Hurt Locker Studio Begins Requesting Canadian ISP's Subscriber Info 172
New submitter Nerdolicious writes "Ars Technica reports that Voltage Pictures, the studio behind the infamous Hurt Locker debacle, has requested subscriber information for thousands of TekSavvy customers in relation to alleged copyright infringements. In their official blog, TekSavvy clarifies the situation and provides further reassurance that they will not release any private customer information without a court order. They have also posted the legal documents containing both the official notice and list of films that are the subjects of the alleged infringements. However, several questions remain to be answered: will Canadian courts be amicable to these tactics after changes to copyright law were made specifically to prevent the predatory legal entanglement of Canadian citizens? Will the studio actually attempt to pursue the situation beyond the proliferation of threatening extortion letters? How would the already-clogged courts react to what amounts to denial-of-service attack on the judicial system?"
Fuck Hurt Locker (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not a movie pirate and I have never seen this movie, but this bullshit makes me not want to see it. Fuck the Hurt Locker.
Re:Fuck Hurt Locker (Score:4, Interesting)
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Same.
In fact, it almost makes me want to torrent it, then burn piles of dvds and leave them out on street corners with signs saying "free movies!"
Certainly doesn't make me want to watch it, though.
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I did not find it as bad as you describe it. I found a parallel between the guy who defuses the bombs and managing a crisis in a data center. Maybe that's why it seemed slow to you which in my opinion is how it should be.
When you face a crisis in a data center, the last thing you need is people running around like headless chickens.
I also remember an episode of "The Unit" where they get called in because a bomb in some building might be nuclear. When they find out it isn't, they leave and as they walk out o
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When you face a crisis in a data center, the last thing you need is people running around like headless chickens.
Based on my experience, this is pretty much what customers and upper management expects: During crisis, run around aimlessly so they get the feeling that something happening...Actually hunkering down and fixing things only results in complaints that nothing is happening.
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the local police guy blows himself up trying to defuse it.
Don't they have EOD stuff for that?
Re:Fuck Hurt Locker (Score:4, Interesting)
It actually makes me want to torrent it, even though I don't torrent movies, or have any interest in watching it.
Maybe that's the point. It's such a shitty movie the only way to get publicity for it is to say "We're suing the pants off people for this!" It makes it sound like it's valuable. Like they're wasting millions of dollars and throwing armies of lawyers at it because it's worth defending. The reality is... it's a shitty movie and there's way too much marketing research saying that people who pirate are also their most reliable customers. If you wanted to get your sales numbers up... what better way than to get your most reliable customers to say "Hey, I see smoke over there. Must be a fire, let's go check it out!"
Never believe the reason 'they' state (the generic ominous 'they', which applies to any group with an agenda); You look at the effect. That's almost always the reason for the action taken. The few times it isn't, they stop right away and spin the hell out of it... which us laypeople refer to as a Fuck Up.
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It makes me want to switch ISPs to TekSavvy. Luckily, I just did exactly that. Imagine, an ISP both following the intent of the law and standing up for its customers.
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It makes me want to go torrent it so I can figure out what the big deal is, if anything.
No way in hell I'd go to pay just to satisfy that kind of curiosity.
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Not missing much - it's a pretty crapy movie over all.
It's basic premise is based on Captain Willard's intro sequence in Apocalypse Now.
I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.
But they wait till the end to show you that. So it ends up being all about this jack-off who works as a bomb squad expert defusing IEDs and what not who keeps re-enlisting for another tour because it's all he can deal with any more. He's little more than a caricature of a risk junky with a death wish.
The plot consists of a few people dying, David Morse making a brief appear
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Can I nominate John Travolta as Edna Turnblad (Divine) as Brando/Kurtz in your reimagining? Because I would actually pay to see that.
"The horror" indeed...
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Not missing much - it's a pretty crapy movie over all.
I dunno ... I really enjoyed the film and I found it a lot more nuanced than you did. In particular, I thought that while effectively conveying that war is all hell (and certainly not being in any way sympathetic to the continued presence of America in Iraq), it helped me understand why some people find conflict an intoxicating drug -- and it did so in a much more subtle way than your quote from Apocalypse Now. I found the central characters surprisingly engaging, and the tension in the film was created a
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they're already fucked. these guys are so mislead that they'll be lucky if they can even get an ISP to comply - which they won't.
