More Popcorn Time Users Sued 147
An anonymous reader writes: The torrent-based video streaming software Popcorn Time has been in the news lately as multiple entities have initiated legal action over its use. Now, 16 Oregon-based Comcast subscribers have been targeted for their torrenting of the movie Survivor. The attorney who filed the lawsuit (PDF) says his client, Survivor Productions Inc., doesn't plan to seek any more than the minimum $750 fine, and that their goal is to "deter infringement." The lawsuit against these Popcorn Time users was accompanied by 12 other lawsuits targeting individuals who acquired copies of the movie using more typical torrenting practices.
after the right people (Score:1)
It's good that they're actually going after the infringes not the company this time.
Re:after the right people (Score:4, Insightful)
Even more interesting is the attorney who's pursuing this. Carl Crowell [wweek.com] (based out of Salem, IIRC) is pretty damned prolific about this - enough that he has a rather slick operation (see article) that chews through a lot of these each month. I find it interesting that they're willing to settle for $750/ea (though IMHO that's still a bit too high), while most settlements average $5k-$7.5k or so.
Like most copyright suits, he almost always gets the money via settlement. It all still hinges on IP addresses, the ISP, and how well they keep records, though. I'm guessing that Popcorn Time likely blares your IP addy out nice and loud for the world to see by other torrenters, though one would wonder about sharing a movie in order to sue other sharers over the same movie...
"...doesn't plan to..." (Score:2)
WHOA (Score:5, Insightful)
What the fuck?
Re:WHOA (Score:5, Funny)
Unlike Survivor itself.
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Re:WHOA (Score:5, Insightful)
They have learned something that civilized society has known for a very long time.
High severity of punishment is not an effective deterrent. High likelihood of getting caught is an effective deterrent.
Ramping up monitoring and blanketing infringers with minor fees that they would rather pay than fight will further the media group's agenda much better than permanently impoverishing single moms after wildly expensive court battles.
They have not become kinder. Just wiser.
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Hold the fucking phone. They're seeking damages that won't financially ruin entire families, and whose effects won't be felt generations down the line?
What the fuck?
What the quick buck more likely. They no doubt figure it's easier (not to mention more realistic) to get 750 than 750,000.
Of course 750 for a single film is still ridiculous.
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It's a Fine. Not damages. I'm not sure how it works across the pond, but where we live, a fine goes straight to government, not individuals/corporations.
If their goal is to deter infringement (Score:5, Insightful)
I have the right to watch it. (Score:2)
It should not matter where I get it from.
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I paid a fee to a cable company which gives me the right to watch any movie they are currently playing.
It should not matter where I get it from.
I don't think it works that way...
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First of all if you're torrenting it then it's basically out there for the world to download from your machine - so you're at least enabling infringement. Second, your viewing of any particular media may be subject to other requirements such as submitting to periodic advertising. Shifting media would allow you to skirt around those secondary provisions. We can pretend these things aren't our problem but the final price they're offering factors in all of their rights, licenses, and third-party advertising de
Re:I have the right to watch it. (Score:4, Interesting)
My PC is hobbled to near-uselessness with crapware installed by Lenovo
We've recently purchased some Lenovo machines, and yes, they came with a metric assload of shitty software that nobody could possibly use or want, and that soaked up RAM and CPU like a drunk in a vineyard. But you do know you're allowed to uninstall all that shovel-ware, right? And if you don't know what to remove or how to uninstall them yourself, a useful tool is the PC Decrapifier [pcdecrapifier.com], which is so simple anyone can run it.
The Decrapifier is not perfect, though, as the authors seem to be dodging some legal lines by not being particularly aggressive in what they recommend you remove. And it won't get everything. My sister asked me to help her as her machine had slowed to the point of unusability. At some point her machine had become infested by some particularly nasty McAfee "free" malware that required a ludicrous amount of effort to destroy. It took me far too long to discover I had to surf to their site to download a custom uninstall tool. I think I spent almost two hours downloading updates and scrubbing the malware from three machines simultaneously. But once all the crapware was gone, and they had current patches, they actually became some decent machines. (Then I had to go home and take a shower, because that McAfee software made me feel filthy.)
I consider that wasted time as an expense that jacked up the cost of owning the machines by a couple hundred dollars. It would not be worth the investment on a cheap Lenovo, which I would never recommend unless you have the nothing but time to waste, but as I was getting a big SSD, fast CPU, hi res screen, and lots of RAM, I overlooked it. But I'm not forgetting it.
