New Litigation Targets 20,000 BitTorrent-Using Downloaders 949
Hugh Pickens writes "The Hollywood Reporter reports that more than 20,000 individual movie torrent downloaders have been sued in the past few weeks in Washington, DC, federal court for copyright infringement, and another lawsuit targeting 30,000 more torrent downloaders on five more films is forthcoming in what could be a test run that opens up the floodgates to massive litigation against the millions of individuals who use BitTorrent to download movies. The US Copyright Group, a company owned by intellectual property lawyers, is using a new proprietary technology by German-based Guardaley IT that allows for real-time monitoring of movie downloads on torrents. According to Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer at the firm, the program captures IP addresses based on the time stamp that a download has occurred and then checks against a spreadsheet to make sure the downloading content is the copyright protected film and not a misnamed film or trailer. 'We're creating a revenue stream and monetizing the equivalent of an alternative distribution channel,' says Jeffrey Weaver, another lawyer at the firm."
"The difference between the MPAA's past approach and the new one being offered by the US Copyright Group is that the MPAA took a less targeted approach going after a smaller sampling of infringers in a single suit for multiple films, to send a message. In contrast, the US Copyright Group is using the new monitoring technology to go after tens of thousands of infringers at a time on a contingency basis in hopes of coming up with the right cost-benefit incentive to pursue individual pirates."
Can we bill them for the court's time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we bill them for the court's time? If they are going to use the court system to "create an alternative revenue stream", they can damn sure pay for the costs of handling all that paperwork. If an average citizen decided to do this (by using the court system to send out tens of thousands of nastygrams and collecting on the handful that pay) they'd be facing serious-ass jail time.
I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
A while back, a colleague and I had a discussion about unauthorized downloading, and I quipped something to the effect that I would avoid infringement penalties by buying the content and then ripping it. He, OTOH, asked why. Why would I pay for something I could legally record from broadcast for free.
There's an interesting double standard here:
In both cases you've acquired the same content, in the same form, for the same price. But now we're supposed to believe that because it happens via the internet, a crime has been committed? That their business is now suddenly failing because people are doing the same thing they've done for years with tape players and vcrs?
The VCR didn't kill tv and movies. Nor did the tape player kill rock and roll. If you can't make a living as an artist in the era of mp3's and youtube, well, you couldn't have made a living back then, either. Stop blaming the Internet for your own failure.
Re:Good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
So where's the free software DRM-free alternative to watch movies and which works outside the U.S.?
Re:Lawsuits as revenue stream? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's sort of like patent trolling. The company has no legitimate business activity except to act as an entity that can be "damaged" such that they can sue for damages. Remember that guy who got a bad paint job on his BMW and sued and won a 2 million dollar judgment [findlaw.com]? It's a bit like these companies are hunting around for cars with bad paint jobs and buying them for double the retail value, not because they need to drive somewhere, but just so they can get the rights to sue for the "damage".
Re:Good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, if the movie is too cheap for them to have seen in the theaters. Let's see some proof that they would have purchased the movie -- that is the claim these companies are making, right? Prove that these companies are suffering. I have trouble believing that they could operate at a loss year after year and not go out of business.
Re:Good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
These discussions always devolve into pro- and anti-piracy rhetoric, but I have a question.
I actually agree in principle that piracy is wrong. But where I have a problem is with their method of determining guilt. I wish Ray Beckerman or one of the other attorneys here would explain to me how they can *prove* that I, and I alone, am the one responsible for an illegal download with an IP address???
Unless I'm the only one in the house and unless I have a static IP address, how can they *prove* that it's me? And even in that case, what if someone sneaks into my home during the day (maybe I gave the neighbor a key to watch my cats while I was on vacation one time). That's what worries me.
It would be the height of irony for ME to one day get thumped for this, when I AM opposed to piracy. But I could see it happening -- suppose I open a wireless access point at my house, taking reasonable care to secure it, but someone manages to hack in and download copyrighted material without my consent? Why am I liable for that? I'm a VICTIM, not a criminal!!!!
