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Paramount Sues Ohio Man For $100,000
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Dec 14, 2005 02:32 AM
from the one-guy-one-movie-drop-the-bomb dept.
from the one-guy-one-movie-drop-the-bomb dept.
ematic writes "A hapless tech-novice finds himself in a US$100,000 lawsuit with Paramount Pictures for allegedly uploading the movie, Coach Carter, to eDonkey. Paramount had the police seize his four computers, but nothing was found. The tech-novice maintains his innocence, and contends that he is a victim of a drive-by upload. According to the ChannelCincinnati story, the victim 'is either a slick film pirate or an unwitting victim of someone who fits that description.'"
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Slick Film Pirate... (Score:5, Funny)
What the... (Score:5, Insightful)
Movie companies have the right to look at all the computers in your house, because you allegedly commited *copyright infringement*.
Wow.
Re:What the... (Score:5, Insightful)
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2 things: (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? $100,000? Quick math tells me that he would have had to share the movie 4,547 and 1/2 times to have shared enough copies to equal that price tag. I get the idea of a deterent but man. Side note even if the film was compressed to around 700 megs or so (to fit on a CD) that would take 3,183,265 and some change megabyes of bandwidth (3 terabytes if my late nite mind is still working at all) to share that file that many times. Seems a little unlikely the punishment fits the crime.
2) Isn't there a burden of proof on the prosecution in this case? Don't they have to show he was the one responsible for uploading the file? If someone steals my car then commits a drive by shooting, I can't be held responsible, can I? To me, having an open wireless access point seems perfectly reasonable (if that is your preference) and it would seem to be a tough sell to get a judge to fine this guy when there's no evidence he did anything wrong and he can produce a line of reasonable doubt.
I'm not up to date on case law in the US, so maybe I'm wrong but seems really shaky at first glance.
Re:2 things: (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, statutory damages for copyright infringement in the US are arbitrary. They range from $750 - $30,000 ordinarily, rarely go as low as $200, and can fairly easily go as high as $150,000. And that's per work infringed, not the number of infringements (i.e. make a million copies of a movie, and it only counts once; make one copy each of two movies, and it counts twice).
Even where only the minimum amount (almost inevitably $750 per work) is claimed by the plaintiff, multiplying this by a large number of works (e.g. 100 songs is $75,000) can still be very significant to individuals.
Regarding proof, this is a civil case, not a criminal one. While the plaintiff (not prosecutor) has to prove that the defendant infringed, he merely has to show that it is more likely than not that the defendant infringed. Open WAPs aside, the person who uses your WAP most is likely to be you, especially if you don't show that it was in fact someone else, that the files were never on your system, etc. I'm plenty sympathetic here, but honestly, I think the odds are at least marginally in favor of the perpetrator not being a third party, and that's all it takes to satisfy the relevant standard.
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Ignorance of the law is not innocence (Score:5, Funny)
-Grobo, Son of Chinea in the Tenth Dynasty of Koll
Police Priorities? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Drive-by"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I admit I haven't seen "Coach Carter", and I'm not using hard numbers here, but I estimate that uploading an entire motion picture at any worthwhile quality would take at least six hours, maybe twelve. That's not a drive-by, that's your next-door neighbor using your bandwidth all day long.
most likely the guy is lying (Score:5, Interesting)
Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence. The company has filed a federal lawsuit against the Blue Ash man.
But Lee claims that because his wireless connection was unsecured at the time, anyone could have parked near or in front of his home, tapped in and then driven off.
"If I can do anything to make people understand that please, if you're using wireless Internet, have somebody install it that knows what they're doing," he said. "Because if you don't, they could get in trouble just like me."
nice attempt at defence: but it wasn't me, it was someone else who used my unsecured connection.
Who the hell wants to 'share' a movie with others of p2p networks so much that they would go war-driving? I have a very strong feeling that this guy is lying. Of-course this will have to be proven in court, but it is just a gut feeling. In the case he actually did this, he deserves what is coming to him.
You know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Coach Carter (Score:5, Funny)
I hadn't heard of this movie until this story. Further proof that piracy helps the movie industry.