Lenovo, if you're reading this, know that I'm the senior buyer for all computer and electronic equipment purchased by my two extended families, and that $20 in kickbacks you got for installing the shitware on my machine will never recoup the costs of even one of the never-buy-Lenovo recommendations I've been handing out. Multiply that by the thousands of nerds who feel like I do, and that's millions of units you're not selling because of your own stupidity.
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But you do know you're allowed to uninstall all that shovel-ware, right?
Lenovo bakes shit into their ROM chips so BIOS/UEFI reinfects Windows machines with their shit every time you boot.
There have been a slew of stories about it lately.
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should be fine as long as you didn't torrent it, because that would mean you giving slices of it to others as you obtained it
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They installed software to stream movies not share them. There is a major difference in use, the software is sharing in the background without the seeming activity of the user and the user has no way of knowing whether the content, the specific copy they are watching is legal or not. This is being prosecuted in the US because no loser pay laws (so the defendants lose either way, either pay for their legal defence or pay the privately instituted fine with the power of corrupt government), in other countries
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For the kind of content you are talking about, you'd think the fact that they didn't pay for it, or that it wasn't being provided by someone they would have reasonable basis to believe was reputable might be a fairly good indicator, don'tcha think?
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Perhaps you have never seen an idiot box, hmmmmm?!? (hint, hint). Lots of free to air stuff all over the place, in fact ten of billions of internet pages are powered by it, but of course pigopolists will always lie whenever greed demands.
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It does not discourage the poor when they have rich high priced lawyers who can cash in on the court case. Logically in a civil court case the loser should pay as they could have settled without the court.
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Knowingly receiving infringing content is also considered copyright infringement in many jurisdictions.
If you want to try and make a case for not knowing that the content you were torrenting was infringing, well.... good luck to you.
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You can keep telling yourself that... it doesn't make it true. Especially since by your own admission:
So yeah.... you know. It's unlikely you'd convince anyone else that you didn't, if the matter came up, and it's probably grounds for your ISP to terminate your service if they knew about it.
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You don't have to upload.
I kick/ban peers. Seeds are what's important to me.
Also those little slices are nothing and get deleted if you don't get the whole block from the same source. So when I kick them they auto delete whatever they got from me.
You're a 'take a penny...what was the rest, again?' kinda guy, aren't you?
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Hilarious it is, if you think a court is going to swallow that pile of bullshit
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i am no friend of the idea of intellectual property, but it doesn't help to be delusional about how law works
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look, if you want to act like wesley snipes and put your faith in some completely made up bullshit, have fun. but stop trying to sell insane here, nobody is buying it
Watch your tone young one (Score:2)
look, if you want to act like wesley snipes and put your faith in some completely made up bullshit, have fun. but stop trying to sell insane here, nobody is buying it
It's Mr Wesley Snipes, and the guy is too badass to put faith in anything but his skydiving skills. He's so dangerous they had to unfreeze Cobra Stallone to stop him from killing the guy who produced Don't Fear The Reaper, and on his way to save the UN by winning a street basketball game he even stopped to jam with the boys at the jazz club. He's a true Renaissance man, he's up there with Steven Seagal (the blues singer sharpshooter cop who broke James Bond's wrist just for kicks).
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no Blade reference
i give it 6/10
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It matters because you're retransmitting it to other people who do not have the rights. Your agreement to license this content does not cover redistribution.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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This comment bugs me a lot. It seems like media companies are screwed no matter what they do. If they sue for the maximum amount, they're accused of being greedy bastards who destroy people's lives with excessive judgments. If they sue for the minimum amount, they're accused of intentionally trying to avoid judicial scrutiny. It seems like the only way to make some people happy on Slashdot is for media companies to allow their works to be pirated and not take legal action to prevent it. That's just not fair
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While I do not disagree with your sentiment, the problem with your notion here is that *actually* the user *did* distribute a copy. They used bit torrent, and that protocol is *designed* around downloaders being uploaders. Using bit torrent is the very nature of distribution. And the penalties apply because the *reason* why the bootleggers are fined is because they cost the copyright owner sale opportunity.
