looks like it's time for bittorrent users to start paying for their sins

[aedipuss]

http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/03/new-litigation-campaign-targets-tens-of-th...ent-users.html

too late to hide. they already have at least six figures worth of united states ip addresses to sue. and it's already working to generate huge dollars in settlements for the studios in europe.

[lowellriggsiam]

The pirates may wish they had walked the plank.

[jimdagys]

more than 20,000 individual movie torrent downloaders have been sued

I think it is good business. Let me get out my calculator. 20,000 x (let's say $100,000 per lawsuit)=
Everybody in Hollywood will be driving new SUVs.

[greymalkin]

they say they are charging $500 - $1000 per infringer (not infringement)..so using a straight down the middle figure of
750 x 20,000 = $15,000,000

hmm..perhaps I should wait till Lord of the Rings comes out in a "legitimate" HD format :P.

[aedipuss]

oh yeah, it's an excellent business plan. seeing as though it's lawyer's doing the suing for a piece of the action, with no up front costs to the studios they can't lose. even the isp's will get paid - about $50 for each ip they are "forced" to divulge the user's real name and address...

[AlanHK]

too late to hide. they already have at least six figures worth of united states ip addresses to sue. and it's already working to generate huge dollars in settlements for the studios in europe.

Right. They have evidence that would stand up in court for each of these IPs?

It works until some downloaders organise or find some supporters to defend them rather than just caving in and making a settlement. If the charge actually has to be proved in front of a judge, with all the uncertainty of linking an IP address with a computer, and a computer with a person; and of identifying a data packet as unambiguously a copyright infringement, it would very likely be dismissed. And ISPs that rat out their customers are not going to be popular.

And all this comes from a press release by the people planning this campaign.

[mh2360]

Sounds like a similar tactic used by Davenport Lyons in the UK, which ended up with them attending a disciplinary tribunal.

[greymalkin]

yeah..I'm sure once the squealing ISP's are revealed, some street justice is going to happen in the interwebz.

[RdM642]

Right. They have evidence that would stand up in court for each of these IPs?

It works until some downloaders organise

The targets are all uploaders. There are no successful cases civil or criminal in the US against pure downloaders. eg usenet or pure leech torrent

[jman98]

Interestingly enough, all of the films listed are independent films. One of them is a Uwe Boll film and that dude is about as close to being the modern Ed Wood as anyone can be. What the hell?

[AlanHK]

Right. They have evidence that would stand up in court for each of these IPs?
It works until some downloaders organise

The targets are all uploaders. There are no successful cases civil or criminal in the US against pure downloaders. eg usenet or pure leech torrent

The article cited says "downloaders", several times.

But as I said, I don't believe it's really a threat to "six figures" of downloaders (what a nice, vague, number that is -- an indication of how it's being spun in an attempt to spread fear.

And I think there have been "successful" cases against downloaders, but successful in reaching a settlement, not in a legal judgement. And certainly successful in influencing policy of, e.g., some universities.

[aedipuss]

too late to hide. they already have at least six figures worth of united states ip addresses to sue. and it's already working to generate huge dollars in settlements for the studios in europe.

Right. They have evidence that would stand up in court for each of these IPs?

It works until some downloaders organise or find some supporters to defend them rather than just caving in and making a settlement. If the charge actually has to be proved in front of a judge, with all the uncertainty of linking an IP address with a computer, and a computer with a person; and of identifying a data packet as unambiguously a copyright infringement, it would very likely be dismissed. And ISPs that rat out their customers are not going to be popular.

And all this comes from a press release by the people planning this campaign.

from the article it appears they have computers actively in the torrent recording each and every downloaded piece with full certainty that it's a part of the movie they are tracking with date, time and ip. so yeah they have enough for warrants to get the isp's to give up the user's identities. isp's are not allowed to ignore courts orders so they will give them up.

[Supreme2k]

The way torrents work is that you upload as you are downloading, so it is not as simple as merely downloading from a site. Once you become a peer, you are also part of distribution.

[RdM642]

Right. They have evidence that would stand up in court for each of these IPs?
It works until some downloaders organise

The targets are all uploaders. There are no successful cases civil or criminal in the US against pure downloaders. eg usenet or pure leech torrent

The article cited says "downloaders", several times.

