Federal Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Complaint 225
cluedweasel writes "A Federal judge in Medford, OR has dismissed a piracy case lodged against 34 Oregonians. Judge Ann Aiken ruled that Voltage Pictures LLC unfairly lumped the defendants into what she called a 'reverse class action suit' to save on legal expenses and possibly to intimidate them into paying thousands of dollars for viewing a movie that could be bought or rented for less than $10."
The judge was not enthused that they offered to settle for $7500 while noting that potential penalties could be as much as $150,000.
Re:Unknown Lamer, that's not how justice works (Score:5, Informative)
Is $7,500 really appropriate (Score:2, Informative)
If I was convicted of watching a Steven Seagal movie, I'd ask for at least $10,000 in restitution!
Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)
Not intimidation, more like a protection racket.
You pay $7500 or you pay a lot more to a lawyer and risk losing.
Re:Actual damages (Score:5, Informative)
No. See Federal Rule of Evidence 408(a)(1) ("Evidence of the following is not admissible — on behalf of any party — either to prove or disprove the validity or amount of a disputed claim or to impeach by a prior inconsistent statement or a contradiction: furnishing, promising, or offering . . . a valuable consideration [i.e. money] in compromising or attempting to compromise the claim").
Re:Unknown Lamer, that's not how justice works (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cool web site (Score:4, Informative)
It sounds like you accidentally failed to install NoScript [noscript.net].
Re:Cool web site (Score:3, Informative)
Easy to resolve: if you're using Firefox go to Tools / Options / Advanced - and then check Warn me when websites try to redirect or reload the page.
You'll get a nice warning which you don't allow and can actually read the site.
self representation = not smart (Score:4, Informative)
A person who represents himself has a fool for a client.
- paraphrase of a well known quote whose origins I've forgotten
Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)
One of the key differences is that when entities settle out of court, the plaintiff sets a settlement cost at an amount which would be reasonable to offset their losses.
ie: You broke my fence, I am typically entitled to the cost to a repair of that fence and attributable damages (cows wandered out via the gap). Such a cost might be $4000. However, perhaps we agree that because the fence was pretty degraded, it isn't fair for you to have to pay for the cost of replacing the fence (effectively giving me a NEW fence for free) but a portion of the cost commensurate to the value of the original needing repairs anyway fence.
The main difference, of course, is that the settlement amount tends to focus on repairing the actual harm done.
Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)
He understands, but both of you missed one important distinction here:
With most torts, there's no question raised as to whether or not the defendant was involved. Instead, the big disagreement in most lawsuits is over whether or not the defendant's actions caused damages, and/or if their subsequent results are damaging enough to warrant a monetary (or other) redress.
With the trolls at Voltage, there's no way to tell (or even reliably prove) that the defendant and/or his products/property/whatever had any involvement at all.
Re:About time (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, that's what my lawyer said. It'll cost about $10k to get her into court, and court is always a gamble. Bear in mind I'm in Canada where court is significantly cheaper.
The upshot is that if it's less than $25k, it goes to small claims, which means you can represent yourself. If the other side shows up with an army of lawyers, the judge will probably take them to task.
Re:Mass Extortion (Score:4, Informative)
Re:About time (Score:2, Informative)
Here in Canada, they have also cap the limit of damages for copyright infringement which is below that of a small claims court. We also have the loser pays system here for better or worse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_Canada
A copyright holder can instead elect to protect his/her copyright under section 38.1, which allows for "a sum of not less than $500 or more than $5,000 as the court considers just." for all non-commercial infringement, and up to $20,000 for each commercial infringement.
Right now the Canipre case asking for ISP customer info, they are trying to "say" that it is commercial infringement for a reverse class action for a bunch of ISP residential customers with sucky upload speeds...
Reading comprehension fail (Score:4, Informative)
"The judge was not enthused that they offered to settle for $7500 while noting that potential penalties could be as much as $150,000."
While technically accurate, it's extremely misleading. That makes it sound like the judge got angry that they were letting people off the hook for "only" $7500 when they could have asked for more. In fact, the judge's point was that a movie that could be legally purchased on Amazon as a disc ($9) or a rental ($3,.99) should not have a settlement offer of $7500. The $150,000 issue wasn't made by the judge and is in fact essentially irrelevant to the ruling. Once again the person who posts something interesting on Slashdot icnorrectly seizes on a relatively minor point as being the key issue of the post.
Re:About time (Score:4, Informative)
I thought small claims court meant "no lawyers". So not only can you represent yourself, you pretty much have to represent yourself, as you can't get a lawyer to represent you.
It also means that the other party (the firm sending those letters) must send a non-lawyer to court to represent the company. That person may have the backing of lawyers in preparing the case but they have to argue the case there and then.
