Music Festival Producer Pre-Sues Bootleggers 422
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, if you even have been *thinking* about bootlegging the Mile High Music Festival this coming weekend in Denver you've already been sued. No joke. Event producer AEG has already filed trademark infringement claims against 100 John Does and 100 Jane Does in anticipation that they're going to bootleg the event. Since none of the sued parties have actually done anything yet, no one's showing up in court to protest the lawsuit either, so it moves forward... meaning that AEG can use it to get all sorts of law enforcement officials (US Marshals, local and state police and even off-duty officers) to go seize bootleg material."
You've got to be shitting me. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can sue people for things they haven't done yet? Well fuck. HEY GATES! I'm suing you for slandering me! You haven't done it yet, but YOU MIGHT.
Pre-cogs! (Score:1, Insightful)
Steven Spielberg's Minority Report wowed audiences with its futuristic tech: flashy hand-gesture computers, flex-screen displays, holograms, and Lexus-designed auto-piloted vehicles. The sci-fi flick also showed the world a dystopian, draconian picture of a crime-free society: "precogs" predicting murders, eye-scanners dotting the streets and subways, a jet-pack-toting police force, and a public seemingly deprived of any right to privacy. Spielberg envisioned this for 2054, but advances in technology are bringing that future sooner and sooner. Here's a look at some of our own sci-fi crime fighting tools.
1. Blue CRUSH
IBM's new Blue Crime Reduction Utilizing Statistical History (CRUSH) programs feels almost directly inspired by Minority Report. Similar to the "precogs," IBM's new system uses "predictive analytics," mining years and years of incident reports and law enforcement data to "forecast criminal 'hot spots.'" Police in Memphis have already had great success with the $11-billion "precrime" predicting tool: Since installing Blue CRUSH, the city has seen a 31% drop in serious crime.
2. Facebook
There's no escaping the system when we've all voluntarily tapped into it. With Facebook having some 500 million registered users, the social network is quickly becoming a powerful source of data for the police, who can scan profiles for suspect clues. Only this week, law enforcement used Facebook to nab a murder suspect through photos posted on his page. Witnesses were able to independently ID the alleged killer using these pictures alone, which the city police chief called "ironclad" evidence. And this isn't the first time. In 2009, an escaped criminal used Facebook to taunt police while on the lamb, posting pictures of himself flaunting his freedom--before he was soon caught.
3. Google Maps
Internet crime updates such as Gothamist's incident map now allow the public to track the police blotter next-to-real-time. But it's not just concerned citizens and nosy neighbors who are plugging into Google's mapping tech. Google Earth has given law enforcement access to satellite imagery, enabling them to track down criminals from the sky. In Sweden, for example, police were able to zoom down close enough to discover a two-acre marijuana plantation, leading to the arrest of 16 perps and the seizure of 1.2 tons of pot. Drug-sniffing dogs are now a thing of the past.
4. OnStar
In the film, all vehicles are auto-piloted along tracks and can be controlled by law enforcement. When scanners detect a wanted criminal entering a car, police can automatically pull the vehicle over. Looks like this directly inspired OnStar's Stolen Vehicle Slowdown technology. The system enables customers and police to locate a stolen car using GPS, depower the vehicle, and watch as it glides to safety along the side of the road, ending any chance for a high speed chase. Did I mention OnStar even force-locks the doors until police can arrive?
5. Scanners, Everywhere
The days of comical-disguises are numbered for Boris and Natasha, who will have to figure out another way to get past airport security. New facial recognition scanners such as the one installed last year in London enable airport security to measure "points on a person's face and compare them with [their] digital passport photograph." Of course, law enforcement isn't only tracking you by air. Automatic number plate recognition technology is becoming more ubiquitous, allowing police to monitor you real-time, even when they're not looking.
6. Drones
A bill circling the House of Representatives aims to legalize unmanned aerial vehicles to fly over domestic skies for enhanced border security and oil pipeline monitoring. British units are already using UAVs to keep watch of its citizens, which would perhaps raise more questions over privacy violations if London wasn't already chock-full of CCTV cams.