It says downloaders because the writers don't know or are copying form press releases.

In the US no one has ever been successfully sued or persecuted for downloading alone. The term illegal download itself is something that exists as a theoretical assertion, and not a legal principle firmly addressed in case law. Press releases ore statements by parties, or sloppy news writers or even statement in court that refer to uploading as "downloading" don't accrue to establishing anything when in fact the activities cited ends up being distribution (uploading).

The way torrents work is that you upload as you are downloading, so it is not as simple as merely downloading from a site. Once you become a peer, you are also part of distribution.

It depends. There are people who workaround that even on p2p, there are ways to leech uploading nothing or merely uploading material not under copyright. It is frowned upon but people do do it.
More to the point, there are also a slew of coyright material downloaded intentionlly and unintentionally by nntp, smtp and http that are pure downloads and which there is no established case law despite deliberately confusing claims that there is..

[RdM642]

from the article it appears they have computers actively in the torrent recording each and every downloaded piece

each and every upload...maybe.

[AlanHK]

Right. They have evidence that would stand up in court for each of these IPs?
It works until some downloaders organise

The targets are all uploaders. There are no successful cases civil or criminal in the US against pure downloaders. eg usenet or pure leech torrent

The article cited says "downloaders", several times.

It says downloaders because the writers don't know or are copying form press releases.

In the US no one has ever been successfully sued or persecuted for downloading alone.

Yes, for the third time, I know that. I don't know why you keep "correcting" me for things like that, since I basically agree with your point, if not your style

(Though people certainly have been "persecuted". I expect you meant "prosecuted".)

And if you use Bittorrent, by design you upload at the same time as you download (though there are ways to cheat that).

[AlanHK]

from the article it appears they have computers actively in the torrent recording each and every downloaded piece with full certainty that it's a part of the movie they are tracking with date, time and ip.

Again you're just repeating what the lawyers bringing the cases (or more to the point, THREATENING to bring cases in the hope of forcing a settlement) want you to believe.

"Full certainty" is not legal proof.
Cases the RIAA took to court with "full certainty" fell apart under scrutiny.
And how many times does it have to be said: an IP is not a fingerprint. I use a dozen different IPs every day. I could leech from a neighbour or a nearby office's wifi. If I was going to use BT (which by the way, I don't), I would not be using an IP that could be easily tracked to me. And I'd be using proxies, VPNs, encryption, and so forth. If prosecutions did actually start (which we have not seen yet) I expect that very quickly that this would become the norm, and any "certainty" would go out the window.

[Mitchum22]

God, what a pathetic thread. Most of the people in it seem to get their jollies from being corporate groupies -- after all, how dare the great unwashed try and rip off companies that charge $15 a ticket to watch "How to Train Your Dragon," "Hot Tub Machine," "She's Out of My League" and "Repo Men".

And people wonder why the US has become nothing but a shitty little corporate prison.

[bendixG15]

Lawyers keep finding ways to make money ...............

[aedipuss]

God, what a pathetic thread. Most of the people in it seem to get their jollies from being corporate groupies -- after all, how dare the great unwashed try and rip off companies that charge $15 a ticket to watch "How to Train Your Dragon," "Hot Tub Machine," "She's Out of My League" and "Repo Men".

And people wonder why the US has become nothing but a shitty little corporate prison.

you can't afford $15 to see the flick you don't deserve to see it at all. get your sorry ass off the couch and make something of yourself. i for one am tired of lame losers who think they deserve everything for free, and i don't think i'm the only one.

you don't like it here, get out. start a mass migration of whiners please!

[RdM642]

i for one am tired of lame losers who think they deserve everything for free, and i don't think i'm the only one.

Well you put yourself in that camp when you admitt using anydvd which is stolen code and or stolen patented mechanism, right?

Do you think paying someone else to use stolen goods, or pretending you don't know why they can't sell it in the US makes it better?

do you feel stealing patented material is better or different than stealing copyright material?

I agree with you that the rationalizations are a problem, but the hypocrisy is also a problem. I don't think anyone using anydvd should be making accusations about others.

