Judge Prevents 23,322 Filesharing Does From Being Sued For Now 199
An anonymous reader writes "The Judge overseeing the US Copyright Group's lawsuit against 23,000 individuals sharing 'The Expendables' has shut the door on progress. In a ruling made yesterday, the judge has ordered the US Copyright Group to show cause as to how all 23,322 fall under his Court's jurisdiction. Considering the US Copyright Group's failure in the past to show cause on jurisdiction, this could be the beginning of the end."
I Can Has Subject Title? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I Can Has Subject Title? (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm damn glad I didn't say anything about bucks, hunting season, or road kill then. Thanks for explaining it, the title really could have been worded better.
Hunting season?
Rabbit season! Duck season! FIRE!!!
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punters?
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Re:I Can Has Subject Title? (Score:5, Informative)
Doe, a deer, a female deer.
Deer are notorious for running file sharing software, it's actually what got Bambi killed.
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Exactly my thought.
Bambi's sharing Disney movies on eMule!!
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Citation: http://artists.letssingit.com/lemon-demon-lyrics-the-ultimate-showdown-6ztn912 [letssingit.com]
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Re:I Can Has Subject Title? (Score:5, Funny)
Downloaders on a deer-to-deer file-sharing network.
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>serious answer
>pun thread
*whistle*
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BMO
Re:I Can Has Subject Title? (Score:5, Funny)
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You must be new here.
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Well, there is "some" here. But he didn't say anything about "all."
Where? (Score:2)
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Sembalence of Inteligence? This is Earth dam it, there's no inteligent life here.
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When a piece of gear downgrades your Bluray to 480p it's suddenly a vast government conspiracy that merits paragraphs of whingeing about freedom and the right to access "my movies." But when a small business loses hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue because people are too friggin' cheap to go watch something on Instant Queue, it's a moment for lolz. Noted.
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If you can prove that they actually lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, not only will it no longer be a moment for lulz, but the MPAA and many movie companies will pay you handsomely.
You see, no one has yet proven any lost revenue caused by filesharing, they have only said "hey look, they didn't pay us. They could have paid us and didn't! Thus look at all this money we lost!" potential income is not money lost and thus, until then, there are lulz. =D
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Went to a party recently, my director on Dance of the Dead [imdb.com] remarked that both his features now were available on FilesTube!
When you actually know and work with the people who are supposed to get paid for this stuff, and your paycheck comes from that money too, it sorta rubs you a different way.
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Let's get something straight. You don't know me. Attributing things to me in your head because you are butthurt is just this side of nuts.
I don't pirate. I'm a Linux guy too, so I've gone as far as completely getting away from the "need" to pirate software just to have a functioning computer without being nickeled-and-dimed to death. It's gotten better over the years with movies too. Between Netflix and better selection of movies on demand through my cable operator, the "need" to pirate doesn't exist f
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I don't pirate.
It doesn't really matter for the purpose of your argument, since you defend it. Or rather, you're happy to concede it's an offense, as long as it goes unpunished or the punishment is framed as counterproductive, which is a contradiction if one accepts that nulla crimen sine poena, which I think is reasonable.
If I can sit on the couch and point the remote at the TV and get Dance of the Dead for a 99 cent rental, fuck torrents. Want me to watch it? Get Cox to carry it on pay-per-view.
They did, it's great! People claim as you do that they'd do this, but then they don't. And all the while the salve their conscience with a bunch of rather self-serving rationalization about how they w
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It's like the old cartoon of someone giving up trying to download porn over a modem and just giving up and going to the corner store and buying a Playboy.
Pardon me, but in what way would a Playboy magazine satisfy a need for porn?
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I guess I'll respond to the AC.
Cogitate and assimilate: If you copy something that is protected by copyright, and you did not have license to do so, or you make a copy in violation of your license (be that license a license for home exhibition, the Creative Commons license, or the GPL), you are liable to civil and criminal penalties. It does not matter what you may have done if you did not have the means to make the copy. It does not matter how zealously you are pursued. It does not matter if you violate
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When you actually know and work with the people who are supposed to get paid for this stuff, and your paycheck comes from that money too, it sorta rubs you a different way.
Well, if they didn't pay you for the work you did, then it's your fault for not specifying that you wanted to be paid up front like everybody else.
By the time a film has been converted to a digital form on a file sharing network, everybody involved in doing actual work on the film has already been paid, and the movie has almost always made a profit for the producers, even though the miracle of Hollywood Accounting allows the producers to claim they have never made a profit on any movie, ever.