7. Mii? Easily the best Minority Report-like tool, however, comes courtesy of Nintendo. In Japan, police searching for a hit-and-run suspect put u
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
You can sue people for things they haven't done yet? Well fuck. HEY GATES! I'm suing you for slandering me! You haven't done it yet, but YOU MIGHT.
They've been doing it for a while. When an officer charges someone for resisting arrest and nothing else. Figure out that paradox.
Thrown Out (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be thrown out and not allowed to be filed in court again.
This is exactly like me calling the police and reporting my car stolen, so when they arrive to take a statement, I point to my car and tell them that it might be stolen later that night so they're going to have to sit around and wait for it to happen.
Re:hah (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but that is after your home is ransacked, your belongings destroyed/taken, your dogs killed, lose your job while you sit in jail, and your life pretty much ruined. Also you better hope they don't find anything else while they do their searches like that movie screener you got from a friend.
Personally this is scary nuts that it wasn't tossed out the second this was filed. The attorneys should be dis-barred and the judge toss in jail. This NOT how the American legal system works and is total abuse of it.
Bogus complaint (Score:3, Insightful)
How can this even be moving forward. You can't bootleg something that has not happened yet.
Therefore the complaint is bogus.
Any citizen in the city should phone and complain to their representative about the waste of resources.
The producer AEG should be charged with filing a bogus complaint and made to pay for all the actions taken plus a penatly.
Re:Pre-emptive lawsuits (Score:3, Insightful)
This is completely laughable and should be thrown out....a complete waste of time and money.
And she didn't have to burn her bra (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pre-emptive lawsuits (Score:5, Insightful)
John/Jane Doe cases happen all the time. It's presumed that the identity of the person can, at some point, be established. I assume between pre-trial and actual trial, since a person has a right to defend themselves, but I'm not sure it's wise to take that on trust any more. However, all you have to do is find a way to put the case on hold indefinitely and you've a court case you can unleash on anyone at any time.
Well, as far as I was aware John/Jane Doe cases are filed for crimes already committed, but by people whose exact identity is not yet known. This goes a LARGE step farther since the crime has not yet been committed, and is not even guaranteed to be committed. This is a slick trick to get the taxpayers to provide the extra security and snooping for them. I understand John/Jane Doe cases where it is clear a crime has been committed, but to file a lawsuit before the supposed crime can even be committed let alone proven to have occurred seems to go well beyond the intent of any law and should not be permitted. Planning to commit a felony is against the law in itself, so those sorts of situations are already covered, as long as it can be proved that the plans were actually in place.
Stones in glass houses...idiot "promoter" (Score:3, Insightful)
Rock promoters fear one thing: lawsuits. If this idiot wants to play lawsuit wars, he will not survive another season. Rock concerts like this have much bigger problems traditionally, and perhaps instead of "tapers" he'd prefer the good old days of broken glass whiskey bottles, date rape, stampedes, and under aged drinking and overdosing. This summer many died in Germany in a poorly managed crowd. The fact is that if this turkey thinks there is money to be made in lawsuits, than I say sue this idiot until he can no longer afford to obtain an insurance rider. The fact is that the current generation of parents were some of the woodstockers and Deadheads that perfected the art of concert going. But I remeber when I was promoting concerts in LA in 1980-3 that parents were not so cool, and that a cut on the foot due to broken glass at the venue was enough to swallow the profit margin of a sold out concert. Lets remind these idiots who the customer is, and what will happen to anyone who thinks that suing the customer is a good business plan. And while you're at it, this is a call to all tapers to circulate Denver and to guarantee a "Streisand Effect" on the sound boards. He'll have fun suing the entire planet while watching sales drop. We need another Bill Graham, not another Clear Channel-like corporate scum sucking maggot. Rock on, and let the music never stop.
