UK Police Arrest Mulve Operators
from the um,-what? dept
Over the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of talk about Mulve, an application that was released that apparently made it quite easy to download all sorts of music for free. We didn’t write about it, because we don’t tend to write about new apps like that, but it has been interesting to watch the reaction to it. The Mulve software itself is really a search engine, apparently searching a cache of music found on a Russian social network. The RIAA was able to take Mulve down briefly, but it quickly came back up. Now, TorrentFreak is reporting that Mulve’s operators have been arrested by the UK police.
Details are pretty scarce at this time, but I can’t fathom any criminal provision that could stick here. This reminds me a lot of when UK police arrested OiNK’s admin, Alan Ellis, and only afterwards realized that it didn’t look like OiNK actually broke any laws. So, it tried to charge him with “conspiracy to defraud the music industry.” After a few wasted years, a jury finally found him not guilty.
Either way, arresting these guys seems like pure overkill. The software is a search engine. Yes, the search engine finds and lets people download music (from elsewhere on the internet) in an unauthorized fashion, but so does Google. At the very least, let a civil trial happen. It’s difficult to see how this should involve the police and any sort of criminal lawsuits.
Comments on “UK Police Arrest Mulve Operators”
The frak?
“At the very least, let a civil trial happen.”
Yeah, hit ’em with a slightly smaller stick. For great justice.
Since when have police let laws determine what they can and can’t do….
Re: Re:
There are limits to how far they will go.
For example, if you were wearing a helmet cam and ended up catching an offduty copy engaging in unprofessional conduct on a public street, they could not arrest you. Oh, wait. Nevermind.
TorrentFreak also learned that the arrested guy wasn’t actually involved in the programming of the application but since it’s believed he made the video demo the authorities have put two and two together to arrive at the outcome detailed above.
hahahahahahahahaha
They killed their account, too. Mulve.com is now just a placeholder.
I don't blame them.
FTA:“Just letting you know that following arrests, we have decided to take Mulve offline for good. We do not want to fight this,” Mulve told TorrentFreak.
We live in a world where citizens are afraid of law enforcement even when they are innocent, because they know that innocence is no longer a valid defense. I hope our grand children forgive us.
Re: I don't blame them.
Our grandchildren won’t forgive us.
2000 years from now (if humans are still here), people will look back and say, “They had it SO good, how did they screw it all up?”
Re: Re: I don't blame them.
By allowing law to expand too far and capitalism to intrude too far into our legal system.
They released the source code for Mulve I will look at it when I get home. I wonder how hard it would be to mix the client with a p2p based, distributed database, search engine and add it to Mulve? Now that might be a fun project. No central database, distribute the code with the app as part of the lisc, and watch the reaction of RIAA … I’m on a horse.
Re: Re:
Use the Mulve to search Jamendo and Magnatune and other free music locations, then you got something special.
Re: Re:
YES!!! Do it and report back!!!
Also see the simple How To instructions on http://freezonetv.com
bah, this is crap, I’ve posted on a web Mulve and jail their developers, motherfucker police!
Greetings ^^
Dolores!
What was the name of Seinfeld’s girfriend in the show…you know, the one he couldn’t remember, but was embarrassed to ask?
It sounded like a female body part, he remembered. Mulve?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1g5iPdwTL4