Next, you'll cl
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Well, if they didn't pay you for the work you did, then it's your fault for not specifying that you wanted to be paid up front like everybody else.
I got paid, it's not about that; it's about wether or not they're going to be able to make the next one, or will even want to.
I don't know where you get your statistics, but the number of mass-market studio features has dropped significantly, and any growth I've seen has come from downscale, non-union, crappy genre films and direct-to-home-video titles. (Oh wait, that's what Dance of the Dead was. Shit.) ;)
On a related note, the producers of The Expendables have about two dozen movies in development at this moment, including a sequel, so I don't think file sharing has hurt them enough to keep them from providing a lot of jobs, too.
"In development" means they put out a press release. It doesn't mean they've spent a dime.
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Personally I'd be just as happy if Hollywood died completely. I sure don't support ANY company, person, or organization that likes the current copyright laws, and especially not those ***** who bribed legislators to get the DMCA et seq. passed. This o but definitely included the RIAA & the MPAA, and ALL of their sponsors.
I *am* in favor of reasonable copyrights. Say 5-10 years. Even 20 would be acceptable. The current abuse is not defensible by any sane and fair person.
I do not think that piracy i
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BAHRAMYOU! We ewe's are in the network, chewin' on your grains!
Alternate title: (Score:2)
Runaway legal system brakes in time for 22,000 filesharing Does.
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Ba dump-dump [instantrimshot.com]
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Sounds like someone's setting up a very inappropriate film venture to me...
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It's the new slogan of the pirate bay, similar to Motorola's "Droid Does" slogan. The 23322 is elite speak for zeezz, but you'd have to get them to explain that one.
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Pardon my ignorance, but can anyone say what "23,322 Filesharing Does" are?
Doe: A deer. A female deer.
I guess lawsuits against the bucks can proceed. Who would have figured that a lackluster action film with over-the-hill actors would be so popular with woodland creatures...
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It's actually not. They are refering to "John Doe" in a plural sense.
And I really don't like it. It completely screws up whatever part of the brain does language parsing. I practically get like a mini-headache every time I see "Does" used like that.
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If you read ignorant, ungrammatical, and misspelled messageboard postings all day I can see how it might become a problem for some.
Even including the well written material I read daily, the vast majority of the time I encounter the word "does", it's as a linking verb (or "copula" if you want to get all academic). This takes precedence over what punctuation surrounds the word, in my brain at least. If I read a lot of criminal reports or news articles about unidentified people this might change, however as it stands this is probably the 5th time in my entire life I've seen the word used as a pluralized noun. This is what jams me up.
The clue your brain is missing is there's no period after "filesharing".
I rea
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still does not compute...
Actually, it does.
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In any case, why "Doe"? It seems as though placeholders should be blander, more common names, like "Smith".
Of course, when you go up against 23,322 Smiths, you should make sure your attorney is Neo.
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No he doesn't.
Ridiculous (Score:3, Informative)
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Shutting down the whole internet wouldn't stop it either.
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Don't copy that floppy!
As if they want to stop file sharing? (Score:4)
Re:As if they want to stop file sharing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mozart managed to pirate Allegri's Misereri from the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week 1770 using only his ears and his memory.
He attended the Tenebrae service where it was performed, then wrote it down from memory. He then attended another performance to correct errors in his original transcription. After that, he sold bootleg copies of it to various sheet music shops around Europe.
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As long as it's copyable it'll be copied.
If the Internet no longer supported file sharing, people would do it by USB flash media. If somehow they managed to make USB flash media DRMed, people would do it via LAN Party. If they somehow managed to make that not work, people would burn things to CD. Even if they somehow managed to completely eliminate the possibility of digitally copying the files, two people would hook up the analog-out of one device to the analog-in on another and hit play and record.
If y
Great news (Score:2)
I'm pretty happy that this is going in the right direction. While I don't live in the United States, I'm hoping if these things are shut down there, they may be less aggressive on neighboring countries in enforcing such crude copyright laws..
Re:Great news (Score:4, Interesting)
That's where you are wrong. The 3-strikes, laws we keep hearing about would never pass in the US so easily. It is easier for the US government and US companies to influence foreign government than it is for the US government to influence its people.
