Aussie Police ARE the Pirates
Oh, irony, you sweet mistress, you. TorrentFreak (via The Australian) is reporting that hundreds of pirated movie files were found on the computers of an Australian Police IT unit!
“If the officers do go unpunished, it could create a favorable precedent for filesharers in South Australia. If police officers, who are expected to be held to a greater level of accountability regarding the law, show this level of contempt for the current copyright laws, are unpunished, it will make it harder to convince a court that regular citizen should be punished for similar acts.”
This really could be one of the steps that forces legal systems around the world to rewrite their laws around copywrite. Imagine how many people would have to be prosecuted if anyone who ever downloaded or copied a “protected” file was actually found out.
April 7, 2008 9:53 pm 1 Comment
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By georgegad, April 8, 2008 @ 2:03 am
Just dropped in to copy my comment from the site i first found this article.
As humorous as i find this, honestly the coppers who were doing this have little to fear.
The only reason it was illegal is because they were using the police computers to download, and the police force is a business interest.
Had they done the same activity on their home computers they would have not been in breach of the copyright law.
Take this as serious warning though. If you happen to download on your work computer, stop now. The company you work for is a for-profit business and cannot be involved in filesharing. Your work, not you, will be taken to court. They will be found guilty, and of course they will pass the blame to you. You will be fired and possibly have to go to civil court.
Downloading and copying is completly legal here in australia, but only for civilians in a non-profit situation, not for government agencies or corporations.