Uwe Boll, Other Filmmakers Sue Thousands of Movie Pirates 284
linzeal writes "Directors whose films have done poorly at the box office are increasingly being solicited by high-powered law firms to file lawsuits with offers of settlement. This practice, which the EFF has been calling extortive and 'mafia-like', has resulted in courts starting to rule in favor of the consumer, and in some cases throwing out the lawsuits. This is all fine and dandy, however, when you are considered the world's worst director and you largely finance films through your own holding company. At that point, the rhetoric and ridicule gets ratcheted up rather quickly."
Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
Are they seriously trying to convince me that someone would want to pirate Uwe Boll's movies?
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
They're not just watching, they're distributing it too. Sorry, but putting those bits online is capital treason against the internet.
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Don't you think on some level that these people should lose the lawsuit for supporting Uwe Boll with their time and bandwidth? I mean really.
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I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that I quite enjoyed Rampage. Boll's bad cinematography actually makes the movie work in a way I didn't expect.
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I know this is blasphemy, but I really enjoyed House of the Dead. I got exactly what I wanted from that movie (killing zombies and not the emo-zobmies or Aesop zombies that George Romero's latest movies have been subjecting us to - diary of the dead and island of the dead come to mind.)
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Really? ;)
Can you post a link to a torrent?
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Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, filmgoers damage Uwe Boll!
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Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
There are plenty of people who are into light to severe masochism out there, easily in the thousands.
It's a gateway really. You watch Uwe Boll movies, and maybe Street Fighter, and tell yourself "It's so bad, its funny!" Eventually though, the crappulence gets boring, you move to harder stuff, like the Mortal Kombat movie (not the new proof of concept one). Before you know it, you're living in a gutter, offering sexual favors for a copy of the Star Wars Holiday special.
I applaud Herr Boll for trying to clean up the streets and atone for his past actions.
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
Which Mortal Kombat movie? The first one was awesome. They had a pretty skilled fight choreographer who clearly had some actual MA experience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Kombat_(film) [wikipedia.org]
Even claims it is among the best VG->Movie films ever.
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
Being amongst the best VG->Movie films isn't saying that much.
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Case in point:
Old HK Jackie Chan movies vs new Hollywood Jackie Chan movies.
New ones are so craptacular I can't even tollerate them through his amazing martial arts, give me Police Story, Project A or Armour Of The Gods and I'll actually enjoy it.
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It also had Christopher Lambert.
The guy is seriously underrated
Underrated? There can be only one!
Sometimes I just want to watch a bad movie. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's masochism. Sometimes I just want to watch a laughably bad movie. I don't know why, I just do. When I was a kid, I used to love those Saturday afternoon kung fu movies on our local independent station. I didn't just go to see Battlefield Earth, I actually paid good money to see it in a theater. Not even as a matinee. To this day, I'll often watch whatever crapbomb is on Syfy on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. If you think Uwe Boll is bad, try watching Atomic Twister sometime.
I dunno, it's just fun to sit there and watch a movie thinking, "Whoa, that's three miles past bad." It's also fun to talk about them with my friends. "Oh yeah? You thought that was bad? Let me tell you what I saw last Saturday!"
By the way, I don't know why you lumped Mortal Kombat with those types of movies. Did it win an Oscar? Hell no, but it was still actually kind of neat and exciting to watch. It actually had some redeeming qualities to it. The fight scene with Subzero was awesome. I thought Linden Ashby's (Johnny Cage) fight with Goro was cool, too. The start of it was hilarious. Anyway, there's a difference between mindless fun action and just plain bad. It was Mortal Kombat. What exactly were you expecting?
Re:Sometimes I just want to watch a bad movie. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is what it really is all about. Making money out of the first few weeks of really bad movies. Churn out a crap movie and then spend more on advertising the movie than you spent making the movie, select the few isolated best scenes for the preview (even by accident these can occur), pay off the reviewers and generate a profit. No different to the model for the majority of the music industry.
Streaming kills this revenue stream, everyone learns exactly how bad the movie is and are no longer sucked in by deceitful advertising and disingenuous reviews, so they don't spend their money on a ticket finding out the truly annoying way how much the quality of movies differed from the lies put forward by the advertising.