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I was going to post the exact same thing. Great to see it as a first post.
This just in , shitty movie blames piracy . (Score:1, Informative)
I own this movie, it sucks. It's not terrible but it's certainly not good.
This review off rotten tomatoes says it all
"Lacking a narrative arc. There's no central conflict to keep the audience interested. Instead it's just repetitive unrealistic war scenes, and it really drags throughout its long running time. Yawn."
I'm confused by all the good reviews.
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To be honest, the Rotten Tomatoes reviewer sounds like the sort of convention-bound scold that's been ruining movies for a decade now with corporate focus-group storylines dumbed down for a room-temperature IQ audience.
Fair Disclosure: I was a sound effects editor on Hurt Locker and my supervisor won two Oscars.
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It's worth noting that Hurt Locker is not one of the films that Voltage Pictures is threatening to sue TekSavvy customers over. I'm not sure why nobody else has picked up on this.
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Re:This just in , shitty movie blames piracy . (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I did not enjoy Hurt Locker, much for the same reasons as that reviewer you were mentioning earlier, and that doesn't lead me to believe I would enjoy Zero Dark Thirty, but none of that (on anybody's part) is really relevant to the topic at hand (Voltage Pictures attempting mass lawsuits in Canada).
It's an interesting scenario. The Canadian government has indicated that it crafted our new copyright laws (which just entered into effect) specifically to discourage exactly what Voltage Pictures is attempting to do. There's also the question of if the alleged infringement would fall under the old law or the new law, since the law went into effect only a few days ago. Voltage Pictures' claims indicate they're seeking damages far in excess of what is allowable under the law, so that would seem to indicate that they're either intending to try to get damages under the old law, or that they're going to try to claim the alleged infringement was commercial rather than personal (different limits, above what Voltage Pictures is threatening, apply to commercial infringement under the new laws).
Nobody on any side really knows what's going to happen (because Canada's new copyright law is only days old), so this really is virgin territory in every respect.
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Really? What was all that bullshit granting the telecoms immunity for their little indiscretions all about then?
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The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 didn't delete the previously existing laws, it merely made them impossible to enforce by forbidding state governments from investigating warrantless surveillance, and authorizing the Federal government to destroy any records of the surveillance. It also specifically granted immunity from prosecution to participating telcos, but the government had to specifically certify them, and the certification was revokable either by a federal court or the government.
The criminal act ne
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The relevant portion isn't what is illegal or legal, however, but the damages. According to Michael Geist (a leading legal authority on such matters), the new rules from the new law would be in effect for any new lawsuits [michaelgeist.ca]. I believe this is because the rules cover how the judge would award damages, so when determining damages the judge would have to use the rules as the exist at the time of the ruling.
So it's unlikely that Voltage would manage to secure anything more than the minimum statutory damage of $1
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It's not very new, the structure of the film is what you'd call episodic or maybe picaresque. It's certainly attested in Kubrick (viz. Barry Lyndon, and the 250 year old book it's based on), and even earlier works like Sullivan's Travels or many, many C. B. DeMille spectacle films. Also, using some perceived slight from a bunch of film critics as an excuse for not l
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What makes you say that? How did you feel the film mitigated the cause or conduct of the war?
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First of all, it never questions the reasons of the war.
From the very beginning it pushes the audience towards sympathy for the American soldier, as in displaying apparently innocuous Iraqi men detonating IEDs and so on, giving a ready justification to any psychopathic behaviour of the soldiers because "the enemy is everywhere".
In a complete reversal of moral values than in say, horror movies, the audience is pushed to stand on the hunter side instead of the hunted, to worry about the danger that Baghdad's
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Why must a film question the war? I've seen films that question the war, and frankly they're polemical and insulting, even when I agreed with them.
Why is it wrong to feel sympathy for the American soldier? How does that mitigate the conduct of the Iraq war? Is the American soldier not in a sympathetic situation? Remarque had sympathy for the German soldiers in
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I do agree with what you are saying. If anything the movie was not about the Iraq War it was purely about a bomb tech who was an adrenaline junky. The fact he was there had zero to do with him just like all soldiers. Someone else had set the policies that led him to be where is. This is the whole reason for the Support the Troops movement. They are their doing their job they volunteered for. It's not their fault they are there. What they do when they are there is a different story.