When someone is pulled for speeding, it's the *driver* who is ticketed, not the owner of the car. In fact, speeding tickets are routinely thrown out of court simply because the arresting officer couldn't prove that he/she had the vehicle under constant observation after clocking them at an illegal speed. There's always a chance that the car changed drivers while it was unobservable.
Why doesn't the same principle apply here?
Re:Good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention the spreadsheet abuse outlined in the summary. Won't somebody think of the databases?
Re:how? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Sue fucking everyone" (Score:5, Interesting)
if the legal copyright holders seed to you, they KNOW what was inside the encrypted stream.
If the legal copyright holder is offering a free download (seeding) then should they sue you for accepting their offer?
An invasion of privacy?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Couldn't this proprietary software package being used to track downloads be construed as a wire tap ergo inadmissible in a court of law?
Or is this AC being a silly little AC again?
With love
The Anonymous Coward
Re:WTF are they thinking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because you're a not a customer for one pirated movie doesn't mean you haven't been a customer. There is a chance you've seen the movie in the the theater and wanted to copy when the dvd, but didn't think it was worth $20.
You paid to see it once, but you found the pay-to-buy price too high, and found a different channel to acquire it. I bet if you looked at any of the people sued by the MPAA, you'll find they've also paid to see films created by MPAA members - in pretty much every case. Is that not a customer?
Re:Good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, my comment was primarily sarcasm. I pirate out of convenience. I pay for cable and DVR, but its easier for me to simply torrent the ~4 shows I follow than it is to fight with the family and watch them on the TV. I pay for an all-you-can-listen music service but the DRM required means I cant listen to the music (I pay extra to use it on a mobile device)on my phone, the only mp3 player I own.
I feel justified in this action because the content creators have already gotten their share from me. If they cant provide me with what I pay for, I will turn to whoever will.
Re:"We're creating a revenue stream..." (Score:5, Interesting)
How long do you suppose it will be until we find out that they are actually seeding the torrents themselves?
People here on Slashdot have been saying they need to find a new business model - well, now they have!
Degradation of Freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
I am ranting, I know, but for mother fuck-fuckity-fucks sake how much longer are the rational, intelligent, and reasonable going to continue to stand for this? Are the aforementioned independent free-thinkers to disjointed, apathetic, and outnumbered to ever turn the tide? I feel this civilization is edging towards a serious crises, one much worse than we have ever seen. Be that crises a nuclear holocaust, or the silent denigration of of the common sense rights that a democratic mentality provides, the crises is coming, and we don't seem to be heading anywhere near the appropriate direction to turn the tides of destruction.
Perhaps my tinfoil hat is too tight, maybe I need to get some sunlight. I don't know. But it is hard as a relatively young individual to imagine a positive environment for future children. Each day that passes, more rights are stripped, more debt is incurred, more inflation rapes the dollar, more political seats are bargained, more people hate democracy, more people get lazy, more people become passive obedient workers, taking the big red, white, and blue dick right up the ass, while the bourgeoisie reap the benefits of a society that becomes more mentally jellified by mass-media induced mind-fucking every day.
Sorry about that. Your regularly scheduled broadcasting will now continue.
Re:"Sue fucking everyone" (Score:2, Interesting)
If the legal copyright holder is offering a free download (seeding) then should they sue you for accepting their offer?
Then they just turn off uploading and only leach - anyone then uploading content that the lawyer is downloading can be said to be distributing.
Scarcity and Information (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not an economist, but...
The fundamental problem with selling music or other media over the internet is that data is not a scarce commodity. Copying music does not deprive anyone else of access to that music. It's much like copying an entire book without buying it. The book is still available for buying, and the store still owns it, so who cares?
Of course, this is a harmful position to take. If everyone thought nothing of "pirating" music, then artists would receive no compensation for their efforts, which is wrong. (Of course, imagine for a second an ideal world where all music purchases went right to the artist. The RIAA/MPAA just muddies things a bit.) Artists deserve compensation, but it will never work to sell data, which is inherently non-scarce, for money, which is scarce. Why spend money on something that has no actual scarce value at all? At least, there will always be people who will say that.