Re:Pre-emptive lawsuits (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the issue of time though? You're suing people for doing something at an event that hasn't even taken place yet. How are they even allowed to file that suit? I understand not having a specific target for the suit, but how can you sue someone for doing something in the future?
Re:Prediction (Score:2, Insightful)
6. Defendants, and each of them, are individuals and business entities who, upon information and belief, are acting in concert and active participation with each other in committing the wrongful acts alleged herein.
Now, by reading the legal document included in TFA, I learned that they aren't worried about people bootlegging the music (for once), but worried about selling t-shirts and stuff with the music festival name on it. Not as interesting. But unless every single person selling a "fake t-shirt" came in one big van and are working together, doesn't the bit above make it invalid?
Re:Pre-emptive lawsuits (Score:5, Insightful)
My understanding is that whenever someone is named as John or Jane Doe their identity is not known, as you said. Not that they are everyone, but that they could be anyone.
In other words, they're a specific, yet unknown, person from the time the court case is filed onward. A very simple defense against this lawsuit should be to note the filing date/time and that you had not yet visited their music festival at that time (provable by virtue of it simply not having happened yet) and therefore could not be one of the 200 specific, but unknown, people that the case is against.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
No paradox. Officer gets a report of a burglary. He see's that you fit the description. He attempts to arrest you. You resist. He hauls you to jail. Later they realize that you aren't the burglar. They still charge you with resisting arrest, and nothing else.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not suing "no one in particular". They are suing individuals who are not yet identified for an action that has not yet occurred, to enable law enforcement to prevent that action from occurring.
I personally think that's fine, as long as they pay the bill for that law enforcement.
Or they could do what other private event festivals do -- pay for security staff that toss out anyone selling infringing goods, and accept the fact that people are going to sell stuff outside the venue (in which case, they often call the cops to enforce street sales licenses, area zoning, whatever can be used to get those people away from the venue).
Read ALL The Articles (Score:2, Insightful)
Digging deep enough, they're saying, "only the plaintiff has the right to sell merchandise bearing the Festival Trademarks at and near the Festival." They're not going after people making recordings of the festival. They're going after people illegally selling bootlegged merchandise at the festival. This is likely to happen. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to file court proceedings and get police support when there is a high likelihood of specific, known crimes being committed.
It's like seeing a bunch of suspicious looking people standing outside a jewelry store with crowbars at midnight. Sure, a crime has not been committed yet, but you're a jackass if you don't report it to police.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
They're probably asking for summary judgment since the John Does didn't show in court.
There are currently zero counts of infringement or unlawful behavior. What is that judgment supposed to be based on?
Central Scrutinizer (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Frank Zappa put it well ...:
"This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...it is my responsibility to enforce all the laws that haven't been passed yet. It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you to the potential consequences of various ordinary everyday activities you might be performing which could eventually lead to *The Death Penalty* (or affect your parents' credit rating). Our criminal institutions are full of little creeps like you who do wrong things...and many of them were driven to these crimes by a horrible force called MUSIC!
"Our studies have shown that this horrible force is so dangerous to society at large that laws are being drawn up at this very moment to stop it forever! Cruel and inhuman punishments are being carefully described in tiny paragraphs so they won't conflict with the Constitution (which, itself, is being modified in order to accommodate THE FUTURE).
"I bring you now a special presentation to show what can happen to you if you choose a career in MUSIC...The WHITE ZONE is for loading and unloading only...if you have to load or unload, go to the WHITE ZONE... you'll love it...it's a way of life...Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...Hi, it's me, I'm back. This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...The WHITE ZONE is for loading and unloading only...If yah gotta load, or if yah gotta unload, go to the WHITE ZONE. You'll love it...it's a way of life. That's right, you'll love it, it's a way of life, that's right, you'll love it, it's a way of life, you'll love it. This, is, the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER!"
-- Source [science.uva.nl]
Re:Read much? (Score:2, Insightful)
If they already know or suspect that the shirts are being made (e.g., the same thing happened at the last festival), there's not really a good reason they shouldn't be able to start the civil process and then start taking names. I'm actually with the promoters on the whole "use of their trademark" thing.