I saw it and found it mild
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You're totally entitled to your opinion.
However, "It sucks" isn't a persuasive argument. Congratulations on the "waste of electricity" crack, you must be Really Smart, but that doesn't make your case either.
It's almost as if people don't even want to talk about the movie, they just want to use an opinion of it to signal their peer group inclusion or something. NAH, that can't be it.
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I believe this is called the Tinkerbell Effect.
this is the right move (Score:1)
sue your fans! see if they EVER support you. idiots.
I made a mistake once (Score:4, Funny)
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Waste? I thought it was a good flick.
Send them the money (Score:4, Interesting)
with a letter stating that you are paying the requested amount in order to protect yourself from being sued but the Rights Holder as stated in the original notice. Then charge them with extortion.
Charge them with extortion (Score:5, Informative)
At least one U.S. judge thinks it actually is extortion: at http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2012/07/04/judge-wright-is-so-right-copyright-trolling-is-essentially-an-extortion-scheme/ [fightcopyrighttrolls.com] Judge Otis D. Wright writes:
They've asked for $10,000 per person in punitive damages, twice what the current law allows, so they either to think the old rules apply, or they're just trying to scare people into settling out of court.
--dave
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I'm a TekSavvy customer and I'm sort of hoping Voltage comes after me... I've never downloaded The Hurt Locker. In fact, it's still sitting on my Bell box waiting for us to watch it... we recorded it when it was on TMN a couple years ago.
The best movie in Voltage's catalogue is Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, which I bought as soon as it was released. That movie's comedy gold!
Q&A (Score:5, Insightful)
will Canadian courts be amicable to these tactics after changes to copyright law were made specifically to prevent the predatory legal entanglement of Canadian citizens? Will the studio actually attempt to pursue the situation beyond the proliferation of threatening extortion letters? How would the already-clogged courts react to what amounts to denial-of-service attack on the judicial system?"
The better question is: What incentive is there for the industry to stop? The United States has proved militarily, economically, and in many other ways that shock and awe are a powerful combination to ensure compliance. Not that they're the first -- the Romans did the same thing, as did many cultures before them as well. The fact is, the only thing they're losing is a tiny amount of money and they're getting huge amounts of press out of it.
Has it ever occurred to anyone that the laws and lawyers and letters and posturing isn't meant to actually have an impact? Statistically, it can't. If right now, today, everyone who was sharing files just for today was dragged into a court action, our justice system would be busy for the next ten years clearing the backlog for just today's infractions. By itself, there's no way that any law, legal action, or technical solution, can even scratch the surface. But what if the point is publicity? A shock and awe campaign that uses lawsuits instead of bombs. The more outrageous, the more press, and the more press, the more people become fearful. Have you noticed that these press releases, actions, and articles, occur on a fairly consistent tick-tock cycle of about three months? It has been going on for years.
This is a public relations campaign... and whenever you're asking how X will react to Y, you're playing right into it. X and Y don't matter. No, honestly, they don't: Statistically, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than getting in trouble for file sharing. My service provider is one of those who promised to impliment the new "six strikes" policy, to much hoopla in the press. That was six months ago. Every month since then, I've downloaded an average of 960GB of pirated material, a lot of it on the "Top 100" list off The Pirate Bay. No letter. No e-mail. Not even a peep about the bandwidth being used. I'm supposed to be in that "top 1%" that they insist they're pursuing all possible legal actions against. No knocks on the door. No black helicopters. My life has continued just as it has before. And I've been doing this for over a decade. I'm not hiding behind proxies, or encrypting my traffic, or doing anything special really at all. It's all right there for anyone to look at.
Nobody has. Even with all the automation, all the legal power, all of the everything that you've heard about... there are still hundreds of millions of people just like me worldwide. Statistics are not in their favor here guys. So the question isn't how Canada will react... the question is: How will you? Because that's the goal of all of this -- it's changing your behavior through fear and doubt. It's an appeal to your emotions -- visions of going to jail and losing everything you ever owned and loved while they parade you out in front of the media. That's the big sell.
So... are you buying?
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That is really interesting point of view.