More information needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy I know has a lot of guns. He also makes a lot of his own ammo. Recently, he *gasp* cleaned his pistol. Clearly he is hiding evidence and he is the killer we are looking for.
Re:Tech Novice? (Score:5, Funny)
Er... someone just broke in and left them here. What are those things anyway? I thought they were modern art.
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Some people just waste money (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Tech Novice? (Score:5, Funny)
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Motive? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of unanswered questions here. This is typical of the big media companies now, just like the Mafia: shake down the little people and get the word out that you should toe the line and pay your protection money, or we'll get you.
I do agree that circumstantial evidence seems to suggest he's a bit more tech savvy than one might think, but on the other hand, a tech-savvy person can also get their network broken into or their password stolen. Basically, this company doesn't have a leg to stand on. Maybe that's why they're shaking him down for so much money, to make him feel he has no choice but to settle.
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Re:Motive? (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a relative that needed to 'wipe' his computer fairly regularly. (no, not for anything illegal.) He had an app that would go through each sector of a hard drive and 0 it out repeatedly. As I understand it, and no I'm not an expert, just formatting a drive won't necessarily clear the data off it. Even if it did 0 out all the data, it would still be recoverable by a professional service. I believe tihs worked by reading some sort of residual that could indicate whether that bit was a 1 or a 0. This app was supposed to be so thorough that even the professional services couldn't read the data. (this was the sort of thing the gov't would use for classified computers.)
I may not have all the details 100% right (... corrections gratefully welcomed!) but the gist of my point is this: If they took his computer, noticed the HD was totally blank even though it looked like it should at least have an OS on it, and they analyzed and found out that something more serious than a basic format had occured, they'd have justifiable reasons to believe that he blanked it intentionally to remove incriminating evidence. To the best of my knowledge, though, they wouldn't be able to prove that he did it as a result of their arrival. Circumstantial at best. Personally, I could see an innocent man OR a guilty man doing the exact same thing.
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Re:Motive? (Score:5, Informative)
This is especially when I am about to make full image backups of my drives. If you zero out the unused regions the drive image compresses much better.
Otherwise you end up using space to backup up deleted data. In some cases you do want to do that, but not always.
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Re:Tech Novice? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it bizarre that, just because certain people are not fans of the concept of intellectual property as it applies to movie downloads, they automatically assume that someone who is accused of breaking these laws is innocent.
I find it bizarre that you would assume he is guilty. What ever happened to "Innocent until proven guilty"? If he is guilty, let the evidence speak to that fact. The burden should be on the prosecution to prove that he in fact did commit the crime.
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Re:Tech Novice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowing the MPAA/RIAA and their tactics, the definition of "four computers" was probably more like:
He should count himself lucky if they didn't take his cell phone and wristwatch.
What I'm curious about is this: How the hell did Paramount have the police seize four of his computers? IANAL, but last time I checked, that would have required a search warrant obtained by a judge with probable cause that he commited a crime. Even assuming that they went through that trouble, it would be law enforcement officers who would investigate the computers, not Paramount. But TFA specifically says, "Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home..." Hmmm...
I figure the more likely scenario is that Paramount told the guy, "If you let us have your computers, we won't sue you." The guy, not being a lawyer and thinking that was a good deal, said, "Okay," then erased one of his hard drives, since he was at least smart enough to know that if Paramount found what they were looking for they would have sued him anyway. (Or maybe he's innocent and just didn't want them to see his downloaded porn collection; either way doesn't matter.) Then Paramount, mad, sued him anyway.
The guy needs to go get a really lawyer pronto. Whether he's innocent or guilty, Paramount is going to do their best to screw him, and personally, even if he's guilty, I hope he comes out of this clean. Not because I think that sharing files illegally is okay, but becuase they (Paramount) are using crooked tactics that are much worse than the crimes this guy may or may not have committed.
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Re:Simplify that list (Score:5, Interesting)
He had his "new" computer, which actually worked.
He had his "old" computer, which worked but was really slow.
He had a much older computer, that was dead. Bad hard drive, flaky memory, and it was only 133Mhz.
And finally, he had another computer, a friend brought over and abandon, that was in unknown operational order, and he didn't care to find out.