So they sueing everyone the streamed the first 10 to 15 minutes and decided not to waste their time and money on a cinema ticket is the only way for them to generate a profit and continue in their degenerate couch castings ways (believe it or not BJ in limos and abusing teenagers with delusions of future movie stardom and major motivators in their business choice, more than the profit).
So sick liars, doing sick things so that they can continue in their sick ways, now that's just plain sick. All brought to you by lawyers who created and exploit a corrupted legal system, that can specifically victimise the poor.
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Shakespeare being recited in Latin, while the other persons head was being beaten in? Blood splatters everywhere...with a touch of humanism.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you think Uwe Boll is bad, try watching Atomic Twister sometime.
I dare you to find worse than Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter [imdb.com]. It has a kung-fu second coming of Jesus, a priest with a punk hairdo riding a vespa, and a newspaper headline reading "Critical shortage of lesbians". Other than that the movie has no redeemable qualities whatsoever, and the fact that video and audio aren't synchronized very well gets on your nerves pretty fast doesn't help either.
Having said that, if you like bad horror movies a good laugh is Bad Taste [imdb.com] by Peter Jackson, but you probably already hav
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand... (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they seriously trying to convince me that someone would want to pirate Uwe Boll's movies?
I sure as Hell wouldn't *PAY* for a copy...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll pirate one for $100! (No, Mr. Boll, you give $100, then I'll pirate it!)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a good point:
If you download a movie that has played on a television channel you have a subscription to then doesn't it become an instance of time-shifting, like a VCR or Tivo? It just saves you the bother of having to program your recorder.
The real news in TFA (Score:5, Informative)
The real news (and injustice) in TFA is this:
His production company, Boll KG, exploits a German tax loophole, so even when he films an English-language movie in Canada ... his financiers get a fat write-off from the German government.
So German taxpayers are funding Uwe Boll's movies? Shouldn't we petition Germany to stop that crime against humanity?
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Don’t worry. There is a reason Boll stopped making “movies”: They finally closed the loophole.
He’s basically done now. Perhaps that’s why he’s now trying it this way.
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We got a hybrid of 1984 and Brave New World, with all the religion and
billions going to war machine it was bound to be a hybrid of the two.
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:5, Funny)
BloodRayne was absolute garbage. The only film I've seen that was worse was BloodRayne 2.
I'll give Uwe Boll a point for accuracy. The movies were just as shitty as the games.
Sue Me! (Score:3, Informative)
You'd have to sue me to download this guys stuff.
Now we have "You pirated my movie!" trolls.
Can we get back to dealing with real criminals?
This Slashdot Article Is Libel (Score:5, Insightful)
None of these people are proven to be pirates. Uwe Boll claims they are. But that doesn't mean you get to report that they are. The headline should be "Uwe Boll, Other Flimmakers Sue Thousands of People".
Slashdot could be sued for this headline.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:This Slashdot Article Is Libel (Score:5, Funny)
Uwe Boll also claims to be a film-maker, so I think it's clear we should take anything he says with a grain of salt.
Old news (Score:5, Informative)
These ludicrous lawsuits are already in jeopardy, as the judge has ruled they have to prove a valid legal reason to roll up all these John/Jane Does in one lawsuit [arstechnica.com]. Rightfully so. I have no problem with them suing these people, but trying to roll them up into single lawsuits so that their filing costs and complexity remain low is abuse of the justice system.
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The point in question is "Rule 20, which Judge Collyer referenced in her order, plaintiffs may only join defendants in a lawsuit if:
* They assert any right to relief jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences; and
* Any question of law or fact common to all plaintiffs will arise in the action."
I'm just glad they haven't needed Rule 30 yet.
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Rule 30? I'd be more concerned with Rule 34.
Have you seen some of these judges? I definitely don't want to see them sans robes.
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Yeah, Rule 34 was what I was going for. Guess it got crossed in my mind with Wolfram's Rule 30. I fail.
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I wouldn't want to see Stephen Wolfram without his robes, either.
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And what about his wizard hat?