In a way, it speaks well of the US people, not not really... we rolled right over when it came to terrorist laws didn't we? But worse than that -- saw a news story about certain parts of town where violent things have occurred. The news people played comments by people demanding more police and cameras and other measures to "keep us safe." So we still have a long way to go (or have slipped way too far down that slippery slope). You will find people of the US not worried about losing freedom, but they are worried about losing convenience!
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That's where you are wrong. The 3-strikes, laws we keep hearing about would never pass in the US so easily.
Until some Senator or Representative that's been bought ... er I mean to whose campaign the RIAA or MPAA contributed generously ... slips it into a 1500 page "flags for orphans of members of the armed forces killed in action" bill right next to the hundred other "trivialities" that other members of Congress have stuffed into the bill 15 minutes before the vote.
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The problem is that the cases are failing on basic Law 101 stuff that isn't that easy to change.
This one failed because they took action in a court in the wrong state/district. I can't really see how you can easily change the law to give a DC court jurisdiction over someone in for example Texas.
The ACS:Law and Righthaven cases failed because, among other things, the person taking the action was not the copyright owner. Changing the law to deal with that problem is even more difficult.
I'm a file sharer/downloader (Score:2)
Every time I read a story like this, I get a sinking feeling, but then I realize it doesn't apply to me. Turns out, I don't download stuff other people like. Also, I tend to avoid some of the massively popular torrents for that very reason. "Expendables?" Yeah, never even saw it, let alone downloaded it. My musical taste is kind of old too. While it's true that for me to download, someone else must be sharing it and therefore has "some" popularity, I'm still probably in a 1% group while everyone else
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Turns out, I don't download stuff other people like
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/a-new-record-9729-p2p-porn-pushers-sued-at-once.ars [arstechnica.com]
Luckily, these lawsuits were stopped by the judge as well, because of how completely absurd it is to sued thousands of people across different jurisdictions in the same court room.
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Turns out, I don't download stuff other people like.
No one liked The Expendables, or even Hurt Locker. That didnt stop the copyright holders from suing people.
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They had to find a way to make some money out of that thing..
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Not only did it make money, but it made enough to convince a studio to green-light a sequel [imdb.com].
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(why the f*ck is movie underlined as a typo in Chrome?)
You are probably using a British English dictionary. Movie is an American word. Brits call it "film".
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why the f*ck is movie underlined as a typo in Chrome
At a guess, they're trying to court Apple's hipster douche demographic. It's a film, you philistine.
*cue flames about "Casablanca" being a film and "Expendables" being a badly-written, overproduced pile of pandering trash*
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That`s what 90% of people think!
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I get a sinking feeling, but then I realize it doesn't apply to me. Turns out, I don't download stuff other people like.
If it weren't for the MAFIAA, I would never have started watching foreign films. Early on I figured the risk of getting popped in the USA for downloading a Korean or Japanese film was pretty much null. So foreign films were pretty much all I watched for over half a decade. Turned me on to some really great cinema too.
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*cough*usenet*cough*
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Jdownloader is free. In many cases the captchas have been broken.
The real crime was... (Score:5, Insightful)
The studio should be prosecuted for making such a bad movie. The people sharing it only committed the crime of making people think it was worth sharing. If there were 22,000 people sharing it, that means millions watched it, and thus the equivalent of at least a handful of human lifetimes evaporated in a puff of wasted time. Poof.
The essential irony is that the title of the movie should be a dead give-away. The whole thing was expendable.
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Speaking of irony, it sounds like you actually watched the entire movie... you didn't give anyone actual money for that "privilege", did you?
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Why would that be irony? Perhaps he was one of the millions ripped off by a crap movie who wants his 2 hours and $10 back but will never get it.
He said SHOULD be a dead give-away, not that it was.
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I think I was sick at the time, which was my excuse for not getting up and doing something else.
And yes, I guess it is somewhat ironic. Sad bennomatic is sad.
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Take any one of the leading men in that film. Are you really expecting to walk into film featuring Stallone or Crews or Lundgren and get high art? It's a goddamned action movie. Does a lot of shit blow up? Check. Does the body count go into the double or even triple digits? Check.
I actually enjoy action movies, because it's trashy, violent entertainment. I usually figure out the end plot of most dramas, so I need either comedy or lots of explosions to distract me.