It took me three days to talk him into changing the memory in it, which I picked out specifically for that machine. He didn't want to, because he had never opened a computer before. He doesn't deal with installing many softwares, because he doesn't understand how they all work. He uses his mail client, his web browser, and that's about it. Completely not technical, and he "owns" 4 computers.
If his house was raided tomorrow, of course he'd get the same report of having four computers. He doesn't do anything illegal, immoral, or questionable, but that fourth abandon computer may have something on it. How responsible can he be for it? He can't even finger the friend who had it. They were on a first name basis, and the friend moved out of state. "That computer? Oh that was Joe's. He lives in some other state now. I haven't heard from him in a year."
If *MY* house was ever raided, they'd just shit themselves. I have roughly two dozen computers. Most of them are non-working workstations from an old office. Others are old servers, and lots of old parts. I don't throw much of anything away, because I know there will always be something useful. I grabbed a 20Gb drive from the pile, for someone who needed a drive, and didn't have money for a new drive. It was an identical match, and she didn't do much of anything with it other than check Email. It formatted, it didn't click or whine, and they're happy to have a working computer again.
Now, the question would be, would they find anything illegal? Nope. They'd spend weeks searching through the 100+ hard drives until they found the worst thing I have is ISO's of Linux distributions, and possibly they could recover some old web sites from drives that go "click". Maybe the BSA could get me, because I don't have the Windows licenses associated with the old parts.
I know I should destroy the clicking drives, but sometimes they're entertaining to take the top off, and watch the platters spin while I grind them down with a screwdriver. Wheeeeee... The magnets make cool things to stick to light switch screws, and the bearings bounce really well on hard surfaces. Ya, I've made some very unrecoverable drives.
Parent
Re:Plausible deniability (Score:5, Interesting)
Additionally, courts are aware that defendants may engage in behavior, knowing what the outcome is likely to be. Willful blindness, such as you suggest, is pretty obvious and does not help people get off the hook.
It's possible that you are thinking of the legal system as a mechanism that is not intelligent, and can be gotten around through cleverness. That is not the case. People are involved in the system at every step, and often they are more clever than you, and have a dim view of amateurs trying to manipulate them. Basically, if you would see through such a ploy, or if you think other intelligent people would, you should expect that your opponents in a legal battle would.
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Re:Perjury is a Crime (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Perjury is a Crime (Score:5, Interesting)
Um... ME? I help friends all the time with their computers. In fact I am about to help a friend set up the fourth computer in his house. He has one, and all 3 of his kids have their own computers. Guess what? They are all networked and they use WiFi to do it.
Why am I doing that? Because he and his family are novices when it comes to networking.
As for the clean machine? First thing I do is wipe the drive and reset it up to get rid of all the preloaded crap from the factory. Guess I'm trying to hide something too...
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Guilty until proven innocent where you come from? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article didn't say they were networked. The article said, "Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence."
And what does cleaned mean, really? The article doesn't clarify. Does cleaned mean he got so sick of Windows running slow from spyware that he reinstalled his operating system, formatting the drive in the process because his friend told him to do so? Do you think that might be possible, mister guilty-until-proven-innocent with your snarky little perjury-is-a-crime comment bullshit?
Do you know how many people have wireless set up because their "Home DSL/Cable Gateway" that the man at bestbuy/circuitcity/compusa sold them on the pretense that "wireless is the future" and "if you get a laptop you can roam your house and always be on the internet." Care to venture a guess at how many stupid consumers get duped into that one? That's right I said stupid consumers, people who don't know how to secure the WAP they just bought "to keep the hackers out of [his] computer."
And before you go on the "why would a computer novice have FOUR computers?" rant, I offer you this: It's 1990, a man gets a computer. It's 1994, the man's computer stops working, he puts it in the closet, he gets another computer. It's 2000, his second computer stops working, he puts it and the first out in the garage and gets a new one. I'm sure you can guess where the fourth computer came from unless you are actually as stupid as your comment would lead me to believe.
Really, I don't know how you got modded insightful at all, because you lend no insight to the conversation, only FUD.
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