Falsely Accused Movie Pirate Deserves $17K Compensation, Court Says (torrentfreak.com) 60
An Oregon District Court has sided with a wrongfully accused man who was sued for allegedly downloading a pirated copy of the Adam Sandler movie "The Cobbler." According to the court's recommendations, reports TorrentFreak, the man is entitled to more than $17,000 in compensation as the result of the filmmakers "overaggressive" and "unreasonable" tactics. From the article: The defendant in question, Thomas Gonzales, operates an adult foster care home where several people had access to the Internet. The filmmakers were aware of this and during a hearing their counsel admitted that any guest could have downloaded the film. [...] "The Court finds that once Plaintiff learned that the alleged infringement was taking place at an adult group care home at which Gonzales did not reside, Plaintiff's continued pursuit of Gonzales for copyright infringement was objectively unreasonable," Judge Beckerman ruled. "The Court shares Gonzales' concern that Plaintiff is motivated, at least in large part, by extracting large settlements from individual consumers prior to any meaningful litigation. "On balance, the Court has concerns about the motivation behind Plaintiff's overaggressive litigation of this case and other cases, and that factor weighs in favor of fee shifting."
$17K (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't sound sufficiently punitive to me.
Re:$17K (Score:5, Insightful)
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The standard for showing that the person was falsely accused is pretty high, however... if he had resided at the location in question instead of simply being the operator of the facility, it probably wouldn't have gone the way it did.
May or may not be different. The reason is that the plaintiff only use IP address to identify that there is an illegal download of the movie. The Internet in the place is shared, so the plaintiff will have to do a lot more due diligent (more expenses and time) in order to find the right person. If the plaintiff ever found a person, the case would be completely different when filing (much stronger evidence)...
Re:$17K (Score:5, Informative)
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While that may (or may not) be a defense against having to actually *pay* damages, being awarded damages for being sued for piracy does not depend on whether or not you are innocent of the accusation, or even that it only *may* have been you who had done it, but only because it is unreasonable for the accuser to conclude that you may have done it in the first place because you do not actually live there.
My point being that the bar for getting awarded damages for the accused is actually pretty high... at
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what about room mates?
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This is a great precedent, though. If every falsely accused person went for damages of $17k, it would quickly alter the landscape for these studios.
From a litigation perspective, they have taken 2,074 steps forward, and one step backward.
This will do exactly two things to their "landscape"; Jack and Shit.
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The damages would have been quite higher if they could have proven he actually watched that terrible movie.
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This is compensation. The punitive part is (Score:5, Informative)
The current ruling is about *compensation*, not punitive damages. If he wants to file for punitive damages, he's now in a position to file for that. It's two separate things.
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Doesn't sound sufficiently punitive to me.
I agree, I didn't see in the article what "large settlement" they were trying to extort from him. And since he obviously didn't pay the extortion they were doubtless suing for a ridiculous "Hollywood accounting" amount. The defendant's settlement should be at least three times that amount PLUS his attorney fees. There is plenty of precedent for this in law, passing a bad check makes you liable for three times the amount for example.
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Re:$17K (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't sound sufficiently punitive to me.
The defendant did NOT ask for punitive damage but only the rewards which are expenses that the defendant had to pay out of pocket during the litigation.
*** From the court document ***
Gonzales has filed a motion for an award of costs and attorney’s fees. (Def.’s Mot. Att’y Fees, ECF No. 47.) Specifically, Gonzales seeks $264.60 in costs and $17,222.40 in attorney’s fees, for successfully defending Plaintiff’s contributory infringement claim.
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Re:An Adam Sandler movie? (Score:5, Funny)
Diminished capacity defense.
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Re:Need a change of leadership (Score:5, Informative)
On Valenti's stepping-down in 2004, Dan Glickman was made President of the MPAA. He admittedly was Jewish, but he doesn't appear to have changes Valenti's policies too dramatically.
Glickman left the MPAA in 2010 after only six years, to be replaced by Chuck Dodd, who is not Jewish.