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Re:LOL? Wut? (Score:5, Informative)
From the article I linked to:
"A brief entry in the official court docket lays out the order. "MINUTE ORDER requiring Plaintiff to show cause in writing no later than June 21, 2010 why Doe Defendants 2 through 2000 should not be dismissed for misjoinder under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20," wrote the judge in The Steam Experiment case. The same order was repeated in a separate case targeting 4,577 users alleged to have shared the film Far Cry."
Let's take a look at Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20:
"Persons may join in one action as plaintiffs if: [cornell.edu]
(A) they assert any right to relief jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences; and
(B) any question of law or fact common to all plaintiffs will arise in the action. "
Unless all of these people were a part of some vast conspiracy to download the same movie from the same source en mass, they can't be joined together in a single lawsuit. Explain how my post is wrong, based on the entry in the court docket and Procedure 20.
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What does people joining together as plaintiffs (Procedure 20) have to do with joining defendants together in court motions?
Your supporting quote is not relevant, whether or not your point is correct.
Re:LOL? Wut? (Score:5, Informative)
GAH!
Thanks for pointing that out. here is the relevant portion, from the same link:
Persons -- as well as a vessel, cargo, or other property subject to admiralty process in rem -- may be joined in one action as defendants if:
(A) any right to relief is asserted against them jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences; and
(B) any question of law or fact common to all defendants will arise in the action.
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While you may or may not be correct in your earlier post, the parent to this post uses the wrong section of Procedure 20. What you should have quoted is:
in some cases throwing out the lawsuits (Score:2)
I had not heard of any of this latest batch of lawsuits being thrown out. Where's the link to that story?
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You already responded to a post where I put up a link, but just in case others miss it and are curious, Ars had the story a few days ago [arstechnica.com].
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I don't think any of these cases have actually been thrown out yet, so perhaps the poster should have used the future tense.
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For clarification, that story is about the possibility of them being thrown out and required to be refiled as individual lawsuits. Not quite the same as thrown out, full stop...but still.
Let's solve the real problem (Score:2, Funny)
1. No hunting within 200 feet of an Ambulance.
2. No standing on a corner yelling "Free Scotch".
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This whole lawsuit crazy society is the product of lawyer greed and people wanting something for nothing.
Re:Let's solve the real problem (Score:4, Funny)
1. Any person with a valid State hunting license may harvest attorneys.
2. Taking of attorneys with traps or dead falls is permitted. The use of currency as bait is prohibited.
3. Killing of attorneys with a vehicle is prohibited. If accidentally struck, remove dead attorney to roadside and proceed to nearest car wash.
4. It is unlawful to chase, herd, or harvest attorneys from a snow machine, helicopter, or aircraft.
5. It shall be unlawful to shout “whiplash”, “ambulance”, or “free Perrier” for the purpose of trapping attorneys.
6. It shall be unlawful to hunt attorneys within 100 yards of BMW dealerships.
7. It shall be unlawful to use cocaine, young boys, $100 bills, prostitutes, or vehicle accidents to attract attorneys.
8. It shall be unlawful to hunt attorneys within 200 yards of courtrooms, law libraries, health spas, gay bars, ambulances, or hospitals.
9. If an attorney is elected to government office, it shall be a felony to hunt, trap, or possess it.
10. Stuffed or mounted attorneys must have a state health department inspection for AIDS, rabies, and vermin.
11. It shall be illegal for a hunter to disguise himself as a reporter, drug dealer, pimp, female legal clerk, sheep, accident victim, bookie, or tax accountant for the purpose of hunting attorneys.
Always liked. (Score:2)
"The more I think about it old Bill was right, lets kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight."
The Eagles from "Get over it"
Maybe... (Score:2)
He's preparing for an impending class-action lawsuit by film-goers. I know the first time I saw a Uwe Boll "film" I was told I paid to see a movie and not the disastrous pile of shit that it was.
He's got the whole process wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Alone in the Dark (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe... (Score:2)
Maybe Ewe should take another route, one that was quite successful the last time he did it.
"I think he's a jerk. This might be PR but I don't want to keep getting punched in the head." Jeff Sneider, 2006
If they don't agree with you, beat the shit out of them.