My question is, what they get out of that?
They certainly will not sell more DVDs or make more money at the movies. Take me for example. When I got out of college they just started to do that "War on Piracy". My reaction was: I never bought any DVD, any music or any game except if it's DRM free. Like mp3 from Amazon, games from www.gog.com
If they wouldn't have started this "War on Piracy" I would happily pirate movies, games and music like before. But I would also bu
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Something tells me you'll never have enough time to watch/listen/play all that content, particularly if you've acquired nearly a terabyte within 6 months
Mmmm, average 1080p HQ bluray rip: 10GB. 40 minutes of a 720p HQ TV episode: about 1.25GB. 75% of my video watching time goes to TV episodes like The Daily Show, Mythbusters, etc. The other 25% goes to movies. So the total for the 900 TB of data I pulled last month equates to about 19.8 hours a day of high quality video (the only kind I download). That said, the problem is a lot of it is automated by feeds and searches. About 10--15% of the TV episodes are later repacked as "proper" tagged, meaning that the
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And for the record, I'd gladly pay a small stipend every month to skip the rigamarole of setting up filters, searches, rss feeds, and the sorting and what-not (it takes about 5, sometimes 10 minutes every few days) and wasting so much bandwidth if there was a legitimate service that met my needs. And it's not a high bar to clear; Be commercial free. Be high quality (I can wait hours or days -- just make it good, not Netflix instashit). Be complete. And be timely. So far, not a single commercial offering has
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What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the new law limits non-commercial infringement to $5,000 per person, what would be the point of pursuing non-commercial infringers? Lawyers fees just to prepare and set out the the threatening letters will likely eat up a fair chunk of that, a one day of examination will likely eat up the rest.
Basically, the Tories, whether they intended to or not, have made pursuit of non-commercial infringers a no-win scenario. The likelihood is that every Canadian who illegally downloaded the Hurt Locker will probably not be liable for more than a few hundred bucks in damages, and if any of them pay a hundred bucks for a lawyer to write a nasty retort to the Hurt Locker's lawyers nasty letter, it's likely the Hurt Locker's lawyers will just abandon it entirely.
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Basically, the Tories, whether they intended to or not, have made pursuit of non-commercial infringers a no-win scenario.
I don't have any love for the Tories, but let's give credit where it is due. They knew full well what they were doing and stated on several occasions that they wanted to discourage IP holders from pursuing non-commercial infringers.
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. If every Canadian threatened with legal action over Hurt Locker pirating were to tell the lawyers "I'll see you in court" they would go bankrupt in a hurry.
I suppose the lawyers could try to declare commercial infringement for someone seeding the movie, but I doubt that would wash in court without some direct evidence of exchange of funds, so I think we are looking at a hard $5k limit. From what I've read, the general opinion is that the courts would likely award the "injured" party significantly less than $5k (that's the statutory maximum).
The only way I see this really working is that the media corporations send out nasty letters saying "Pay us a couple of hundred bucks NOW!" followed by some impotent legal fluff threatening dire circumstances, and hope enough people just simply pay to make it go away. But anyone that understands the true nature of the new copyright act will realize that there is no way in hell the media companies are going to pursue people all the way to the steps of the courthouse and tens of thousands of dollars of their own expense.
There will be no Joel Tenenbaum's in Canada.
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The good news in this is that Canadians already have fair confidence that the courts will safeguard them against this kind of harrassment. The FUD program was never able to gain traction here before, and it's certainly not going anywhere now.
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First of all, this legislation didn't begin with the Tories. It was under the Paul Martin Liberals that the first attempt at putting major copyright reforms through was made, and THAT legislation was extremely onerous, as was the drafts that the Tories followed up with.
And yes, the government could raise the amounts, but as it stands now, short of using it as a cudgel to grab some quick money out of the uninformed, there is no value in going to court over some guy who downloads a few pirated movies from Bit
I don't get it (Score:1)
I always assumed if caught I would just grab second hand copies and claim format shifting and an inability to rip my own content. Unless it's some major pre release I don't see how that wouldn't work
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The need for you to make cash by selling a burned copy was removed. Release date does not matter. The Canadian legal system is now more understanding when it comes to issues surrounding US national security.