[Alex_ander]

looks like it's time for bittorrent users to start paying for their sins

To be a torrent user is not a sin (the article says "movie downloaders" which is correct). The next step would be to say "time for internet users (-> PC users -> users of electric appliances etc) to pay for their sins" since some of them do something illegal.

[chrchr]

I'm really surprised with all theese!
I don't know what "torrent" is and how it "works"...!

But, i heard it's illegal to film the "private moments" of the elephant and upload after to youtube.The copyright of the "porn movie" belongs to the Zoo park.
Church doesn't like the idea of poor animals be used as "concuption products", too!
And maybe somebody who has downloaded this "movie" and he has turned it in a DVD format (so he can watch it in his DVD player) he can be really in the ..."shit" !!!

And i heard that it's illegal too, to "spy" and "film" the elephant.Nobody asked him if he agrees, and for sure (who is sure if?) he is not a "terrorist", and he doesn't make a "buisness", just because he lives.
He only tries to live in a "cage" that "you" put him.

[Supreme2k]

something about elephants

I'm sure that was funnier in Greek.

[aedipuss]

looks like it's time for bittorrent users to start paying for their sins

To be a torrent user is not a sin (the article says "movie downloaders" which is correct). The next step would be to say "time for internet users (-> PC users -> users of electric appliances etc) to pay for their sins" since some of them do something illegal.

oops sorry, i do apologize for the inference that ALL bittorrent users are sinners. but i would like to meet and shake the hand of the one user who never has downloaded or hosted any file that wasn't owned by someone else, linux distro only people excepted of course.

[aedipuss]

i for one am tired of lame losers who think they deserve everything for free, and i don't think i'm the only one.

Well you put yourself in that camp when you admitt using anydvd which is stolen code and or stolen patented mechanism, right?

Do you think paying someone else to use stolen goods, or pretending you don't know why they can't sell it in the US makes it better?

do you feel stealing patented material is better or different than stealing copyright material?

I agree with you that the rationalizations are a problem, but the hypocrisy is also a problem. I don't think anyone using anydvd should be making accusations about others.

what? anydvd? it can't be sold legally in the u.s. because it violates the dcma. don't know what you're on about.

[lordsmurf]

Cases the RIAA took to court with "full certainty" fell apart under scrutiny.

I once torrented/downloaded what was supposed to be a Linux Live CD, for a computer I was trying to recover. What I got was some really crappy bootleg of a movie. WTF? Found another Live CD, different distro, from a university FTP.

More than once I've caught my wireless router re-enabling wireless access by itself, after a long power surge had knocked it out for a half day or so. I often didn't notice it until weeks had gone by. Recently I started to just unplug it when it's not needed.

I find it hard to believe anything can be "full certainty" when even the best of us can be tricked.

[aedipuss]

Cases the RIAA took to court with "full certainty" fell apart under scrutiny.

I once torrented/downloaded what was supposed to be a Linux Live CD, for a computer I was trying to recover. What I got was some really crappy bootleg of a movie. WTF? Found another Live CD, different distro, from a university FTP.

More than once I've caught my wireless router re-enabling wireless access by itself, after a long power surge had knocked it out for a half day or so. I often didn't notice it until weeks had gone by. Recently I started to just unplug it when it's not needed.

I find it hard to believe anything can be "full certainty" when even the best of us can be tricked.

with the current climate in the courts, like the recent decisions against newsbin, isohunt and other torrent trackers shut down for just listing offending file names, i don't expect there will be much sympathy for actual filesharers. the i didn't know, i was tricked defense won't work at all, but i'd almost give points for the rogue modem. if only the court certified networking expert and technologically savvy defense attorney wouldn't cost way more than the settlement offer....

[victoriabears]

what amuses me is that if illegal ownloading was stopped then all isp accounts would be the basic service, for instance, my local provider gives me 400GB for $150 per month, which I am using for a few months to catch up on my private torrents then will go back to only 100GB a month for $45 (yes I have pointed out to the isp the nonsnese of their pricing).

[jagabo]

Was this an early April fools' joke? I haven't seen any other reports except for those quoting the Hollywood Reporter story.