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I made my choice years ago. Not to watch any of it. But if I was going to, I'd toss a Jolly Roger on my car and drive around yelling YAARRRR! At passing motorists.
Re:Sure fire 100% guaranteed way (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure fire 100% guaranteed way
...to not get sued for pirating movies.
Don't pirate movies.
Actually, you are wrong, I can sue you for just about anything I want, but that doesn't mean the courts are going to rule in my favour, or even have the lawsuit at all, they could just through it away, like they are doing now.
But all in all, there is no way sure fire way to not get sued.
I'll ignore the whole bit about pirating movies and why some people do it, that's a broken record that can be found on about 10% of slashdot articles.
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move to Canada. Or most European countries. or other places where corporations don't control the government nearly as much.
a broken record? (Score:3, Funny)
got a torrent?
Re:Sure fire 100% guaranteed way (Score:5, Informative)
That was a pretty good summary of the civil court system. :) But you left out the part that you (the plaintiff) may still will in court on an unjustified lawsuit. A lot of it has to do with how good the lawyers are for both sides. If there is a jury involved, it's all showmanship. Whoever puts on the best show wins.
Plaintiff with a big budget versus defendant who can barely afford to keep his Internet connection, I'd wager on the plaintiff.
The only sure way not to get sued is to not be on record anywhere, and never have contact of any sort with anyone. If no one knows who you are, and no one finds out about you, then you're almost safe. That is becoming harder and harder to do though.
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Re:Sure fire 100% guaranteed way (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, given the number of people who have been sued, the well-known cases of them suing innocents, and the number of people likely to be downloading movies...
I'd say you are just about as likely to be sued if you pirate as if you don't. The average chance of being sued is near-zero, really, and the chances of them making an error are high enough that the difference between the two likelihoods is statistical noise.
Not the case (Score:5, Insightful)
There's multiple problems:
1) The software they use to determine who is downloading a movie may not give accurate results. This was particularly true with Kazza Lite. You could ask it for a list of IPs of people on a share and it would return incorrect results. So, maybe your IP got reported incorrectly.
2) Your ISP could give them incorrect information. Perhaps their logs of who had the IP at a given time were incorrect. Let's not pretend like software never fucks up. Perhaps they got tampered with (it is just text files after all). Maybe one of their admins was doing the downloading and falsified the logs to cover his tracks.
3) Your net connection could have been used without your knowledge. Unless you are really serious about wireless security, someone could have used it. Many people run open APs or WEP and that can easily be bypassed. So it is perfectly possible for someone to have used your connection to download.
That is one of the many problems with lawsuits like these. You really can't be sure that the people being sued are the people who did the downloading. So not doing it is NOT good enough to prevent you from getting sued. You could still find yourself hit with a lawsuit. You claim "But I didn't do it!" and they say "Ya right, pay us the extortion money or we take you to court."
Re:Not the case (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not the case (Score:5, Informative)
While all those points may be valid, don't forget that we're talking about civil law here, not criminal. The standard is preponderance of the evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
So when an IP shows up as having downloaded a file, and the ISP provides the logs which map the IP address to a person, the question before the jury isn't "Does that prove conclusively that that person downloaded a file?" but rather "Given the evidence, is it more likely than not that they did?". The plaintiffs really only have to prove there's a 51% chance you downloaded the file. It's not a very high burden.
I am aware of that (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is why it is such a problem. Given that they can show up with some pretty shoddy evidence and your only way to defend yourself is to mount a defense more expensive than paying their extortion fee, you more or less have to pay the fee even if you are innocent.
The idea that you can be sued, successfully, for six figures for supposedly downloading a movie on very weak evidence is a problem. More or less there is no reason for them to try and make sure the suits are legit since people are forced to settle or have their lives ruined.
If this was something like a civil traffic ticket, where you are being charged a hundred bucks and you can defend yourself without drastically increasing the amount, I'd be ok with it. You don't need a massive amount of evidence in that case. However here people are being sued for many orders of magnitude over the actual value of the product on weak evidence, and have to settle for thousands, even if they are innocent.