People with big guns, illegal drugs, digital movie duplication equipment, adult movies and links to active US warzones are also found with p2p movies.
Your act of p2p is providing funding, rest and recuperation to the enemy in a time of war -
Steven Seagal (Score:2)
As a long-time Teksavvy customer on an unlimited plan, after looking over Voltage Pictures catalogue all I can say is... thank goodness I'm not a Steven Seagal fan.
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People are serious about their money (Score:1)
The films being monitored (Score:2)
From the court documents, here's the list of films that they were looking for:
Generation Um⦠(2012)
Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010)
True Justice (The Complete First Season) (2010)
The Third Act aka The Magic of Belle Isle (2012)
The Good Doctor (2011)
Rosewood Lane (2011)
Another Happy Day aka The Reasonable Bunch (2011)
Killer Joke (2011)
Escapee (2011)
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Haven't even heard of any of these films, let alone pirated them. Are they as awful as their titles make them sound?
Meh. I'll wait for them to show up on Netflix, and then promptly ignore them like I do half of the content on there. It'll be amusing if these people decide to send me a letter (yes, I am a TekSavvy customer, have been for years). Their scare tactics only work because people are afraid to challenge them in court, at least in the US. You hear about people like Jammie Thomas, and worry that you
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Tucker & Dale was awesome and very entertaining. A good twist on the old slasher films of the 80s.
Hopefully judges send a message to the liars (Score:4, Interesting)
When Canada was reforming it's copyright laws it got a specific commitment from the movie industry that they were not interested in mass john-doe lawsuits against consumers. The copyright law was reformed to reflect that. Maximum penalty for _all_ infringements is as much as $5K or as little as $100 and judges are instructed by the law to keep the penalty proportionate to the damages and to consider the hardship of the penalty against the defendant.
Now here we are, the movie studio have proven themselves to be bald-faced liars and are going after consumers in mass john-doe lawsuits.
My hope is that Canadians don't allow themselves to be bullied by these copyright trolls and each and every one of them takes the matter to court. Further, my hope, wish, and desire is that the judges that see these cases see the movie industry for the liars that they are and punish them by awarding the minimum $100 fines.
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Even if the lawsuits went through, what then? At a maximum award of $5000, a day in court by the movie industry's lawyers will eat up the award. Bring it on, I say.
It may be a "collateral damage" move against ISPs (Score:2)
They asked a court for the contact information of a huge number of Tek Savvy customers, and will now at least threaten them. we don't hear about any cases involving Bell or Rogers, which suggests that either they didn't ask them for customer listts or that the monopoly players rolled over quietly.
Were I a monopolist, I'd encourage anything that would cause my competitor's customers to be hurt, in hopes the competitor would be hurt.
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Tek Savvy is doing notice and notice, as per the (new) law, and put one notice on their blog.
Rogers and Bell have been and still are being very close-mouthed about any suits. So far as I know, they do not now and did not in the past do notice-and-notice. In particular I found out about the York University "Norwich Order" against Bell through York and the Slaw legal blog: see http://www.slaw.ca/2009/09/15/york-university-v-bell-canada-enterprises-observations-and-implications-for-future-norwich-jurisprude [www.slaw.ca]
Debacle? How so? (Score:2)
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Not that your post is anything more than a rambling troll, but I wanted to comment on one part:
Yes, people will be able to encrypt their torrenting and skirt the laws.. but plenty of dumb ones will be caught...
Encryption, Tor, 'decentralized search' and all the other crap that comes up to 'hide' where the data is coming from and going is just for idiots who think they can 'hide' from the law.
You know what happens when you bounce something through Tor and the courts get involved? They sue the node they saw the data from. Do that a few times and Tor is dead. Same with various p2p protocols that bounce the data through
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I don't have to find the actual downloader, just the person facilitating it. Like it or not, facilitating crime IS a crime.
Running TOR exit node or open wifi or similar is NOT facilitating crime.
It's just like bulding a public road. When some thief uses your road to escape from crime scene, you are not responsible for facilitating crime, are you?
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The surest way to combat piracy will be to require ISP's to map IP addresses to subscribers. Add monitoring and automatic notices that warn of the copyright laws already on the books will follow.
This won't work at all. ISPs already map IP addresses to subscribers but they have no way to find out who exactly is using the internet connection at any time. It could be the subscriber, it could be someone from his family, guests or complete strangers using his open wifi network.
