Music publishing companies notched another court victory against a broadband provider that refused to terminate the accounts of Internet users accused of piracy. In a ruling on Wednesday, the conservative-leaning US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sided with the big three record labels against Grande Communications, a subsidiary of Astound Broadband.

The appeals court ordered a new trial on damages because it said the $46.8 million award was too high, but affirmed the lower court’s finding that Grande is liable for contributory copyright infringement.

      • Flying Squid
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        09 months ago

        That was one of the station cars at one of the TV stations where I worked because the station manager rented one at some conference and decided it was awesome.

        What a piece of shit car.

  • Admiral Patrick
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    29 months ago

    Exactly what law states internet connections should be terminated for users accused of piracy?

    And are we going to selectively enforce this against poor people, or are they going to start demanding the trunk lines feeding AI datacenters be cut as well? (I asked rhetorically).

    • @[email protected]
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      09 months ago

      Might be a good idea to torrent whatever you need before the corpos manage to get some law passed that makes it so that isps will have to terminate users for that.

        • NaibofTabr
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          19 months ago

          You want a protocol that will build physical last-mile connections to peoples’ houses?

            • NaibofTabr
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              09 months ago

              Well the birds still have to link to the main network somewhere to exchange packets… which I assume would still be an ISP, unless all you want is local mesh networking.

          • @[email protected]
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            19 months ago

            I just woke up everyone in my house with a giggle fit thanks to you. Yes weed is involved.

            That was amazing.

              • @[email protected]
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                09 months ago

                It can cover a one-kilometer radius

                So most of the last mile.

                If we try to have cable or telcos do last-mile they’ll fuck us as hard as they possibly can, make laws guaranteeing themselves a permanent monopoly, etc.

                We need wireless as a backup just to keep those worthless fuckers honest, then we can do a hybrid model with some scattered fiber ONTs terminating into wifi nodes.

                What we really need is to string fiber on the power lines, but the telcos and comcast pay the power companies extra to stop that too.

                Break the monopoly power and this all comes tumbling down.

                • @[email protected]
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                  9 months ago

                  “And then we can do a hybrid model” congratulations you just invented an ISP.

                  “Then we’ll string wires on poles” congratulations you just invented an ISP again.

                • NaibofTabr
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                  19 months ago

                  Someone will still have to install and maintain the wireless access points, physically link them to the local network trunk and negotiate for service with the backbone provider… which would just be an ISP, who would sell you access to the WiFi system like a cellular provider.

                  This isn’t a problem that can be solved with technology. Monopolies have to be fixed with government oversight.

    • @[email protected]
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      19 months ago

      Come on, you don’t think an industry that habitually uses automated takedown requests regardless of merit would falsely accuse anyone, do you?

    • @[email protected]
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      29 months ago

      AI shouldn’t be allowed to touch the internet because it’s basically stealing everything and never giving references which is plagiarism.

  • ThrowawayOnLemmy
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    09 months ago

    Good fuckin luck with that. You’re just gonna have people adopting more obfuscated piracy methods.

  • @[email protected]
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    09 months ago

    That could be a fun kind of ddos attack for a botnet - compromise your competitors’ machines and download collective TBs of infringing material, then report it as an anonymous whistleblower!

  • Nougat
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    19 months ago

    I suppose this means that if someone tells USPS that a burned DVD of The Bee Movie has been mailed to me, USPS should stop delivering any mail to me?

  • BlackLaZoR
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    19 months ago

    Service termination based on accusation alone? What a great legal invention. Im sure it won’t ever be abused