You could literally shoplift the same movie, a crime which causes actual harm, and be given better representation and face far less sanctions if found guilty. A first offense shoplifting charge here for low values of merchandise will get you a fine of $250 plus the value of the merchandise and probation. That is for a crime where actual harm is caused (the store loses the value of the item you stole) not one with just theoretical harm (in a download, they theoretically lost a sale, but in many cases actually did not).
Lower the fine to a level reasonable with the nature of the crime (victimless crimes like speeding or jaywalking) and allow people to defend themselves in a civil court like traffic court and I'm ok with it. Keep lawsuits in the 6 figure range, and I cannot support something on so flimsy an evidence.
Re:Not the case (Score:5, Informative)
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Then that means we could have a huge class-action lawsuit against any ISP for virus infections or any company that had their computers botneted.
I've never understood why companies who have a professional IT staff are held blameless when their systems are infiltrated but the average Joe with no real computer expertise is expected to be responsible for the exploits of his systems. Why do we expect a cable subscriber to be able to lock down their network when AT&T cannot?
Re:Sure fire 100% guaranteed way (Score:4, Insightful)
...to not get sued for pirating movies.
Don't pirate movies.
Also a sure fire 100% guaranteed way to get modded into oblivion I'm sure, but whatever. I just have to ask though: Who the fuck is pirating a Uwe Boll movie? You deserve to get sued morons.
Actually, you're going to (or should) get modded down because this is flamebait. "If you don't want to get sued for doing X, don't do X" is an extremely shallow, closed-minded and unintelligent oversimplification that assumes people should be able to be sued for doing X in the first place.
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Well yeah, but if it's illegal and you do it, you can be sued. Talking about whether it should be on /. is a waste of time.
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Wrong.
If it is illegal, you can be sued for doing it, whether or not you actually have done it.
A major purpose of the trial -- which comes after you have been sued -- is to determine whether or not you did what you were sued for doing. If there was away to assure you were guilty before you were sued, we wouldn't need trials.
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The issue here is not about whether downloading movies should is illegal. The issue is that the plaintiffs cannot provide any tangible evidence that a movie was actually downloaded by the person they are accusing, because they have no control nor dominion over any of the computers and networks involved in the transaction.
They get logs from an ISP which they do not own nor manage, produced by software written by a third party, yielding IP addresses allegedly caught transmitting "illegal bits".
The whole ench
Re:Sure fire 100% guaranteed way (Score:5, Insightful)
The law is pretty clear on whether copyright violation is legal or not.
Using the "I'm not likely to be one of the people they choose to pursue action against" strategy seems, as time goes on, to be a less-than-optimal one.
But since we're commenting on flamebait mods... the whole article is flamebait for slashdot. The only reason this is newsworthy is because it includes Uwe Boll, make of some of the most nerd-despised movies on the planet. It's no longer news when a media rights holder pursues action against infringers -- the only reason this article made the main page is so we can flame (1) entities that pursue enforcement of their IP rights and (2) that director of tripe, Uwe Boll.
Seriously, it's hard to complain about flamebait posts when that's the very nature of the article.
Re:Sure fire 100% guaranteed way (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. I had never heard of Uwe Boll until he started his lawsuit campaign. The reason this issue gets under my skin is the egregious abuse of copyright and the court system, not because of the person doing it.
Saying that "it's no longer news when a media rights holder pursues action against infringers" is dangerous- do you want such actions to become the accepted norm?
Re:Sure fire 100% guaranteed way (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't bother me one way or the other. I don't knowingly violate copyright. If copyright law gets changed, then my actions may change. Until then, I buy the media I choose to consume, and if I don't think the price is right -- I do without.
The key reason the pursuit of action against violators is not newsworthy is that we know it happens frequently. This is nothing new. What would be more newsworthy are articles about how enforcement is changing, or articles about how the law itself is changing. Yet another copyright holder suing due to infringement just isn't news anymore.
One other note:
You must be new here :) . Luckily for us, since Germany (and other countries) closed the tax loophole investors in his films were taking advantage of, he hasn't been getting a lot of work. The tax loophole is what made his bombs profitable despite their dismal ratings.
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It doesn't bother me one way or the other. I don't knowingly violate copyright. If copyright law gets changed, then my actions may change. Until then, I buy the media I choose to consume, and if I don't think the price is right -- I do without.
