Film Studios Sue 'No Logs' VPN Provider For $10 Million (arstechnica.com) 73
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: LiquidVPN's business model was a fierce one, thriving on the fence of the law. In webpages seen by Ars, the VPN company boasted itself as "the best VPN for torrenting" that would also let you "unblock ISP banned streams," otherwise restricted due to copyright takedown requests. Furthermore, LiquidVPN customers were really in for a treat with "High Quality Popcorn Time Streams" thrown into the mix. And, of course, this was all a "DMCA Free Zone," since, much like any logless VPN provider, Liquid did not have the ability to forward DMCA notices to users downloading infringing content. Except, Liquid listed all of these features on its website explicitly and glamorized all of the possibilities. And imagine doing all these things seven days of the week without the risk of getting caught by your ISP or anyone else, reassured the VPN provider with a "full-refund" guarantee. Transparency can be a good thing when presenting your product, except when your marketing claims surpass the legal gray area.
Unsurprisingly, in March this year, several filmmakers filed a lawsuit with the Florida District Court against LiquidVPN. This month, these plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a default judgment against LiquidVPN for the defendant's failure to plead or show up at the most recent court hearing. According to court documents (PDF), movie production firms argue LiquidVPN should not be extended "safe harbor" protections, as the defendant didn't establish a repeat-infringer policy or appoint a registered DMCA agent. The ask for $9,900,000 comprises the maximum statutory damage amount of $150,000 for each of the 66 works listed in the complaint. Additionally, $1,650,000 has been sought against LiquidVPN for "secondary liability as to DMCA violations." The asks don't stop there, however. The list of demands extends for LiquidVPN to permanently suspend accounts of repeat infringers, dismissing their "no log" policy. But the face of the LiquidVPN website is already nowhere to be seen. For weeks, the homepage has been unreachable, although the client area remains accessible.
Unsurprisingly, in March this year, several filmmakers filed a lawsuit with the Florida District Court against LiquidVPN. This month, these plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a default judgment against LiquidVPN for the defendant's failure to plead or show up at the most recent court hearing. According to court documents (PDF), movie production firms argue LiquidVPN should not be extended "safe harbor" protections, as the defendant didn't establish a repeat-infringer policy or appoint a registered DMCA agent. The ask for $9,900,000 comprises the maximum statutory damage amount of $150,000 for each of the 66 works listed in the complaint. Additionally, $1,650,000 has been sought against LiquidVPN for "secondary liability as to DMCA violations." The asks don't stop there, however. The list of demands extends for LiquidVPN to permanently suspend accounts of repeat infringers, dismissing their "no log" policy. But the face of the LiquidVPN website is already nowhere to be seen. For weeks, the homepage has been unreachable, although the client area remains accessible.
Hollywood Accounting (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it absolutely hilarious that Hollywood known for their Shady accounting practices is suing another agency and demanding that they keep better records.
Perhaps Hollywood should keep better records so they can pay people correctly.
Re:Hollywood Accounting (Score:4, Interesting)
I find it absolutely disgusting that you support piracy. Every illegal download is a lost sale.
What's really disgusting is how we let the upper class cheat us out of our own culture and then impoverish us trying to get it back. The system is corrupt and exploitive and we let it get this way because of greed.It's all just classism and economic discrimination, exploitation and slavery.
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:5, Insightful)
cheat us out of our own culture
Perhaps we should be looking somewhere other than for-profit businesses for our culture.
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:1)
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:3)
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cheat us out of our own culture
Perhaps we should be looking somewhere other than for-profit businesses for our culture.
