Playing of freeview movies in SL

Hi all,
I'm curious about this as I have stumbled across a cinema in SL that plays all the latest movies for free. Is this legal? It's no charge, and on top of that the same sim/company sells TV sets that contain up to 40 or so movies in them that can be bought for anywhere around $1000L per month.
I guess the question is - do we turn a blind eye to establishments like this, and if not, what would be the recommended course of action to take? An abuse report?

Cheers.

There really isn't anything you can do about it unless you happen to be the copyright owner. LL also isn't hosting the content or even providing access to it. It's your puter that is connecting directly to a site hosting the movies.

You could always report it to the movie studio or an entity that is representing them if you wanted to, but you'd have to report the site the content is hosted on. Reporting it in SL isn't going to help since that isn't where the (alleged) infringement is taking place.

Outrage about copyright infringement generally seems to be reserved for the copyrights of other residents only in any case.

So the general consensus is that it is acceptable to provide an avenue for people to freely access material that is clearly illegal?
I wonder... if I opened a sim and sold a multitude of links leading to various child pornography on the internet, and even showed child porn in my sim, would you have the same response?

There is no ambiguity here - they are *selling* movies that do not belong to them, and freely playing movies they do not own rights to. If yourself, others like you, and the Lindens themselves take such a lax attitude to this issue - I have to wonder about the future of Second Life.

I'm going to be the devils advocate here. How do you know the stream to those movies are not legal? You can show videos that are copyright protected as long as you have rights to those. The person could be paying the proper fees and signed the proper papers.

Do what you think is right..........but, if I were you, I'd sure investigate first. You could end up with egg on your chin.

And your analogy with child pornography is beyond stupid.

The showing of current movies is an issue I guess, so AR the Sim owner or theatre operator. For the TV streaming, there are some sites that stream old movies legally just as there are music streams, so these could be OK to show. I agree with Peggy, the porn analogy is ridiculous.

You're right - but so are some responses. And name calling and throwing around insults are unnecessary.

What I will do is look into the source of the movies, and contact the sim owner for more information.

It seems you want confirmation on something you already made your mind up on. But, I sure don't know what you've decided.

To be honest I see this thread as a semi troll. If you think you should AR the people you think are guilty then go ahead..........no one is going argue much. If you are not going to AR, again no one is going to argue much. But, so far you have responded pretty emphatically about the responses you've recieved so far. Mine is probably the most argumentitive..........the others have been rather benign. I really don't think you are as "offended" as you might like us to believe. I do think you want to argue.

So, I'm out.

you should really read your response before you look at who is attacking who..you were pretty insulting yourself to a person giving you a very decent answer..
they did not deserve that at all..and if it were the other way around and someone were insulting you in the same manner roles in this thread would be reversed..

What I will do is look into the source of the movies, and contact the sim owner for more information.

Oops, did I just repeat myself? ;o)

they have a lotion for people with that condition

The problem is no different than if the movie were being shown anywhere else on the internet.

In fact because of how the video streaming works it is the exact same thing.

If you had another viewer program where you could use that same URL boom you'd get the same movie.

You wouldn't blame the viewer in that case.

My, or anyone else's for that matter, attitude towards the issue isn't relevant.

You asked a practical question, you received an answer to the question on how and what and where to report.

Several people now have pointed out that the alledged infringement isn't taking place in SL because the content is hosted externally so LL isn't going to do anything about it (beyond the fact that you're not the copyright owner) since there is nothing they can do.

Whatever entity handles the rights for whatever movie studio produced the movie is where you report it if you feel you need to and you'd need to report the actual URL and not SL to be of any use since sending a cease and decist to LL would be quite pointless, it needs to go to the webhost who's actually hosting it.

What I will do is look into the source of the movies, and contact the sim owner for more information.

This is asking for trouble, especially since everybody has agreed that the child porn analogy is absurd, but I guess I'm not quite understanding just why it's absurd. Of course child porn is unspeakably dreadful, but just dealing with the mechanics, isn't LL exactly equally culpable in both cases? Obviously, the total crimes involved are not equally heinous, but wouldn't LL have the same share (or no share at all) in the commission of both crimes?

So, is it that we'd expect LL to be vigorous in stopping one but not the other, because one is so much worse than the other? That would be a perfectly good reason; I just want to make sure that's what's being said. Because it seems to me quite wrong to ascribe a larger *share* of the blame to LL for the worse case, when both would use the same mechanisms, and would be equally impossible for LL to prevent a priori.

There's no question of legality in that case, it's always going to be illegal. LL still wouldn't be able to actually take down the content either, they could clear the media URL and would hopefully pass the land owner's information on to the relevant authorities.

Those movies on the other hand could be properly licensed and only the copyright owner (or someone contracted to act on their behalf) would know and would be able to actually do something about it and it's in their best interest to remove the actual content (and identify who is actually hosting it) rather than a link to it.

If I had to guess I'd think/hope that any content provider would be required to remove and report any instance of child porn on their service, whether directly linked or merely referenced, but for copyrighted content they only need to respond to properly files DMCAs and nothing more. If the procedure for the former is more or less accurate, then the two just don't compare which would make it "absurd" to compare apples to oranges.

here maybe this helps you repeat it 3 more times..

I dont see the reason for going after the sim owner? Are they posting links to your copyrighted videos? I have a freeview type tv and it pulls links to old moves from the internet, that are free for anyone on the internet to watch.. SL or LL has nothing to do with the inbetweens. IMHO of course. I just see stirring the pot as helping. May as well go after all us online radio hosts and dj's so we lose that aspect of SL also.

Most of us seem to agree that streaming copyright protected videos over the internet is not legal without permission from the the copyright holder.

Accessing that stream is not illegal in most places. The ISP, browser maker, pc company and Linden Labs are not responsible if someone uses their product to watch videos that are being streamed from somewhere in the world by someone who does not have the rights to them.

If you want to avoid using a service that is illegally streaming videos you'll have to check on the copyrights and permissions involved. None of which has anything to do with Linden Labs or Al Gore.

Activities that promote or portray child abuse are not allowed in SL and should be reported to Linden Labs and government authorities.

If you know of an internet site that is illegally streaming protected videos the copyright holders would probably like you to report it to them. They probably won't be interested in a list of people who have visited the site.

I think somebody has been reading Dan Linden's "Rat on Your Neighbor" Blog on the toilet again.....

Or Chain Yanking 101

My 2 Cents: I just dont care.