Wow, someone with a grown-up attitude on this topic, posting on /. Thank you.
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We need a culling program for sociopaths, and we need it now.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You think that's my attitude? You're far from accurate.
Since you seem to be a little dense, let me explain my position in full:
In a market-based system, actors in the system make choices that depend on information.
If I were to pirate an album, or a movie, the information I'm giving to the rights holder of that IP is that I want their product, but I'm not going to pay for it because I can get it for free. Their options are then to compete on pric
Re:Sure fire 100% guaranteed way (Score:4, Insightful)
In a lot of cases, the only real way to get a law changed is to ignore it on a very wide scale. Even then it takes a lot of time, but it does work-right now, the marijuana laws are being changed, not on the principle that it's more against the public interest to outlaw marijuana than to legalize and regulate it (though a strong case may be made that this is true), but because it's impossible to realistically do so.
I think the same may be true for copyright. Only the "industries" who produce imaginary property (commonly known as IP) can buy Congresspeople to pretend that shit they make up is not only real but is "property" of some kind. Copyright etc. was never intended as a property right, at least not in the US-the Constitution states not only that it may be taken away after a specified time period, but that it must be. Contrast that with its treatment of real property, where it may never be taken away without just compensation. Its purpose was also clearly specified-"To promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts." Not to pay anyone, not to protect or establish a property right, not to advance anyone's private interest. Only to advance a public interest-promotion of science and art. If science and art would be best served with no copyright or patent law, this clause would not only allow but mandate that these laws be repealed at once.
I'm not sure that's true. I'd support a genuinely limited time (no longer than 10 years), commercial-use-only copyright, in the interest of said promotion of science and art. On the other hand, suing people for making a remix of a song or movie scene does not advance science or art, it diminishes it. Copyright terms so long that they exceed a normal lifespan do not promote science and art, but diminish it. Ridiculous scope of patentability, from software to genes, does not advance science and art, it diminishes it.
And at this point, no one's around to throw as many bribes, erm, excuse me, "free speech contributions" at reducing the excesses of these laws as at making them worse. The only real chance at reform is to make them untenable and unenforceable, and the only way I can see to do that is to ignore them. By all means, be smart about it-use a VPN, use encryption, use smaller trackers. But the only way I'll voluntarily comply with copyright law is when it comes within reason. I already do that where individuals choose to exercise reasonable terms-I'm happy to pay for music at Magnatune or donate to open source projects. For anything else, you betcha I'll download it, and not feel a single twinge of guilt. If you're going to attempt ridiculous terms and artificial scarcity, I don't feel in the slightest bad about subverting you. Quite, in fact, the opposite.
And to answer an argument so common it's nearly inevitable anymore, such a universe may mean that some business models go obsolete. But if that's the case, they already are obsolete, and we're just propping them up with laws pretending they're not. C'est la vie, so to speak-business models go obsolete all the time. We shouldn't force everyone to pretend the world works in a way it no longer does to prop up an outdated model, we should find new ones that work with the new technology and reality. If that means the end of certain video games, or Hollywood movies, or what have you, well, somehow, the human race survived without those for some time. And it's not like our desire for such things will go away-someone will find a workable way to do them, whether that's raising funds in advance, doing them collaboratively, or what have you, and those who are aficionados will likely pay or participate. If not, they die out, and so their time came like so many things before them.
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Strictly speaking, this doesn't mean these lawsuits won't affect you.
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I, on the other hand, hear far too many cries and justifications (from copyright holders) for being paid without repeatedly producing.
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On the other hand, it's a valid point.
No. In order to be a valid point, it must be true, and the idea that "if you don't do it you won't get caught" has been proven false [slashdot.org]. Specifically, innocence is no guarantee that you won't get sued.
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D'oh!
Corrected link here:
http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/ [washington.edu]
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Also a sure fire 100% guaranteed way to get modded into oblivion
And you'd deserve it because it is false.
Wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong.
Not doing something doesn't stop you from getting accused of doing it, and a lawsuit is, after all, just a very formal accusation.