It's way too late for that. The upper class owns the show, body and soul; and there's no way they'll willing let go. We're going to have to take it back somehow. That's too bad because people often resort to force and violence when they get desperate and then it just takes longer to rebuild everything.Too bad people aren't smart enough to understand how important and foundational ethics really are, and how unethical our society has become. Sadly, once corruption sets in, a society is doomed, and now we need
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That said, I have a Mullvad connection with a Wireguard client on my router. The connection drops every few weeks, and I have to generate new credentials. I get the "last handshake 31 minutes ago" message with like 300 bytes received and a few kilobytes sent on the old credentials. Does anyone know what is going on? It looked to be aligned with the months, but it
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:2, Interesting)
While they don't use ovens anymore, Nazi Germany currently says "papers, please" if you want to consume certain forms of art work.
https://www.theouterhaven.net/... [theouterhaven.net]
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The Nazis haven't been in power in Germany for quite a few years now (I think it is more than 50 but I could be wrong). Also, if you had actually read the article you linked to you would see that it is actually Steam that is blocking the games in Germany. Steam doesn't want to be bothered to implement an actual age verification system and instead has decided that games needing this verification just won't be accessible in Germany.
While the age-verification is more than enough for most places, it isn’t in Germany. In fact, it may as well not be there, at least in the eyes of the government. Due to this, Steam has blocked all games with this classification in Germany.
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:1)
That's because Nazi Germany requires steam to say "papers, please" and steam doesn't want to. So to be compliant with the law, they just tell the little Nazis to play my little pony instead.
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Sorry I didn't realize it was only Germany that requires proof of age to access non-essential entertainment. I guess all other countries just let anyone into a bar and lets them drink whatever they want without showing id. Admittedly I haven't been to a bar recently but last time I did you needed to show proof of age to imbibe. That is also a "papers, please" situation so I guess all countries that do that are also "Nazis"?
All Germany is doing is forcing people to actually prove that they are of age instead
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:3)
All other countries can tell the difference between drinking alcohol and playing video games. Besides, flashing an ID card to show your date of birth is a lot different than scanning the ID card and keeping a permanent record of it, which is what would have to be done in this case, (otherwise just anybody can upload the same ID card) which can also subsequently be requested by the government, along with a full record of everything that steam keeps track of (games played, play time, etc.)
Nazis are used to th
Re:Hollywood Accounting (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not an advocate of piracy at all, and refuse to practice it myself, but . . .
Every illegal download is possibly:
A) Someone that would have never purchased a ticket or legal copy.
B) Someone previewing a potential purchase before tossing their money at the studios.
C) Some curious dumbass kid that hasn't thought through the consequences, and probably also fit A) above.
D) Someone thinking they're making a protest by illegally downloading instead of purchasing.
Only D) above fits your "every illegal download is a lost sale." I know that's what Hollywood and the RIAA want you to believe, but to be so thoroughly programmed by them to make their argument for them is more than a little over the line. These behemoths want control of all content.
I just hate to see us degenerate every conversation to purest black and purest white with no gray in between. Life is not that simple.
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"B) Someone previewing a potential purchase before tossing their money at the studios."
Horseshit. If those people exist at all they are in miniscule numbers. The whole list is silly, but that one is a unicorn.
And the parent is just whataboutism (I despise most contemporary lingo, but that one is just such a nicely encapsulated idea).
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Horseshit. If those people exist at all they are in miniscule numbers
So? We're - or rather, the person you are replying to, is talking about possible reasons. That's an EXISTENTIAL question, not a QUANTITATIVE one... it could be 1%, it could be 20%, whatever, as long as the number is non-zero, it's reasonable to conclude that the type of person exists. How many are there, or not, is irrelevant when we're talking about reasons that exist existing.
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:4, Insightful)
Read up on Napster. Album sales were record breaking.
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Album sales weren't record breaking because of Napster. Society was at the juncture of massive online exposure for acts, and minimum piracy.
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Funny - I realize I haven't asked everyone, but among my friends I can't recall a single one that ever bought films they haven't seen yet, unless it was something they believed to be good anyway. I've known several who had at least a moderate habit of collecting good films - from those I've known, none had enough money to put into that hobby that they could spend money just to "try out" a movie they didn't know if they would like it. They all pirated movies as well - and I know there's a lot of films that a
Re:Hollywood Accounting (Score:5, Informative)
There is an "E"
E) It's not obtainable legally, anywhere.
