Porn Maker Sues 7,000+ For Copyright Infringement 374
This summer, we discussed news that the producers of The Hurt Locker had sued 5,000 people for sharing the movie over BitTorrent. Reader suraj.sun writes with word that a porn company is now following suit, filing a complaint targeting 7,098 people for illegally sharing one of their films. Quoting:
"Axel Braun Productions filed the complaint Friday in US District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, alleging that the defendants illegally shared the adult film Batman XXX: A Porn Parody. The film was written and directed by Axel Braun and distributed by Vivid Entertainment, one of the country's best known porn studios. ... '**** 'em all,' Braun told Xbiz. 'People don't realize that when you pirate a movie it hurts all of the people who work very hard to get it produced — from the cast to the production assistants to the makeup artists. So we are going after every one of them who pirates our content.'"
Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's messed up that the EFF thinks that it's not okay to sue thousands of people at once. In my eyes, it seems like that's the best way to deal with it.
I mean, piracy is messed up. I pirate things, but I know that pirating things doesn't help the people that create it. Music, movies, books, porn, no matter what you are pirating it. The only way to sensibly deal with this in court is to deal with everyone who's committing the "crime" (I say crime in quotations because I'm not going to say if piracy is really a crime).
So I say good job porn makers. You guys are getting shafted, and it is messed up.
download does NOT equal loss of sale (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it doesn't hurt you. Either I "preview" said film via torrent, maybe, or I don't see it at all. Now, please tell me where is the loss of sale? Oh, hurts.. well maybe that.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
These porn guys are suing people for infringing "their" copyright. (I say their in quotations because the porn company is infringing on DC Comics copyright.)
Ironic?
Justifying piracy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Fellow pirates,
I implore you to continue your campaign on Slashdot to make me feel less guilty. I know that not paying someone for their work is wrong, but if Slashdot posts enough articles bashing the RIAA/MPAA/copyright law/whatever, it's easier for me to accept what I'm doing emotionally by visualizing someone else as the bad guy. Once on the forefront of relevant IT news, Slashdot is now a lame repository of mainstream pseudoscience links and pro-piracy articles to appease a dwindling readership. I am overjoyed.
Even though the open source community is about giving back as much as it is taking, I'm just going to take. I'm a human leech with self-serving beliefs and an inability to empathize with content creators who are trying to make a living.
I don't believe John Carmack should be paid for his work. I'm going to sit on my ass while he spends years coding the next advanced 3D engine from id Software. When their game comes out, I'm going to pirate it without giving a second thought about paying John Carmack for his work. I'm just so used to pirating things now that I take it for granted. If anyone mentions John Carmack to make me feel guilty, I'll look for Slashdot articles that bolster my viewpoint, such as this one, amusingly posted in the Your Rights Online section even though none of my rights are being violated.
According to that study, it's okay to not pay people for their work because there's some vague hope that they'll make up the difference in income through "concerts and speaking tours." Artists are now forced to take time out of doing what they want to do. John Carmack must stop programming in order to make money from programming. It's genius. The study does exactly what I need it to--make me feel less guilty when I pirate. We've managed to stretch the truth so far that we're actually telling ourselves that we're helping artists by not paying them for their work. Excellent job.
I look forward to Slashdot telling me everyday who the bad guys are. Even though Slashdot has sued websites in the past for copyright infringement, and they've pretended to care about plagiarism, we're supposed to go along with Slashdot's anti-copyright agenda. I'm okay with that hypocrisy because it serves me. It makes me feel less guilty when I pirate something. Remember, I'm not the bad guy--the RIAA/MPAA/whatever is. That makes it okay for me to not pay people for their work.
EULAs and copyright licenses are wrong, yet the GPL is good. Piracy isn't theft, yet GPL violations are referred to as "stolen GPL code." I accept all of these double-standards because it serves me. I pretend not to notice when someone points out that the GPL relies on copyright law, and if I want to get rid of copyright, my beloved open source code will no longer be protected by the GPL. I don't care, because I'm too busy concerning myself with what I want for free, not about the consequences. I want to get rid of copyrights because I've been told that copyrights are the bad guy, and they are an obstacle to my rampant piracy.
Fellow pirates, let us continue our selfish leeching. Let us paint others as the bad guys to absolve us of our emotional guilt. Our goal is to convince people that piracy is something the good guys are doing in a fight with the evil corporations. Making money is wrong, even though Slashdot displays ads, and it cost me money to buy the computer I'm using to pirate stuff.