You can add monitoring of traffic at ISP level, but how will the ISP find out, if some movie upload/download should be considered copyright infrigment and not fair use? We live in 21st century, it's increasingly common that users
Why TekSavvy? (Score:5, Insightful)
TekSavvy is one of Canada's smallest ISP's. Large telcos like Telus are required by the CRTC to allow little guys like TekSavvy access to their copper in order to foster some competition in the industry. The big guys dislike companies like TekSavvy because they sell unlimited data plans, and they've been fighting for some time to impose surcharges based on data useage.
When I hear that copyright enforcers are going after a little player like TekSavvy, I can't help but wonder if the larger ISP's are in collusion.
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When I hear that copyright enforcers are going after a little player like TekSavvy, I can't help but wonder if the larger ISP's are in collusion.
I'm guessing you didn't pay attention to the CRTC proceedings for the last few years on things like GAS, speed matching and throttling. There was a huge pile of crap on it all, quite a few people have been fighting against it and the closed-backdoor crap from the incumbents. JF Mezi [twitter.com] for example has done quite a bit of work on all this.
Re:Why TekSavvy? (Score:5, Informative)
I've been a TekSavvy customer for a few months now (they only recently came to our area). I appreciate them for introducing a little bit of competition in Canada. I also appreciate that they fight for your digital rights. The reason I switched to TekSavvy was because I watched their CEO participate in discussions on TV Ontario's "The Agenda" and CBC about digital rights and competition. When I switched from Rogers(our cable monopoly internet provider), Rogers offered me a rate that was 1/2 of what I was paying and double the bandwidth. It was even lower than TekSavvy's rates but I switched anyways. You would never get such a deal if TekSavvy didn't exist. The switch was difficult because Rogers cut the cable line rather than transfer it to TekSavvy... but I'm finally off of the mega giant known as Roger's. I'm glad TekSavvy is publicizing these legal threats, it reminds me why I switched.
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Smaller companies are considered easier targets, which helps to set a precedent. That could be the true goal with it. You know, a test-the-waters thing.
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Or is Teksavvy the only one actually complying with the law?
The damages for the ISPs non-compliance seems to be capped at $10k. Given they're using the new law to get info on subscribers to sue them under the old law, the window for this kind of abuse is small. It might be cheaper and less trouble to drag things out, let the judge find the ISP non-compliant, let the logs expire then pay the $10k.
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Considering the most that they're likely to receive per infringer is a few hundred bucks, they'd be losing money on every demand.
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Far Too Many Unknowns (Score:2)
In the meantime, they're out to scare end users (easy) and probably more particularly, ISPs (not quite so easy, but not hard either). Because it's much, much easier, and quieter, to bully ISPs into monitoring and controlling their customer's traffic.
TekSavvy is making a big noise about not releasing information unt
send them an IOU (Score:2)
it's as good as cashmoney, and if they send it back, then the contract is completed. Offer, consideration and agreement. You have no further obligation to them.
Of course, you could demand a trial by jury and put the burden on them to prove it was YOU who PHYSICALLY DOWNLOADED THE MOVIE. In a civil suit, there is no such burden of proof on the accuser; you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Not being in physical proximity to your computer (ie you're in hospital, in a vegetative state) is not a sub
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forgot to clarify; an IOU is worded thusly:
"I PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER ON DEMAND THE SUM OF THE DEBT."
To complete, a legal signature on the piece of paper.
(there is NO LAW which prevents an individual from issuing his OWN CURRENCY).
ob. letter (Score:2)
via throwaway email:
Dear Voltage Pictures,
I have been informed by my telco that you wish to gather subscriber information with the intention to extort money from them, with the claim that said subscribers have been involved in commercial piracy.
As a subscriber, and irrespective of whether or not I might be named in that information, I have some information for you. It consists of the final two words in Arkell v- Pressdram (1971) [unreported].
Sincerely,
Anon.