Now, the nature of bit torrent means that the distribution is diffuse and it is not as clear that the
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how are "Popcorn users " "profit from illegal distribution"
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$750 seems convenient because it's the statutory minimum allowed by law. The law allows for either actual damages and profit, or statutory damages of $750-30k unless it was willful infringement, then the upper limit is $150k. Actual damages/profit is impossible to prove in this case so $750 would be the minimum.
Also, because they are being accused for sharing the same work as a collective, I believe that $750 gets split up between all parties, or if one party pays it the other parties are not individually l
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In your senario, you imply that the customer would have purchased the movie if they had not downloaded it. You can't PROVE that they would have done that, so you can't prove that 1 download = 1 lost sale.
For uploading, it's impossible to determine what actual damages are. How many copies did they upload? Partial or full copies? What's the threshold for number of bits or bytes that must be seeded before infringement happens to count as 1 sale lost? The only thing the plaintiff can prove is how much they got.
How (Score:2)
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They're finding them the same way they find people on normal torrents - Popcorn Time is basically a torrent client with streaming video built in. They have one of those "piracy protection" firms sit on the torrent and gather IPs, then subpoena the ISPs to find out who had the offending IP address at the time they saw it in the swarm for the torrent. From there, all it takes is a few threatening letters and a legal team backed by the deep pockets of Big Media.
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so you are saying that popcorn time does not provide a vpn (or even instruct people that vpn is the key to safety; the right vpn, of course)?
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Why would it? And to extend that question: why would it for free?
Terrible movie (Score:1)
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Life is not that difficult ... (Score:2, Flamebait)
... to understand:
Pirating is illegal.
We're not taking questions from the audience, because that's all we're going to say about that.
Re:Life is not that difficult ... (Score:4, Funny)
We're not taking questions from the audience
Why not?
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... because that's all we're going to say about that.
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Why is that all you're going to say about that? Are you Forrest Gump from the "Viet-fucking-nam" scene or something?
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We will continue to treat all individuals equally and we stand by our pledge to protect the planet, while sustaining our continued economic growth as we adjust our business model in the forward-going directionalized mission to be competitive in a volatile market where shareholder confidence is a parameter that we recognize and appreciate is a futuralized initiative-driven wide scope paradigmed pledge to demarginalize those on the periphery of the broad customer base that we feel is essential to the revenue
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Needs more synergy. And cowbell.
Can't compete with piracy w/o making lawful copies (Score:2)
The film and television industry is failing even these buzzwords.
forward-going directionalized mission to be competitive
A mission that the industry is failing.
You can't "be competitive" with piracy if you refuse to make lawful versions of works available. I understand some of the rationale behind the Disney sales moratorium cycle, but where's the authentic DVD of Song of the South?
pledge to demarginalize those on the periphery of the broad customer base
A pledge that the industry is failing.
"Those on the periphery of the broad customer base" demand genuine copies of more obscure TV series like Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. Y
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Pirating is illegal.
In which country?
Something online possibly being illegal somewhere at some time to someone is about the single most complicated thing about life right now.
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Where piracy is not piracy, it is not called piracy and it is not treated as piracy.
You are not successful in making a simple thing difficult.
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Where piracy is not piracy is most of the world, where only wide spread distribution is in any way considered illegal and someone downloading a song amount to a breach of contract. For example see the current trends in Australia where a movie studio is suing hundreds of people and all they may be liable for is the cost of the movie.
Piracy in most of the world is a civil issue, not a criminal one. Legality is based on case laws, and for the most part the cases on online piracy have not been written. While we
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And yet amazingly, piracy, by definition, is illegal.
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Simply copying and assisting in copying data does not involve raping or pillaging anybody and is not theft.
You seem to be not using torrents properly.
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Oh you are definitely going to have to provide a citation for that, since piracy has been used to mean copyright infringement for hundreds of years.
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And yet copyright infringement is not piracy in any legal definition. Also mostly it's not illegal but rather a contractual / civil law issue between two parties.
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It benefits content creators over freeloaders. (Score:2)
Copyright laws are the only things preventing someone from immediately printing & selling (or giving away) their own 10 million copies of Harry Potter. You wouldn't allow that so why do you think it's okay just because it's music or movies and done on the internet.
Sure, you can get away with it...but at some point, for most people, life becomes more about right & wrong than what you can get away with.
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If there's money to be made from Harry Potter, then J. K. Rowling should get it, but there shouldn't be any right that money can be made from Harry Potter.