Yours truly,
A fellow Slashbot
Re:download does NOT equal loss of sale (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we say that not every download is a loss of sale, but some losses of sale can be attributed to downloading?
Just because the RIAA/MPAA presents cases in black and white, doesn't mean we have to. It's harder to make them look ridiculous with their huge fines if we're not grounded in reality either and pretend d/l music/movies is so good that it helps children in Africa heal from AIDS and prolongs unicorn marriages.
Maybe then it would help get saner copyright laws that isn't tilted towards corporate insanity.
Re:download does NOT equal loss of sale (Score:4, Insightful)
Which cuts directly to the real bullshit of the RIAA/MPAA's arguments. They are convinced that if they could just get tougher laws, more DRM and punishments straight out of the middle ages, then all their troubles would go away and they would make even more money than they do now.
Unfortunately:
1. There is no content so amazingly wonderful that I absolutely have to have it.
2. There is a significant number of people who will never buy your product, at any price. If they can't get it for free, or really really cheap, then they will simply do without it (see point 1)
3. Someone "pirates" your movie -- you get no money. People are afraid of getting sued for downloading it so they say "fuck it" and move on to something else (see point 2) in which case -- you get no money.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
You think you are funny don't you?
This is serious . Those poor fluffers [urbandictionary.com] working on the set did not get paid because of these acts of pornographic piracy.....
Re:download does NOT equal loss of sale (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, let's take a different situation. Let's say you are an electrical customer and you decide to shower twice a day and so have that many changes of clothing - meaning twice as many loads in both the washer and the dryer as before. Will your single lifestlye choice result in a new power plant being built? Likely not. But what is 10 million people follow suit in similiar energy sucking choices? Maybe so, then.
It's not an analogy, I'm just trying to illustrate cumulative effects.
It's unlikely that most people are searching for any specific porn title. It's not the nature of this beast, like most movie genres. But the free sharing/uploading/downloading of porn probably has a very real effect on consumers.
Maybe they wouldn't have gone into the store to buy it, but perhaps if they couldn't find the quantity they wanted freely online, they would have to take out a subscription to a site that licensed the works. And in the end, every producer is hit, because subscriptions are down, and the value in licensing every work out there goes down cumulatively as well. I'm sure Hotel PPV is suffering the same way among the younger, computer savvy crowd.
Re:Havent seen it. Let me go Download it... (Score:1, Insightful)
What makes it interesting is that it will all be from a definitively conservative basis, it would be interesting to watch Republicans publicly attempt to defend copyright protections for pornography.
Ha! You think conservatives actually care about following what's in the Constitution, instead of merely invoking its name to support whatever they've dreamed up. Sucker!
Re:Justifying piracy. (Score:1, Insightful)
I implore you to continue your campaign on Slashdot to make me feel less guilty.
Who else is feeling guilty? You are just projecting your own fucked up morals onto others.
Even though the open source community is about giving back as much as it is taking, I'm just going to take.
That's great, be an asshole. And people who use bittorrent will continue to make copies, which is also known as giving and sharing, since in the end everyone involved has more than they started with.
I don't believe John Carmack should be paid for his work.
Funny that you bring up John Carmack, one of the few game designers who understands how fucked up the copyright law is, and one of the few who released his old games under GPL.
yet GPL violations are referred to as "stolen GPL code."
By who? Quotation by a copyright holder needed.
I pretend not to notice when someone points out that the GPL relies on copyright law, and if I want to get rid of copyright, my beloved open source code will no longer be protected by the GPL.
Without copyright, there would be no need for GPL. You would know it if your little troll brain could understand the GPL's preamble and the reason for its existence.
Re:Havent seen it. Let me go Download it... (Score:2, Insightful)
This whole suit smells like a viral marketing stunt to me.
Costs (Score:3, Insightful)
New Hollywood movies don't even cost that much on blu-ray.
Re:panicking pornographers (Score:3, Insightful)
Only now in the last 5-10 years have producers realized that the market wants none of this. Guys (as consumers) want a new girl each in each scene and subsequent film. Porn Stars are now only tolerated because they have some special trick.