(Yes, the creative work of the songs themselves would be a scarce work, but in the end you're paying for a copy of the work, not the idea of the work itself. More on that in a second.)
The best solution would be for us to pay for copies of music with some non-scarce currency, but that sort of system is hard to set up and harder to maintain inside a predominately scarcity-based economy, because people tend to attach no value to non-scarce goods when there are scarce goods around. The two economic systems don't mix well at all. I suggest that, instead, artists give music away for free (or for Whuffie, real or imaginary), and sell the primary scarce thing they have left to sell: performance. Get artists to make their money on tour! Give the music away for free to get fans, and the fans will come to the concerts!
...
For more fun, consider that numbers cannot be copyrighted, and that all data can be represented by one really long number. I'm not so much trying to say that data can't be copyrighted, as I am that copyright should be seriously looked at again.
Case study: Myself (Score:1, Interesting)
I go to the cinema a couple times each month. I also have a fairly decent home theatre setup, and about half a wall of shelves holding legitimately purchased DVDs. I also have a media server with at least as many downloaded rips.
Why?
I happen to not live in DVD region 1. And some Hollywood studios think we're less deserving to buy movies in this country or somesuch. Or maybe they just think it's funny to make us wait. It doesn't really matter why, I guess. But it has ofttimes been months, even years after the region 1 release that they'll deign to take my money.
(That is to say nothing of the fact that they often make us wait until well after a movie is in the American cinema before allowing the local establishments to show it. An equally odious practice, in my opinion.)
Well, if they're going to be asses and engage in shenanigans; so will I. But when they offer me a way to legitimately be a customer; I will do that as well.
Re:how? (Score:4, Interesting)
OTOH, it would be incredibly interesting ... even funny ... if most of the 50,000 said "fuck off big evil corporation ... I'm lawsuit proof via Title 11 ... bring it on and see what you get". Hint: there's no crime under Title 11 unless there is a conviction.
Re:Good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
My father buys quite a lot of dvds. A whole lot more than he should in my mom's eyes ;)
That said.... He absolutely HATES the forced anti-piracy clip at the front of every blasting dvd in sale now... He hates it enough that he has now started ripping his movies to ISO files and watch them using his win7 laptop connected to the TV. He usually watches the movies while on a fatburner-bike and the last thing he wants to do when he goes for a 30 min 'trip' is to spend the first few minutes watching a damn anti-piracy clip.
Also.... He bought a blu-ray movie as his new spiffy laptop had a bluray drive. What happened? His sony hdcp-capable tv went blank when he tried watching it. It came with blu-ray capable software and was advertised as working "out of the box". He was quite annoyed that it didnt work. He spent a little time trying to get it to work, as he is quite computer literate but gave up with the feeling that it was just not worth it.
So he has written off the whole bluray format as "not worth it"... This is the kind of person who fits right in the 40-50 year old demographic who spend a lot of money on movies....
When he asks for movies for christmas or birthdays he asks to get them in pre-ripped ISO so he doesnt have to deal with the crap. That alone is more than enough of an indication of the failings of the movie industry than anything else. When you piss of the regular uses enough that they seek out ways to avoid it.... you have -failed-.
Give me a legal way to get the files in a decent format that I can play on any device (win7, winxp, linux, portable) which is priced at a point where a DVD doesnt look cheap in comparison then MAYBE they can salvage the failing industry.
Re:WTF are they thinking? (Score:4, Interesting)
I buy plenty of stuff. More than I should.
But when it comes to a lot of material I cant legally get hold of it. Delayed DVD releases is one thing that pisses me off.
And then there is the retardedness of pricing....
I went to buy the 7 seasons of Macgyver a while back and what was the price-tag? 600 fucking dollars. I am -not- paying that kind of money for 7 seasons of a tv-show from the 80s... I'ms orry.... It is a novelty to have on my shelf for geek cred, but I am NOT paying that much.