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And don't forget about Mickey Rourke. Sigh. You're right. I should have just skipped it. The thing is, trashy violent action movies aren't the problem. It's ones that take the cheapest thrills from all the other action movies you've ever seen and redo them with bigger explosions that I don't like. It's possible to m
Question (Score:2)
So basically... (Score:3)
Crossley declaired bankrupt (Score:5, Informative)
Pertinent to the story, just spotted this in the news:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/367885/acs-law-solicitor-is-bankrupt [pcpro.co.uk]
Blackmailing filesharers didn't turn out to be the money-spinner he anticipated it to be...
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Expendables? (Score:2)
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You're not missing much. The funniest scene and about the only scene in that movie that was any good was Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Stallone in a Church. The dialog between Arnold and Stallone was the only bright spot in that movie.
Frankly, they should just give the movie away.
Pissing off the Judge... (Score:2)
... is generally a bad idea.
He's the guy who says what you can get away with. If you're the plaintiff in a lawsuit, you don't want him holding you to strict rules. You want a "we're all just amicable people trying to figure out the answer here" kind of deal.
Not this.
This copyright group is toast.
One wonders what Judge Learned Hand would have said in a situation like this. It would have been colourful.
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BMO
Sued for pirating The Expandables? (Score:2)
Of all the movies you can pirate, can you imagine getting sued for watching that turd? The viewers should be the ones suing the studio -- to get their money back!
Working Properly? (Score:3)
Isn't this how people want it to work? Don't sue the ISP or threaten the University. Go after the individual file sharers. And now that they're doing it, people are trying to stop the process? Ugh.
Musicians should go back to performing for money, rather than just selling their recordings. Too much hassle. :-)
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Isn't this how people want it to work? Don't sue the ISP or threaten the University. Go after the individual file sharers. And now that they're doing it, people are trying to stop the process? Ugh.
What you see here is known as "due process". You cannot sue someone if you have no information on them, no real evidence against a real person. It has already been determined that an IP address does legally point back to an individual without extra evidence. We really do want this suit to fail too, so that copyright holders will realize that fighting consumer "piracy" is pointless and go back to only suing commercial infringers.
Musicians should go back to performing for money, rather than just selling their recordings. Too much hassle. :-)
Exactly, and they should accept filesharing for what it is: free publicity.
Watch the hand, no, no the other hand... (Score:3)
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Arrrrgghhh, start downloading, me mateys!
...
Start?
Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution (Score:4, Insightful)
They need to show that the people they are suing are under the jurisdiction of the court. Which should be pretty trivial, though of course in reality would mean filing a lot more suits in various courts instead of one big one.
Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution (Score:5, Informative)
They can get past this step, if they do the legwork necessary.
The problem, as the judge sees, is that the rightsholders take every IP address, regardless of where it's located, and sue them all in one court, in order to get subscriber details from the ISPs involved. Well, the judge is basically saying, and rightfully, I would think, that someone who lives in North Carolina shouldn't be sued anonymously in California, just because the USCG has a buttload of lawsuits to file.
Basically, the USCG is trying to save money by filing all lawsuits together, rather than in the appropriate courts. The judge is saying they can't do this.
Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution (Score:4, Informative)
>They can get past this step, if they do the legwork necessary.
The thing is, they can't.
Because the court also vacated discovery. No more discovery. That's it. No more subpoenas will be written trying to attach an IP to a name.
They have to work with what they've got. Which ain't much. This dooms USCG, which I hate to type because it's also the initials for a worthwhile institution called the US Coast Guard
US Copyright Group was just told to go suck on lemons by the court.
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BMO
Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution (Score:5, Informative)
The thing is, they can't.
Sure they can.
1. Run IPs through a geo-ip database.
2. File suits in the proper courts for each of the general locations indicated.
3. File subpoena for each case to the relevant ISP(s) for the accounts for each IP.
It's just work they don't want to do.
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They may have been blocked entirely for this case. But that's probably because they pissed off the judge by being dicks.
I don't know for sure, as I haven't read the whole article.
However, if they'd done it properly to begin with, and filed all the cases in the appropriate courts, then there would have been no reason to kick them out, from what I understand.
Having said that, IANAL, and IDPOOTV.
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But this will never happen. Not because the legal system cares about Hollywood, but because the le
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Crazy like foxes...as you've also found in class actions, attorney's fees make up a disproportionate amount of the settlement. If anyone thinks these guys are doing this to protect and serve the rightsholders, they haven't been paying attention in class.
That won't stop the MAFIAA (Score:2)
Quoting a line from a Cameron flick that seems to accurately describes MAFIAA and their lawyers --
Now only if we can crush them with a hydraulic press... (Yes, I inserted the bit about moral.)