Should be AEG's responsibility (Score:2, Insightful)
If AEG worried so much about this happening, why shouldn't they be forced to hire extra security to look out for the copied merchandise? This burden should not fall on the taxpayers.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why was it unlawful? He had a suspect that matched the description he was given. Are you saying that person SHOULDN'T be arrested in that situation? Under what circumstances could you arrest somebody then?
Mike Masnick? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mike Masnick is a horrible, horrible source of information. He's quite the font of misinformation, however. Whoever approves these articles on slashdot needs to get their head on straight and understand that Slashdot, as a source of information, declines in credibility every time they cite Mike Masnick. Slashdot looks more and more like some "out-of-touch-with-reality but confirming everyone's biases and making them angry" news source everyday.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like the Minority Report...
I always thought Minority Report was a possibility. It's easy to predict human behaviour when backed up against a wall...
Police: You're going to resist arrest, so we're arresting you for that.
Person: I'm not going to resist arrest, you can't arrest me for that.
Police: You are resisting arrest right now.
Person: No, I'm - oh wait...so either way I'm going to be arrested?
Police: Yes
Person: No way copper...*runs*
Police: He's resisting arrest! Let's go!
Congress: See, the system is perfect. The reports never lie...
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:5, Insightful)
So sue 10 John Doe Millionaires, and when you get your summary judgment you now have 10 "gimme your money" vouchers to apply to any millionaires you feels like.
Exactly what they're doing here.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:1, Insightful)
And if 200 men and 200 women show up and bootleg it, can half of them posit the defense that the festival owners chose not to sue them in the first place?
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hah (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? The judges should be held accountable because someone filed a lawsuit with the court clerk's office, even though the judge hasn't even seen it yet?
Not really standard fare (Score:5, Insightful)
For one, injunctions against John Does are rare to be granted. Second they aren't asking for an injunction, they are asking for an injunction, federal marshals for enforcement, monetary damages and attorneys fees.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
You understand there's a difference between charging someone with a crime and convicting them of it, right? There's even a difference between charging them and then dropping the charges or not charging them at all. I'm advocating for the former, because then you have a record of what happened. Then, if an officer has a pattern of dropping a lot of charges, then you could suspect that he's jumping the gun on charging people. You could try to say the same thing about a pattern of arrests and releases, but the difference is that they don't keep records of that.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
"You understand there's a difference between charging someone with a crime and convicting them of it, right? "
Yes, I do. But you said you wanted people charged with crimes that they are innocent of. You do realize that once you charge someone with a crime, the next step is PROSECUTING them, right? The only other possible outcome is to drop the charges. And if you are simply going to drop the charges, why did you take the time to charge them in the first place?
"There's even a difference between charging them and then dropping the charges or not charging them at all. I'm advocating for the former, because then you have a record of what happened."
So you want time and resources wasted charging innocent people... for record-keeping? I would think the report that has the resisting arrest charge would also contain the reason that the officer was arresting you for. And couldn't you simply keep a running total of an officer's "resisting arrest only" incidents?
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the same as the cops getting a perfectly valid warrant to search your house for drugs, and finding your kidnapping victim. It doesn't get tossed out, even if they don't find drugs.
Re:Pre-emptive lawsuits (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the trick here is they file a pre-emptive suit in order to acquire the use of law-enforcement officials and the legal abilities they have.
Abuse of process.
Only in America (Score:1, Insightful)
That joke of a thing you call a legal system has done it again.
Well done America. Keep that dream alive..
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:5, Insightful)
And if only 50 men and 50 women bootleg it, can the festival owners be arrested for submitting the other 100 false claims?
Re:The difference between recording and bootleggin (Score:3, Insightful)
That word is very misleading; it should be called copy privilege, copy exclusivity, or copy monopoly.
Why?