Hell, the local price of the Star Trek TNG series was 134 USD per season up until recently when they just plain stopped selling em as nobody bought em...
I'm sorry but for flippin' sake get the prices within the limits of sanity. If the 7 seasons of macgyver had been 150 dollars I would have had em sitting on my shelf right now instead of on my media-server... Probably in a lot better quality too!... Arg....
Disclaimer: I'm sleep deprived and annoyed at real life asshattery atm so my post is heavily colored by that :-p
Re:Good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Could you share your explanations on why you'll, "never spend a dime on one of their products again"?
Re:They Suck (Score:5, Interesting)
You are wrong. "Theft" is a legal term that nowhere appears in the copyright act. It is not theft, it is copyright infringement. That is the law.
Re:"We're creating a revenue stream..." (Score:4, Interesting)
"...and monetizing the equivalent of an alternative distribution channel."
The equivalent of a distribution channel where tens of thousands get movies for free, but then a randomly selected group has to pay a hundred times the cost of the movie in litigation fees.
At least they're innovating...
See http://www.savecinema.org/index.html [savecinema.org], the U.S. Copyright Group. They think threatening bittorrent users with demands in the $500. to $1000. range will work better than past approaches, and instead of suing few users for multiple media like the RIAA, they will sue multiple users for individual films. Most of us would cough up $500.00 to $1000.00 to keep our lives free from lawyers. They offer their services on contingency to the producers, meaning no upfront investment-- just about $20 million in recoveries per film if you multiply the typically 30,000 infringers (prior to release on DVD) times about $750.00 per. Yes, a lot of studios may come to see the USCG $20 million as an expected line revenue item. USCG specifically targets the 30,000 infringers who act in the window between theatrical release and DVD sale, which presumably means downloaders of "cam" copies are the targets.
Who knows how this will play out. This is a new approach; we have to wait and see.
Re:Good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Or wait until the copyright expires.
At the rate copyright extensions are happening, that probably won't be until my grandchildren are dead. If ever.
Given current production and distribution methods compared to what was available at the inception of copyright, the maximum duration should probably be about 5-10 years now, instead of 28. Everyone knows the majority of sales happen in the first year anyway. Anything after that is just gravy. Even so, I'd still be willing to concede them 28 years. But if the current trend of maximum copyright duration extension continues, copyright will never end.
So, once they're willing to hold up their end of the bargain, I'll hold up mine. Until then, I'll pay the ones I feel deserve it, and the rest can go fuck themselves.
Re:I wonder... (Score:1, Interesting)
Okay, a bit confused here. Are you stating three things?
One, recording a show from TV.
Two, recording a show from YouTube, Hulu, etc.
Three, downloading a copy someone illegally put up online (torrenting)?
I assume ONE and TWO are covered by the Betamax decision, but THREE cannot be justified since it is something totally separate.
Re:They Suck (Score:1, Interesting)
Let me explain this in terms you can (hopefully) understand: "stealing" is the act of depriving someone of the economic value of a thing.
OK - You own SCO stock, the courts have made it worthless, therefore the courts have stolen from you
or
You own an ounce of gold value +/- $2000 I own a ton of gold and sell it on the open market, gold prices drop, therefore I have stolen from you.
Both cases don't look like stealing, yet fall within your definition, but what do I know.
Re:Degradation of Freedom (Score:1, Interesting)
Hi,
What's going on isn't that people are lazy, but that they're being lied to, constantly. These lies get so ingrained that they become conventional wisdom, so much so that in your rant you recited some of them without wondering how you know.
Let's take the claim that inflation is raping the dollar. We've been hearing that ever since Obama took office because his opponents are willing to say anything, even irresponsible things, to embarrass him. We've also been hearing it from people who think that returning to the gold standard will make them richer ever since the seventies, when we left the gold standard (which had been in place since the beginning of the 20th century, having replaced gold and silver against the strident protests of William Jennings Bryan).