I don't know about that, I'm a fairly avid consumer of porn and I like my favorites. What I don't like is a bunch of obviously fake sex, which is why I like the amateur stuff. If you catch them before they are jaded you can see some really nice fucking. After they've been in the business for a few years they may still look good on the outside, but... you know the rest
Usual hivemind fallacy (Score:4, Insightful)
But feel free to karma whore by blatantly ignoring this point which has been raised many times before in response to posts like yours. It seems that attacking the mythical "Slashdot group think" is an easy way to get a +5 Insightful on almost any story these days.
Re:Justifying piracy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Only globally read that but I think I agree. I'm tired of the hypocrites trying to justify piracy.
I'm a pirate, have been for many years, and if I get a fine, fine. I'll deal with it. I knew I was doing something wrong when I started and I don't go around acting like I have the RIGHT to download copyrighted content.
It's not a right, it's a privilege. Without trying to sound too elitist; the oldskool sceners know what I'm talking about.
Re:Good. (Score:1, Insightful)
But trademarks aren't. If they had called the porno "Batguy" or "Batdude", they'd be clear. Calling it "Batman" is a blatant trademark violation.
Re:Havent seen it. Let me go Download it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now technically as the movie can not demonstrate the ability to "promote the useful arts and sciences" under law it is not entitled to copyright protection.
Non sequitur. You are talking about the motivation for copyright law. A work can be protected by copyright law without promoting the goals of copyright law.
Re:Justifying piracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't see the obvious difference between making an unauthorized copy of something and presenting someone else's work as your own then I can understand why copyright law is so screwed up.
Re:panicking pornographers (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the true amateur is where it's at. Sure, the lighting is usually crap, there's often annoying music in the background, or the TV (seriously, who does that? Who fucks with the tv going. Muic I can understand, but trying to get it on with Saturday Night Liv in the background would distract the shit outa me!), and the "models" might not be 100% toned.
But it's genuine. There's no crew standing around, it's not just zombie-like fucking, it's real sex, with people who often actually give a fuck about each other. 1555 times more arousing than a glorified prostitute with fake titties giving head to a ridiculously-large-penised guy with an IQ smaller than his wang-length
/ Anonymous for reasons of shame.
Re:Havent seen it. Let me go Download it... (Score:4, Insightful)
If confronted with the issue of porn copyrights, politicians of either side would just clam up and change the subject. They don't want to offend the social conservatives by appearing to support porn (Espicially the republicans, who are very dependant on that group), but they also don't want to raise the profile of copyright as an issue or risk upsetting the campaign contributors. So they'll just dodge the issue.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
This same argument has been used for newspapers, tv, radio, opera, iPod, mafia, whatever and guess what they are all still here.
And as for dogging being the latest craze. Sorry, but are you TOTALLY incapable of seeing the irony in your own post? You are comparing Vivid to some guy selling DVD's in Ohio (and if he is selling them, then it ain't amateur anymore)? And the move to "amateur" is hardly new either. Gonzo mean anything to you?
What has happened over the decades is that porn, has become more mainstream. As nudity becomes acceptable in this regular movie theather, porn has had to go further to still be able to sell. And tech has allowed it, ever closer close-ups, less need for the camera to dictate the action.
And yet at the same time, the call for retro-porn, from a time when you could NOT see a girls cervix, is greater then ever. For every Dogging fan there is a guy browsing OLD magazines.
The internet has shown us just how great the diversity in the taste of porn is, but that doesn't stop some kid coming along claiming that the DVD's from some guy in Ohio are where it is at.
But don't worry. The newspapers, radio, tv, theathers, the iPod, and the mafia are SURE to take your hint and finally die off. Because YOU determined what EVERYONE else wants.
Grow up.
Re:Good. (Score:1, Insightful)
Now that these guys have drawn attention to themselves, that might just happen.
Re:Usual hivemind fallacy (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean kind of like karma whoring by trotting out the "The Slashdot Groupthink Meme Is False" meme? The only reason you're being so defensive is because he's actually dead on. The editorial slant at slashdot, and the large majority of the comments surrounding such issues, are just as he satirically describes them. And, of course, you know that, or you wouldn't be so prickly about it.
You are technically correct (since I'm not a leech, or piracy advocate either), but you know he's actually correct, in practical terms, when it comes to the culture that rules slashdot and its ratings system.
Re:Usual defender fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Havent seen it. Let me go Download it... (Score:1, Insightful)
Now technically as the movie can not demonstrate the ability to "promote the useful arts and sciences" under law it is not entitled to copyright protection.