So for the last fifty years, someone whose religion can be described as Jewish was the head of the MPAA only 12% of the time. This seems to rather invalidate your argument.
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I don't condone the whole anti-Jew argument, but frankly this line of argument is a bit specious. The president of MPAA is just a figurehead, and does the bidding of the member organizations and their executives. If you examine that constituency you'll find an overwhelming majority of Jewish folks.
Please don't feed the trolls. (Score:2)
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You should be grateful for the Jews...If not for them you'd have nothing to piss and moan about while cowardly hiding behind the AC moniker.
Title missing important inverted commas (Score:2, Insightful)
The title as is implies that the man is a movie pirate and was falsely accused (of something)...
Or just change it to "Man falsely accused of movie piracy..."
The actual article does it better, although they added the quotes to 'falsely' too for some unknown reason...: Court: ‘Falsely’ Accused ‘Movie Pirate’ Deserves $17K Compensation
More then the movie made... (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't $17k more then this movie made?
Re:More then the movie made... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. Adam Sandler movies are basically massive scams where he makes huge profits by selling advertising into the movie, then writes up giant paychecks for himself and all his cronies. No matter how shitty his movies are, the Adam Sandler business is basically self-sustaining.
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That was pretty funny but I looked it up and it earned $24,000 (yes twenty four thousand) in its opening weekend.
The budget was 10mil and total box office was 1.2mil, DVD another 2mil. Wow.
How you recover from that level of a flop I have no idea.
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It's written off as part of a portfolio of other losses to avoid paying tax.
On a funny note the original "Mad Max" (Road Warrior was the title of the US dub) was financed as part of a tax evasion scheme, which is why the director was allowed full control, and the investors were initially horrified when it started making money. Once it started making a LOT of money they were not so horrified.
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Why did they dubb it? Was it originally in an aboriginal language? They speak English in Australia...I know it sounds funny, but honest!
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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No no no. What else floats in water?
A duck!
If he weighs as much as a duck he must be guilty!
without any factual evidence and in criminal case (Score:2)
without any factual evidence!
In criminal case the bar is even higher so the ideas to make pirating an criminal issues will be hardware and in some cases the state can be on the hook for your legal fees as well win or lose.
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No. Don't be a fucking moron.
If you are prosecuted for a crime and found innocent the government doesn't pay your legal fees, ever. There is no cause of action in a criminal trial for compensation for costs by the defendant. These types of damages are only awarded in civil cases.
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You have to bring a separate civil suit against the government for compensation. It's the whole criminal vs. civil trial thing - a criminal trial is one the state brings to you with you being free (not guilty) or jailed (guilty). A civil trial outcome is usuall
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You are conflating two separate issues. No defendant in a criminal trial can sue the government for compensation for actions taken as part of the prosecution even if they are found not guilty by the jury. There are extremely limited situations under which you can legally sue the government and damages from a criminal prosecution are not one of them. Even in cases of gross negligence. You can sue if you were incarcerated for a long period and found innocent but only for lost wages and only in the states that
Slander? (Score:2)
Pirate Compensation (Score:2)
Actually, I've heard that he settled. Instead of $17k, they're giving him $15k, a parrot, and a lifetime supply of rum for compensation.
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I'd take that deal...
Also, define "lifetime" and what is the absolute daily maximum for rum consumption.
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I'd take that deal...
Also, define "lifetime" and what is the absolute daily maximum for rum consumption.
Depends on how strong your liver is.
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I don't drink :p strictly thinking of the black market resale value....
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The more rum you drink, the shorter a lifetime is.
Movie Pirate Compensation? (Score:2)
Adam Sandler? (Score:5, Funny)
The reason he deserves that much (and maybe more) is because his reputation is totally ruined. People now believe he actually wanted to watch The Cobbler with Adam Sandler and there is no coming back from that.
In other words (Score:2)
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It should, especially in petty and vexatious copyright disputes with things pretending to be legal documents distributed via spambots.
Make the punishment fit the crime (Score:2)