Selling Harry Potter without giving Rowling her cut is immoral, but free copying of Harry Potter, not so much. What's the moral difference between reading a torrented ebook of Harry Potter and checking it out of the library?
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I may download Harry Potter from someone who legally purchased a copy.
Would it be immoral for a library to lend a book out to more than one person at a time if it were possible? On the contrary, libraries would better serve their purpose.
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Copyright laws are the only things preventing someone from immediately printing & selling (or giving away) their own 10 million copies of Harry Potter. You wouldn't allow that
What? Yes I would; of course I would. I think that is perfectly moral and ethical behavior.
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Sure, you can get away with it...but at some point, for most people, life becomes more about right & wrong than what you can get away with.
Clearly you and I have very different conceptions of right and wrong. I believe using force to punish somebody for printing and selling their own 10 million copies of Harry Potter is wrong. To me it's so clearly wrong it's hard to even explain it to those who think otherwise. It's like we are from totally different cultures or something.
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Are you insane? Are you suggesting that most people would approve of the uncontrolled distribution of pharmaceuticals on a mass scale?
Of *course* we shouldn't allow that! Not only is it tremendously dangerous to allow just anyone with a 3D printer in their garage to sell drugs, it also would bankrupt the pharmaceutical companies. That might not sound so bad, given their reputation for greed and heartlessness, but they are also known as "the place that new drugs come from." They could stand to be taken down
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"Pirating is illegal."
No its not. When they abolished public domain they reneged on their side of the social contract. There is therefore no obligation for us to uphold our end of the bargain.
Until such time as public domain is reinstated... there is no such thing as copyright.
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social contract
Your social contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Please try referencing laws that actually exist.
Re: Life is not that difficult ... (Score:2)
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You got a problem with taxis, bring it up with people who give a shit.
I don't use taxis.
I did once.
ONCE!
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Curious what is the IP address map of all the piggyback Xfinity public
WiFi access ports and how difficult is it to impersonate a real authorized user.
I am very tempted to never use my "normal" Comcast connection.
Use a VPN, there's even one build in. (Score:5, Informative)
Use a VPN, there's even one built in. Just need to sign up.
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Just need to sign up.
Or, you know, just pay for the fucking movie. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or better yet, go to the library, check out a good book, and read it.
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Never paying for a movie, never again.
Never fucking ever.
I *tried* playing by their rules once. Turns out, I was not allowed to use the tv-out on my graphics card, to view the dvd I *bought*, on my tv.
Fuck them. They are *not* trying to be fair or just. Do not be fucking fooled. Do *not* fall into the "you gotta pay, you freeloader, you're stealing" guilt-trip. Because when i PAID for it, I got screwed over.
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At that point, you fire up something like DVDFab and make an ISO with the copy protection garbage stripped out. Then you should be able to use VLC to play the ISO and output to your TV.
Pretty simple rocket surgery.
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I am that cameraman.
I'm off with an illness just now, but I'm not being paid the sick pay they're obligated to pay me. They are making a lot of money off me, but refuse to pay what they owe.
Fuck 'em. From my perspective, do what you like: I don't suffer because you pirate. I suffer because the owner is a greedy, selfish cunt.
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I think I saw the movie about that...
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Like what? :P
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NO, do NOT use a VPN. All VPNs are subject to court order to tap and trace your ass.
That's not a law in every country in the world.
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Quit trying to justify it. (Score:1)
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I see it in legal and ethical terms, so that's how I call it. Imagine for a second that we discovered that there was life on Mars... and they were copying our movies. Would anyone suggest that gave us a right to invade, and seize their real property? Now, what ethical principle differentiates this from one country seeking to do the same to another, or one individual seeking to
The automatic update does not work anymore: (Score:2)
http://ppa.launchpad.net/webup... [launchpad.net] 404 Not Found
Is there a new address to use ?
Piracy should be prosecuted (Score:2)
I think we all agree that attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them should be prosecuted.
Please don't confound copyright infringement with piracy.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Piracy [gnu.org]
An IP Address is not an identity (Score:1)
you can see horror movie and popcorn (Score:1)
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No. That is why you simply use a paid VPN/VPS whatever-IT-service-you-name-it not in the USA.
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I always figure that if I get fined I'll preemptively pay for the next offense and then use their cashing of the check to be an agreement that I can pirate at will until they catch me again and, at that point, I've already paid for it. I can almost guarantee that they'll cash that check... Try as I might, nobody has sent me even a single letter.