You have misread the clause in the Constitution. Said authorization regarding promotion of sciences and the useful arts is applied to Congress, the actual laws of the Copyright Act make no such distinction of merit.
So for those who can stand the embarrassment of public admitting sharing that film, there is always a US constitutional challenge, bonus if you win you will strip the movie of it's copyright protection and challenge the whole MPA*/RIA* industry. What makes it interesting is that it will all be from a definitively conservative basis, it would be interesting to watch Republicans publicly attempt to defend copyright protections for pornography.
They won't have to bother, you won't even get a lawyer to present the argument, and if you present it pro se, the lawyers you face will just show that the relevant laws and prior cases contain no mention of this phantom argument you're making for copyrights.
Patents are another story, but you really ought to read the law again.
Try it here: www.copyright.gov/title17/
Re:Havent seen it. Let me go Download it... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it isn't. The establishment clause is one way. The government must stay out of church, that doesn't mean that church must stay out of government.
Historically, that's not true. Whenever religion is allowed to interfere in government operations, you usually end up one becoming dominant, i.e. a State Church. And that's what the Framers were trying to avoid. Best to just keep them at arm's length.
Re:Havent seen it. Let me go Download it... (Score:3, Insightful)
It has been my observation over the years that in politics, when someone accusing what they see as an opposing side of something, their side is just as guilty, if not more so, of the same charge.
Mistake #1: Picking a side.
Some of us have wisely decided to mock all sides from on high.
Re:Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
"Change the law" is the cry of the supporter of the status quo who wishes his opponents to waste their efforts in futile activities. The supporters of these laws are far too powerful to allow any change. They claim to be hurt by violations of the law. If that is _true_, then the best way to change the law is to violate it, hoping to weaken or destroy the law's supporters. If it is _false_, then there is no way to change the law, and the choices amount to breaking it or knuckling under.
Re:Havent seen it. Let me go Download it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the phrase "Wall of Separation of Church and State" (note my attempts at 18th-cent. capitalization) doesn't appear in the constitution. You left out the "wall" part, but that's important because it's the reason the phrase doesn't appear. It's a metaphor, and has no place in a legal document such as a constitution. Thomas Jefferson used it later to explain his understanding of the 1st Amendment. Since he wrote the thing in the first place, he gets a pass here.
Re:Usual hivemind fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
May I inquire how you might "karma whore" as an Anonymous Coward? It is my understanding that it generally involves appealing to the slashdot groupthink for the purpose of obtaining karma that may later be used to post various forms of unpopular posts starting at high moderation (aka "burn karma") or gain moderator points. As ACs may not gather karma, I submit that no AC may engage in this practice though they may parttake in "trolling". And by responding, you lost.
Re:Justifying piracy, pretty successfully too! :3 (Score:3, Insightful)
Fellow pirates,
I implore you to continue your campaign on Slashdot to make me feel less guilty.
Hi there AC and Successful Troll, how's it going? This is a hell of a thread you've got here. Congraturation!
Your (yes I know it's plagiarized) post here reminds me a lot of Jonathon Swift's Modest Proposal. Just a nit pick, it is just a touch whinier and less smooth and deadly, but you know if the original you've carped needs some spackle us Pirates won't despise you for adding a little bit of effort to make it a mashup, especially if it's more effective. Nonetheless this was plenty effective, people falling over themselves talking about karma whoring and all manner of silliness. God damn. :D
In any event, I agree about (checks figures) 80% with your strawman here. I pirate. I don't give a damn who's going out of business because of that. It is, in fact, easier for me. If it weren't I might not. I guess I don't have your strawman's dissonance about that. I don't feel guilty and don't look to /. for other voices to ease my guilt. I am confident that my position is right, and enjoy describing how, if for no other reason than it's fairly counter-intuitive and I'm proud of it. And I like pontificating. :D
So if you're strawman (or, borrowed strawman) would like it's guilt eased, I'll be happy to post here about how what it's doing is perfectly moral, because if I read your post correctly what it is allegedly doing is perfectly moral and it should continue to allegedly do that. It's like I've just read Karl Marx make up a "Mr Capitalist" strawman who feels guilty about being selfish or about putting inefficient competitors out of business. It just sounds so awesome that I want to root for the puppet no matter how much the puppeteer might dislike him. :3
For the other 20%, it's mostly mild misunderstandings. The GPL, for example, I am simply against. I want to see it fail along with all other copyright instruments. I publish all of my work as CC0 as it is the closest effective approximation to ridding my work of all copyright entirely. If people wish to hide their ideas in closed source then I won't stop them. If other people wish to reverse engineer those ideas, then I won't stop them either. If I write open source code and someone wants to "steal" it away into their closed source bundle, then I encourage them to do so. Freedom, flexibility, and good publicity will always triumph over paranoia and restrictions and I'm overjoyed at every opportunity to demonstrate that in practice.