It's one thing it it's the latest Fast and Furious, it's quite another thing when it's an indy or obscure studio release of something that hits the circuit for a few weeks, presses out 500 copies on DVD and then goes poof into vapor, never to be seen again, except on a torrent tracker.
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Yeah, I was avoiding talking about that because then you get into the whole realm of the Hollywood establishment players claiming copyright violation on things they don't technically own just so they can swab a bit more cash out of someone's wallet. I've been down that path with the RIAA claiming ownership of some music I was involved with that had zero participation by RIAA members. Though I don't disagree with what you're saying at all.
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There are quite a few that never even press a DVD. Their studio may get picked up by Netflix for a few months and then when they get dropped, they don't find another buyer for distribution. There are quite a few movies and TV shows that are very popular elsewhere, but that are not available physically and nobody has purchased the rights for streaming in this country.
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I advocate piracy. Not the kind where pirated stuff is sold for profit, but software and entertainment piracy through sharing, I do advocate it. I don't mean I want people to pirate as much as possible, quite the opposite: if you have no problem paying for it, you should. My country, Finland, has had a long cultural understanding, and laws, that copying music (whether from radio, from friends or the libraries copy, even internet) for personal listening is not punishable and although technically "unlegal", n
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Copying Is Not Theft [youtube.com]
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Careful not to conflate "legal" and "moral". They don't always overlap, especially when interests are perverted financially.
On that topic, when they diverge you're more likely to get me to give a fuck about the latter.
Perhaps we both wasted keystrokes.
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Every illegal download is a lost sale.
I seriously hope you were going for a +5 funny, but your lack of a sarcasm tag makes you look like one of the dumbest morons to walk the face of the earth.
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Every illegal download is a lost sale.
I seriously hope you were going for a +5 funny, but your lack of a sarcasm tag makes you look like one of the dumbest morons to walk the face of the earth.
My take also. I mean even Hollywood knows that this is not true. The main damage copyright infringement does to them is that if they have hyped some bad PoS piece of "entertainment" for a while, and then it gets copied before the theatrical release, people will not bother to watch it because they already know it is a waste of time and money. Hence Hollywood is basically fighting to continue to be able to rip of its customers unopposed.
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I find it absolutely hilarious that Hollywood known for their Shady accounting practices is suing another agency and demanding that they keep better records.
Perhaps Hollywood should keep better records so they can pay people correctly.
Some of the most amazing stories to come out of Hollywood are written by the studio's accountants.
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(Also, why you should always go for percentage of gross, rather then percentage of net... They can't really play games with the top line gross number)
If anyone that is in the position to negotiate with a Hollywood studio for percentage and is coming to /. for negotiating advice, they're already screwed...
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:2)
The recent kerfluffle over Black Widow shows they can play games with the gross as well.
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> They can't really play games with the top line gross number)
Ahh, but Hollywood has its own *version* of what "gross" is . . . I want to say they call it "adjusted gross".
See Eddy Murphy's testimony when Art Buchwald sued over being stiffed on "Coming to America"
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What probably screwed them in this case was advertising their VPN service as ideal for "torrenting" and other forms of copyright infringement. It establishes a direct link between copyright infringement and their profits.
Re:Hollywood Accounting (Score:5, Insightful)
What probably screwed them in this case was advertising their VPN service as ideal for "torrenting" and other forms of copyright infringement. It establishes a direct link between copyright infringement and their profits.
I've torrented Linux distros. Just last week I grabbed a torrent of the free game Xoonotic. Torrents, like knives, guns, cars, or anything else have both legal and illegal uses. Automatically assuming "torrenting" = "copyright infringement" is simply wrong.