Specifically relevant to copyright and P2P, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the history of Media Sentry and Media Defender.
Re:Sure fire 100% guaranteed way (Score:4, Funny)
Sure fire 100% guaranteed way to not get sued for pirating movies.
Don't pirate movies.
Hhhm, tell that to the printer at UW that got literally hundreds of DMCA notices. [torrentfreak.com]
err, no. dream on. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but your expectation rest on the assumption that politicians gives a flying f_ck, and that somehow common sense would prevail in a system where every politician is bought and paid for by special interest groups.
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Shill! You're attempting to generate piracy and it shows.
Re:Take that pirates! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's play "who's a bigger threat to society"
On the one hand, we have internet pirates. They click buttons in the privacy of their own homes, and watch movies for free.
On the other hand, we have you, who seems to think getting raped in the ass is a just consequence for copying bits.
So, America. Who would you feel safer living next to?
Re:Take that pirates! (Score:5, Funny)
On the one hand, we have people who copy data without paying the creator. They have a small impact on the creators' financial incentive to create, and potentially reduce the cultural output.
On the other hand, we have Uwe Boll, who produces films that are so mind shatteringly bad that people need weeks of expensive therapy after watching them, taking money away from competent film makers and causing an entire generation to lose respect for the cinematic medium.
Finally, we have people who pirate Uwe Boll movies, intentionally spreading them to a large unsuspecting population.
People in category one are selfish. The person in category two is unfortunate. The people in category three are dangerous sociopaths.
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Aren't Uwe Boll's films financed by the public in the first place?
Last I read German law was changed so that he could no longer use German taxpayers' money to fund bad movies, which is why his budgets have dropped dramatically. Though I haven't really been keeping up on what he's been doing in the last couple of years.
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You can get a refund. But don't sit through the entire move and then go demand a refund. That would be like eating an entire meal then saying you don't want to pay because it wasn't good enough. How bad could it have been if you finished the whole thing? Leave in the first 20 minutes or so (you'll know if it's bad by then) and go find a manager to demand a refund.
I almost did that with Battlefield Earth but it was like watching a slow-motion pileup on an icy road. I just couldn't stop watching. They s
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Hey, look, it seems 0.0.0.0 is downloading a movie!
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IP spoofing is not impossible, but is prohibitively difficult (nigh impossible) on the internet as a whole. It would be possible to do it on smaller networks, however. ISP-level is possible, and I would be surprised if there have not been cases of people tricking ISP hardware into thinking they were someone else. There is quite a lot an "unlocked" modem can do, which is why ISPs will cut your service if they find out you're using one.
So yes, it is possible. However, the nu
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So you could, yes, but there are better ways to get revenge.
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It's the Metallica model.
When Load flopped they started sueing.
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Because they'd rather get involved in endless pedantic debates over the meaning of the word "theft" instead of just manning up and admitting they're choosing to do something illegal and immoral. (Sigh...and usually that will provoke a screamfest - "what's immoral is locking up work which wants to be free...", yabber, yabber, cliche, cliche - instead of an adult response. Can someone please tell me why two wrongs make a right in this case, apparently?)
Re:Watch the movie...WATCH IT! (Score:5, Insightful)
Illegal? Few people contest that copyright infringement is against the law. But immoral? Morality is subjective. Piracy isn't automatically immoral simply because you say it is, basing your assertion on your beliefs about copyright law. Simply because noncommercial copyright infringement is illegal does not automatically make it wrong, and if you believe otherwise, there is no way to have a rational argument with you.
Before people choose sides in the War on Piracy, they ought to be required to have a basic understanding of copyright law. This lets them have at least a slight grasp on the issue instead of just mindlessly yammering about something they don't understand. And I would personally add that those evil pirates are much harder to demonize when you understand what a clusterfuck modern copyright law is and how it is abused by large corporations.
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You've hit on an important point, but at the same time, I am left wondering if you understand copyright law yourself. And if you think you do, where did you get that understanding from (that's a general question for everybody reading)? Did you read the Berne Convention, or have you had to work with it on a professional level? Or have you been reading RIAA news articles?
And, for that matter, what branch of media are you dealing with? They're not all the same - the music industry is known for abusing crea