[droithomme]

The sooner she starts her term the sooner she gets out, so this is good for her.

The obvious problem here is sending copyright violators to federal prison for long terms, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Killers and drug dealers often get shorter sentences, and bankers that steal billions don't go to prison at all.

To say this is justice is a stretch.

Running a video site that hosts unlicensed content uploaded by users is what youtube did for years. Where are the prison terms for their founders?

[murz]

> Running a video site that hosts unlicensed content uploaded by users is what youtube did for years

Comparing NinjaVideo.net to YouTube is a bit of a stretch. NinjaVideo.net's sole purpose was to host high-quality unlicensed content, they would feature the unlicensed content, and it was clearly what was driving traffic to their website. If you never saw the site, just take a look in the internet archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100104054215/http://www.ninjavi...

Their frontpage was basically a list of links (the administrators curated and posted these links, complete with graphic banners like this: http://web.archive.org/web/20100104054215im_/http://i47.tiny..., and captions like "the DVDRip is here!!! Enjoy" and "here's a Screener for you") to stream whatever new content was on TV that night, or whatever movies had recently been released (sometimes even before they hit theaters). By simply taking a peak at their forum it was pretty clear that the administrators of the site had a relationship with the "uploaders" and commissioned them to upload the unlicensed content to megaupload where it would then be streamed in high-quality using the "NinjaVideo Helper" (basically a java applet that pushed megaupload content to the DivX web player). I'd venture to guess any DMCA takedown notices would be forwarded to /dev/null.

The clearest difference, imo, is that YouTube allows users to upload content (content can be uploaded without the owners of the site ever seeing it). NinjaVideo did not allow users to upload content, the owners added pages which allowed you to stream content hosted on megaupload (for any video to end up on NinjaVideo, the admins had to add it).

[lachyg]

What punishment, if any, do you believe is fair for her?

[droithomme]

Depends on what she actually did. Isn't copyright violation a civil and not criminal matter? How is what she did different from youtube? You know, even today there are hundreds of thousands of hours of unlicensed movie and show content on youtube. Why aren't they being investigated.

Really the only difference I see is she is black and doesn't have friends in high places. If she sold the site to Google she'd be on the cover of Forbes rather than in jail.

[lachyg]

What she was doing was definitely not what YouTube does / did! YouTube is a video sharing website, where the intent is to share video in which you own the copyright to, obviously with such a large community you will have people that will break the rules.

NinjaVideo is a site that's #1 purpose is to upload copyrighted tv shows and movies, hours after their airing. Its defined purpose is piracy.

Clear difference from YouTube here.

As to your "Why aren't they being investigated." comment -- they are, YouTube is quite proactive in automatic removals, DMCA's, detection of copyrighted music, etc.

[droithomme]

They sure look the same to me. When I type in a name of a movie to see if there is a DVD on amazon yet, often Google, YouTube's owner, offers to show me the version someone has uploaded to their servers. Then, Google/YouTube makes revenue from showing me ads if I or anyone chooses to go to that page.

It's absurd to claim YouTube is not about unlicensed content. The vast majority of their streamed content was unlicensed for the first few years they were up. To deny this is to deny history. It took them a long time to catch hold for video blogging, a lot of which had to wait on people having cameras included with their laptops before it took off. But even now, the unlicensed content is as strong as ever, they just have more licensed content on top of it.

[szopa]

What you are saying is incorrect.

YouTube has deals with major content producers (music labels, movie studios, etc.) which work in the following way: whenever we discover a video that infringes their copyright, they can choose to either block it, monetize it or track it. What blocking means is quite obvious; monetizing means that we put ads in front of the video and share the revenue; tracking means no ads are shown, but the owner can access analytics about the video (how often it is uploaded, how many people watch it, where from, and so on). You can read more about it here: [1].

As you may imagine, this system changes the incentives for copyright owners. When they decide to block some video, all they achieve is making some YouTube uploader unhappy. If they decide to monetize, on the other hand, they start making money from the upload, and the clip becomes, effectively, a marketing tool for their product. If you, say, watch clips from a TV series on YouTube, that may be a signal that you like the series and will eventually watch it on TV or iTunes. What is more, uploaders try to select clips they find interesting and think other people would like to watch – so this in some way turns YouTube into crowdsourced advertising.

(Disclaimer: I work as a programmer at Google and I work on YouTube.)

[1] http://www.youtube.com/t/contentid

[OstiaAntica]

Google purchased YouTube and THEN entered into those content deals. Before that, it was very touch and go for YouTube-- they couldn't afford their bandwidth, let alone licensing deals, and many commenters said that Google was stupid to take on YouTube's copyright liability.

[silentOpen]

This system was put in place years after YouTube launched. YouTube was propelled to popularity without any automatic detection systems in place. Your distinction is disingenuous or you are ignorant of the history of your own employer.

[sunchild]

The difference between civil/criminal liability for copyright infringement depends on whether you knew you were infringing. In YouTube's case, I believe they used their huge volume and a notice/takedown process to protect themselves from intentional infringement liability.

[Natsu]

> Isn't copyright violation a civil and not criminal matter?

Not always. This case was for criminal infringement (and conspiracy). The definition of criminal infringement was expanded by the NET Act a long time ago, but only recently have there been many cases of it making the news.

Here's an article on how the whole criminal infringement thing works if you want to know more:

http://www.ericgoldman.org/Articles/warezcriminalcopyright.p...

[Professa]

Her parents are Egyptian

[sedachv]

Disney should hire her as their head of digital distribution. Putting your most passionate distributor in jail is counter-productive.

[nicki_easy]

<3

[nicki_easy]

Hugging that comment gets hated? I guess I could have expanded.

[lachyg]

It's just a HackersNewsism, stuff that doesn't contribute to the discussion, one liners or troll comments all get downvoted.

Your comment didn't add anything to the discussion and could be replaced by the 'Upvote' button.

[nicki_easy]

Fair enough. I'm new to posting here and being up-/downvoted; I usually just lurk.