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Sure, but LiquidVPN makes it very clear they're not talking about torrenting Linux distros, using pictures of major movies and talking about PopcornTime and streaming your "favorite TV shows". Hard to claim you're only promoting P2P Ubuntu downloads when you show a poster for Interstellar on your features list. You don't have to assume torrenting = copyright infringement when they explicitly state that's what they mean.
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I agree, but they advertised their service as hiding your identity and being ideal for file sharing, the clear implication being that it would prevent you getting sued or sanctioned by your ISP.
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advertising their VPN service as ideal for "torrenting"
I've torrented Linux distros.
You use a slow VPN to torrent Linux distros? I'm extremely curious why.
Most of us use bittorrent for large files because it is faster than a one-to-one http download from a single mirror server.
Going out of your way to choose a many-to-one download protocol and then funnel it over a <100kb/second VPN seems counter productive to me.
I highly suspect the direct http download would be faster than this!
Since it isn't for the speed increase, I'd love to know your use case for this setup.
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You use a slow VPN to torrent Linux distros? I'm extremely curious why.
Yes, it is not as fast as the http download, but I'm generally not in a rush and don't mind seeding. Also I routinely get 10Mb/s or more through my VPN. Not nearly as fast as my connection is capable of, but fast enough for most things.
As well my setup will only allow my torrent client to connect through the VPN. If the tunnel goes down it should be blocked, to avoid any unintentional unsecured sharing. I could use a separate client, or reconfigure it on the fly, but as I said I'm not in a rush.
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Hollywood is making courts test: If you don't have a record as a vendor, you are obviously guilty by association.
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:3)
Civil trial (which most copyright infringement cases are) don't depend on the standards of guilt required in a criminal trial ("beyond reasonable doubt").
In a civil trial, you only need to prove you are "more correct" than your opponent.
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Or in this case, you simply don't show up in court and win by default.
That's what really happened - the owners skipped town, didn't show up for court, so the courts just granted a default judgement. Hollywood is basically just getting everything they asked for because no one bothered showing up, so the courts didn't get to hear a defense and have to make judgements based on what the prosecution says. And generally speaking, t
Re: Hollywood Accounting (Score:2)
If the defense sent didn't show up to court (and thus summary judgement), how do you imagine the plaintiffs are going to get their hands on the billing and other non-anonymized data? If there are no activity logs on the servers, hitting the upstream service provider with a subpoena isn't going to get very far.
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Perhaps Hollywood should keep better records so they can pay people correctly.
Don't confuse cooking the books and writing sneaky contracts with keeping poor records. Hollywood keeps very good records. They use them all the time to show how blockbuster movies make no money after piling on deductions.
They said the quiet part out loud. (Score:3)
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yes. like the other literally hundreds of VPN services, they would be just fine. this compromise is decades old and goes back to at least VCRs and audio cassettes. there are non-infringing uses for all of these things, but it is illegal to promote them explicitly for infringing uses.
whatever one thinks of hollywood and the MPA, these guys were idiots.
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Warrant Canary triggered....missing/not updated (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone should be aware, the Warrant Canary on their site is over a year old, not updated, means bad things.
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Basically, Hollywood is doing this for the press, they will not see any money from this. Of course, they will try to spin it as a great vicroty, but it is doubtful people will fall for their lies.
Burying the lede (Score:2)
risk of getting caught by your ISP or anyone else, reassured the VPN provider with a "full-refund" guarantee.
You get sued for copyright violation and the VPN comes in and refunds your $7/mo. Wow...that ought to cover the bills.
Weird charges (Score:2)
movie production firms argue LiquidVPN should not be extended "safe harbor" protections, as the defendant didn't establish a repeat-infringer policy or appoint a registered DMCA agent
Those are weird charges. if LiquidVPN is doing their job correctly, they cannot see what users are doing, and hence could not detect infringers anyway.
That said, it does seem stupid for them to not even show up. That makes a default judgement likely, regardless of the merits of the case.
IANAL
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