Otherwise your puppet laments over misguided concerns of the puppeteer, saying "even though none of my rights are violated" and "even though this spells doom for my favorite ad-run site" and confusing the people who manage slashdot with it's commenters. I am a commenter, and my views probably don't reflect the views of the site owners. Slashdot might sue people for stealing their content, but I would not in their stead. I do believe that preventing me from obtaining or retransmitting publicly available information is harming my rights. I do believe that retransmitting data authored by someone else does not actually harm their rights. Your puppet may or may not agree with me, but it sounds like it would at least sleep easier if it choose to agree with me. Believing in True Things tends to make sleep easier, and I recommend that to anyone.
So by all means bring your puppet back to ask any other questions it's feeling guilt about and I'll be here all week, eh? Fictional and needlessly angstful as it may be, the world would be better off if more people behaved precisely that way.
Re:Justifying piracy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though the open source community is about giving back as much as it is taking, I'm just going to take. I'm a human leech with self-serving beliefs and an inability to empathize with content creators who are trying to make a living.
Whether or not I agree with you here, depends on what you're advocating. If you want individual artists to get paid for what they do, I have no argument. If you think I should be giving the *AA themselves money, on the other hand, we're likely to have a problem. ;)
I don't believe John Carmack should be paid for his work. I'm going to sit on my ass while he spends years coding the next advanced 3D engine from id Software. When their game comes out, I'm going to pirate it without giving a second thought about paying John Carmack for his work.
Mr Carmack and his distinguished colleagues became economically capable of buying themselves sports cars close to 20 years ago, now. I'm sure he'd appreciate your concerns, but although I don't have his balance sheet in front of me, I'm equally certain that Mr Carmack would tell you that he's scratching along at least reasonably nicely, thank you. ;)
For the record, however, even despite him already being wealthy at this point, I don't have any resistance to giving him a reasonable amount of money for his work, and given my own situation, "reasonable," is defined at anywhere up to $100 AUD per unit, although it would most likely only be *one* unit that I would buy at a time, of course. A man of Mr Carmack's intelligence, in my mind deserves to be doing well economically.
I also recently paid Notch for Minecraft, and I did so before I'd played the game personally at all; having only seen it on my brother's machine. I have nothing whatsoever against ground level Capitalism; I only wish for it to be truly ground level. I want to dispense with the middleman. Let the *AA go the way of the dinosaur, and let Mr Carmack press his own CDs, and I will be more than happy to pay him for them; moreso than I am now, because that way, I could be confident that the entirety of the purchase price would be going where I intended it to; into his pocket directly, and not into those of suits.
If I am going to pay for media, I want to be able to go to the individual website of a specific author, order through said website, and know that the money I am paying for the purchase I am making, will go to that author. I am less confident of that with the *AA being in the way, than I would be according to that model.
EULAs and copyright licenses are wrong, yet the GPL is good. Piracy isn't theft, yet GPL violations are referred to as "stolen GPL code." I accept all of these double-standards because it serves me. I pretend not to notice when someone points out that the GPL relies on copyright law, and if I want to get rid of copyright, my beloved open source code will no longer be protected by the GPL.
GNU/cultists might have this perspective, but I can assure you that I do not. Everything I write is under the BSD license. If I'm going to write FOSS, I don't believe in going half way.
Piracy is theft, if it deprives an author of income. *Copying* itself is not theft at all. Piracy and copying are two different things. Let me explain.
If I pay Mr Carmack for one of his games, in my own mind at least, I'm not paying him for a copy of that. I'm paying him for his labour; and for the fact that I realise that his brain is a unique resource. Said brain requires glucose in order to continue functioning, (he probably also enjoys killing off some of its' redundancy with alcohol as well, periodically, as do many of us) which is derived from a number of secondary substances, all of which cost money. If his work creates something of value for me, I consider it ethical to give him a source of value in return. Trade is an extremely fundamental concept; it's as old as humanity itself.
That then means, that as far as I'm concerned, once I've paid for the ga