PS: if you do happen across my details, take notice
Legal suicide mission/naivete (Score:2)
Voltage Pictures could hardly have picked a worse country to do this. Canadian privacy laws (which effectively vary by province) are some of the most broad and severe ones I've ever seen. TekSavvy has customers in British Columbia, which means that FOIPPA is in effect. FOIPPA is essentially BC's response to the Patriot Act, in particular to the part of it that states that the US Government may approach any US citizen and demand information from them about another person...and that such a request must be
Why can't we just boycott Voltage Pictures? (Score:2)
It's advertising and compensation they want for their DOA movies.
I saw part of Hurt Locker and I couldn't get through it. (It made The Fountain look much more entertaining)
A silent boycott should hurt Voltage Pictures.
IOW: Tell your friends to avoid them because they sue people who watch their movies but don't make demonstrations.
Voltage Pictures is the Metallica of studios
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Go support Asylum studios, they make money the old fashioned way, by conning people into renting their mockbusters.
Their too busy getting sued by other studios to sue pirates.
Troll headline (Score:2)
Can the editors please stop feeding the worst aspects of groupthink and allowing this kind of nonsense onto the site. In no way is equatable to a DOS attack on the justice system. How sympathetic would you be of a bank that took £100 from each customer and then when they all sued used the defence 'all these cases are like a DOS on the justice system'?
Feel free to dislike the tactics and peo
Re:$5000 Canadian (Score:5, Funny)
That would be $5,069.75 US.
Oh and 1992 called, they want their joke back.
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Oh and 1992 called,
Did you warn them??
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It doesn't really piss us off; it's just more fodder for stuff like this [wikipedia.org].
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Why? It still gets Canadians all pissed off when you use it.
Why would we get pissed? Easier to mock you that your median income has decreased by nearly $4k in the last 4 years, while ours has increased by nearly $5k. In turn, you're going to make more money in Canada than in the US.
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Yeah, but when the government takes at least half every dollar extra you make, is it really that much better?
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Yeah, but when the government takes at least half every dollar extra you make, is it really that much better?
Well I've lived and worked in the US, and I live in Canada and work in Canada. I still have to pay US income tax on my various investments and securities, and the same for my canadian ones. But 10 years ago I was paying less in taxes, talking to friends who live in the same areas now. They pay more than I do in taxes here in Ontario, minus the HST. Roughly it works out to being the same, sometimes less. Especially on investments.
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Really? I paid 14% taxes last year and that was on $84k. For this year I think it will be in the low 20's.
Explain that one. Our taxes are higher than the states but you need to be making a buttload to get high percentages and at that point you probably need to hire an accountant to keep track of everything.
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I'm Canadian. If you make $90k, your marginal tax rate is most likely over 40%, plus the property taxes, the sales taxes, etc., from enjoying your earnings easily push your marginal rate over 50%.
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Why? It still gets Canadians all pissed off when you use it. Doesn't matter if its true or not, they still throw a little hissy fit ...
Heh, are you saying that you enjoy reminding people that a CDN dollar was once around 60 cents in US money, and now a CDN dollar is worth more than a US dollar? And you think that pisses off Canadians? Man, I *LOVE* being reminded that my savings have effectively doubled compared to the average American. I *LOVE* hearing that our little country is actually doing better than the sputtering mega-economy on our southern border. So if this is your idea of pissing off Canadians, keep it coming!
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If you're in that situation, legal aid will probably provide you with a lawyer who can draft a response to their letter. That, in and of itself, will probably be enough to get them to drop the case, since their chances of recouping even their legal fees is quite slim.
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Note : Last year puts this before the Conservatives "Modernization" of the copyright law came into effect. The legal landscape for these matters is entirely different now.
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Teksavvy has already sent out an email stating what is going on. They have also stated they requested a court order before they give up names. They have also stated that 1200 people have been notified that they were identified. If I had been one (I am not on Teksavvy (yet), my excuse would have been I have an Open Access Point, oops I broke the agreement with Teksavvy (I assume it has a no bandwidth sharing clause) but prove I broke the law.
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They're hoping to get the contact information of Tek Savvy's customers and send them threatening letters. The letters are cheap, and some people will settle out of court on the mere basis of a threat. Actually going to court is unwise, as it costs money.
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The best part is it is hitting the media here and all it will end up doing is informing people of their rights and the limitations that are now in place
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Alas, they're making themselves infamous here, not in the eyes of a random Chatham resident...
dave (a former non-random Chatham resident) c-b