People see the prices they pay for things increase, and think that there's something wrong, especially as their salaries aren't increasing nearly as fast (thanks to 40 years of unionbusting, offshoring, skyrocketing CxO salaries, and importation of foreign workers who are then treated like shit). People are then told that inflation is the problem, not the fact that they're being asked to work for less so the big boss can get a bonus. And the suggestion to return to the gold standard makes sense when that's the only thing you're looking at- it would be more difficult to cut wages than simply refuse to raise them, which is the same thing with inflation. Plus, inflation makes your money rot in the bank.
I don't know why, but inflation is a necessary part of how economies work. Unfortunately, it's hard to trust economists because half of them are liars who will say anything to try to make rich people richer. Still, Paul Krugman seems trustworthy, and at any rate he has a graph of inflation on his blog [nytimes.com] which should indicate that the dollar is not being raped.
I'm not sure what to say. It's hard to find out who's not lying to you and easy to accept intentional fallacies by liars. I mean, after the hottest decade on record, they sound like Baghdad Bob continuing to deny that the globe is warming! Most of the sheeple aren't sure what to believe either and go with what people they trust tell them. You can't be an expert on everything and liars have been poisoning the well on expertise for decades.
Re:They Suck (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a civil court where these cases are going.
True, this story is about civil court lawsuits being filed. However I would wager that the "settlement offers" do explicitly raise the threat of criminal charges and prison if you don't give them the money they demand.
Having people think something is crime that can be prosecuted in criminal court when it is demonstrably not so
False. The 1997 NET Act [justice.gov] in the US did in fact make most copyright infringement into a felony. In particular the NET Act slipped this cute redefinition into law:
101. The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
Any use of Bittorrent or any other P2P pretty much by definition "includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works". It is also quite easy for offline non-commercial infringement to fall under that definition.
The NET Act adds the following criminal law:
506. Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement.--Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either--
1. for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
2. by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000, shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement.
Note that that is an "or" situation. Under the first clause, even a single minimal infringement is defined as a criminal act if it falls within that crazy redefinition for "financial gain".
The NET act also defines the criminal penalties:
Criminal infringement of a copyright
(a) Whoever violates section 506(a) (relating to criminal offenses) of title 17 shall be punished as provided in subsections (b) and (c) of this section and such penalties shall be in addition to any other provisions of title 17 or any other law.
(b) Any person who commits an offense under section 506(a)(1) of title 17--
1. shall be imprisoned not more than 5 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500;
2. shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense under paragraph (1); and
3. shall be imprisoned not more than 1 year, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, in any other case.
So the penalty is up to FIVE YEARS in prison if you have uploaded or downloaded 10 or more infringing files during a half year. The penalty is up to TEN YEARS for a second offense.
Oh, and if it's only a single act of infringement of a single file, then the law is much more generous with you, the crime is merely a felony with up to ONE YEAR in prison.
If you somehow manage not to fall under the "financial gain" definition, 506(a)(2) still makes infringement a felony if the infringement has a total "retail value" of $1,000 within a half year. In that case the prison terms are merely three years if it was ten or more copies with a total retail value of $2,500, six years on a second offense, or merely up to one year in prison for a non "financial-gain" infringement with total claimed retail value under $2,500.
Probably about a quarter of the entire U.S. population are technically unindicted criminal copyright felons subject
Alternative methods? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the originals are pretty commonplace.
That's that real problem here. All of these "entertainment" industries have entirely too much competition. The newer ones are less used to having a favored position in society so they don't moan and bitch and whine like a dying dinosaur. The younger parts of the industry try to adapt as the dinosoaurs flail around with lobbyists and lawyers.
Media moguls have more to fear from their own back catalogs than "pirates".
Even if everyone only "buys", the market will eventually get saturated and there will be no more market for crap.
If changes to the law hadn't been bought and paid for by the Media Moguls, the Torrents would already be full of legal content. Most of it would be better than the new drek the moguls are trying to push on us now.