It is a privilege, granted by the government in detriment of everyone's else right to copy
No, it is a right granted by the government. "Privilege" would imply that it's some kind of special reward, but (legally) it's not. It's a legal right.
The ultimate goal of copyright was as a richer public domain. It was for the benefit of ALL THE PEOPLE, not the artists', and certainly not the MAFIAA's.
And the mechanism for achieving that is the granting of rights.
If copyright has failed to give us a richer public domain, it has failed to fulfill its sole intended goal. Therefore, it must be abolished.
Wow, go off the deep-end much? What does that have to do with the legal definition of copyright? Do you usually just inject irrelevant statements into discussions?
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Score -1, TryingTooHardToBeFunny.
Better luck next time.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:4, Insightful)
I do. You have no idea what I do and don't know.
The cops don't KNOW if you are innocent or guilty at the time of the arrest. They simply arrest a likely suspect if they have sufficient evidence on hand at the time.
I understand and I disagree with both your premise and their logic.
By your logic, everybody should fight arrest, every time. Because, hey, I'm 'innocent'.
Someone who committed the crime in question is not innocent. They are guilty. Now, given your track record of purposefully picking the definition the person isn't using and asserting that they used the word wrong, I'll just mention that being innocent or guilty is a fact. They either did it or they didn't. Being found guilty or being acquitted is a finding of law. Though the judicial finding is attempting to mimic the former, they two are actually unrelated in that innocent people have been found guilty and guilty people have been acquitted. So yes, I understand the words. But that doesn't mean that I have to use them the way you prefer them to be used, nor is my "valid" use of a word invalid because you assert so.
And why do you think being arrested is some type of horrible event that must be fought?
Why do you think that provably innocent people should submit to the incorrect will of the State? Because the enforcers are armed? Or because obedience is more important than accuracy?
An arrest is nothing more than taking you in for proper booking, questioning, etc. Arrest and imprisonment are NOT the same thing.
One is holding you against your will, while the other is holding you against your will. Yes, I see the distinction you are trying to make in showing me that the two are unrelated.
Re:thoughtcrime (Score:3, Insightful)
I do believe/hope AEG might have just demonstrated a way of creating a negative Streisand effect.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:2, Insightful)
People seem to be having a hard time understanding that members of the public are expected to willingly surrender themselves to the custody of an officer of the law so that the officer may dispassionately investigate whether they are involved in the crime.
Perhaps because, often, arrest is abduction by thugs who operate outside the law whilst at the same time having the ability to falsely implicate their captive in non-existent crimes to enable them to more easily meet their quota.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. Just because the soulless, misogynistic, thug-wannabe rap outnumbers it by orders of magnitude doesn't mean the good rap music doesn't exist.
And yes it's music. Geez man, you sound like my mother.
Re:You've got to be shitting me. (Score:3, Insightful)
I could be wrong, but I thing the GGP's "anything better to do" was sarcastic, pointing at the fact that the police have lots of better things to be doing, so why are we hiring them out to police private parties? I don't necessarily agree with him, just pointing out the alternative interpretation.
Some poor smuck they can pin it on (Score:4, Insightful)
If no one actually bootlegs the event, who pays the monetary damages and attorney fees?
The innocent single mother whose daughter's IP address is "erroneously" identified as an offender (more accurately: framed for the offense), and is forced to settle for a few thousand or face permanent bankruptcy.
Welcome to twenty-first century justice American Style(tm), where you've been found guilty, before you even get out of bed, of a dozen offenses you've never committed. Land of the Free, home of the Brave (as they cower before a legion of Hollywood attorneys and FBI agents jumping over the trussed up bodies of thousands of missing persons to get to hypothetical copyright violators before they get a chance to prove their innocence, but I digress).
Re:Not really standard fare (Score:2, Insightful)
If no one actually bootlegs the event, who pays the monetary damages and attorney fees?
The attorney fees become built into the ticket price. I know what music festival I'm not going to this summer!
Re:Not really standard fare (Score:1, Insightful)
They will find someone, guilty or not.