Re:About time (Score:2, Informative)
Small claims court in Canada allows lawyers. However, they have a limitation as to maximum damages you can claim for attorney's fees (chances are you will get nothing at all, last I recall the maximum damage was $300 for the cost of a representative).
In no court in Canada do you require a lawyer at all, period. This includes criminal court, supreme court, and tax court. And you may select someone to represent you that is not a lawyer in many courts--however, they may not be paid for doing so in certain cases, though.
I know this as I defended someone as a non-lawyer against an assault charge (he came out with no record of conviction, I'd say we won).
Some notes: You may only have a member of the bar or a lawyer representing you in Supreme Court (or you may have neither, if you so choose). Tax court is similar. In criminal court, the charges must demand less than 6 months of jail time for you to select anyone of your choosing.
This should help:
http://www.lawsociety.ab.ca/lawyers/practice_advisors/practice_ethics/Articling_What_Can_a_Student-at-law_Do.aspx
My opinion: When you're wrong, lawyers do a great job making you look like you're right. When you're right, lawyers do a great job of dealing with the fear and lack of dedication you might have when you approach the judge. If you can go to court, look the judge right in the eye, and recite law to him--and don't mind doing the research to do so, then represent yourself but don't expect the court to respect you (in other words, know the law better than the Judge--I certainly did to the point even the prosecution was agreeing with me and instructing the Judge that he might just be wrong...)
If you think you'd like to represent yourself, the best free training you can get is to fight every single parking ticket you ever get. It's easy and the penalty is low. After the second one, you will never fear the courts again. But you might laugh at them.
Re:Unknown Lamer, that's not how justice works (Score:4, Informative)
You are confused on a number of points. Copyright is only a means by which artists are encouraged to produce art. A lot of people are still convinced that there is no other way and that without copyright artists will starve and we'll have no more art. That is of course hysterical nonsense. There are many other ways. Patronage is a big one that is centuries old. You express grave doubts that patronage can be effective. I think you ought to give it another chance, rather than continue to cling to copyright which has so obviously failed in so many ways. With our greatly enhanced ability to communicate, we, the people, should be able to do patronage far, far better than it ever was done in Mozart's day, and we are. The Humble Bundles are a form of patronage. There's also merchandizing and endorsements, public performances, contests with money prizes, and, one you mentioned, work for hire. Kickstarter is work for hire distributed amongst many payees.
You, like many others, are also stretching what copyright does. It is simply what its name says it is, the "right" to make copies. That right is totally artificial, requiring constant and very expensive enforcement by our governments to work at all. Even so, it would have no chance whatsoever of working were it not for the majority of people believing that it is only fair to compensate artists, and mostly accepting the system we have in place for doing so. But the more these trolls abuse the system, the greater that public awareness rises that copyright has big problems. It's too late to save copyright, not that we would want to anyway. Copyright isn't dead yet, but it will be in another few generations.
Copyright is only the right to make copies. It is not a defense against plagiarism, a preventer of fraud and cheating, or a guardian of privacy. Further, the kind of rights that a Hollywood studio negotiates in order to turn a book into a movie is totally different than the kind they'd like to deny to private individuals who just want to make a backup copy or do a time or format shift, whatever conflation the media trolls try to make. We should use different names for these different things. Your examples about the lawyer drawing up a will for you or a musician composing music for your wedding that you then take (doesn't matter whether it's by copying or outright theft of the original media) without paying are not violations of copyright, they are violations of other things such as labor laws and contracts. Suppose you called a plumber who fixed your plumbing and then you refused to pay? Suppose you saw a doctor, got treated, and whether or not the treatment was successful, you refused to pay? (Maybe your medical problem was too difficult to fix in a 15 minute office visit, and all the doctor could do was identify the problem and send you to on to appropriate specialists.) Suppose you're a programmer and your employer fires you and refuses to pay you for the work you did during the last month you were with them, claiming it was no good and so they shouldn't have to pay? That's the same sort of thing as not paying the lawyer or musician in your examples, and is covered under other laws. Copyright is hardly the only thing holding society together!
Your next example, about the young, unknown artist who sells 2 copies, and then can't sell any more because there are free copies available, merely illustrates that copyright is a broken business model. The young artist will simply have to use a different business model, that's all. Stop crying over this and face it, copyright does not work. Certainly we should not go to the lengths required to make copyright work in spite of natural law. DRM is such an abysmal failure that it is a farce. Consider that a public library can buy just one copy of a work, and then loan it out to dozens of people. A used book and record store does much the same. Even if you think banning used bookstores and shutting all our public libraries is necessary for the sake of copyright, friends can still swap books, CDs, flash drives, and the like in private quite easily. That makes for hundreds of people who got to consume a work without paying, something you seem to find morally repugnant. But it is entirely legal. And good.