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Piracy The Courts

Appeal Court Affirms Verdict Against ISP Grande For Failing To Terminate Pirates (torrentfreak.com) 89

Posted by BeauHD from the guilty-until-disconnected dept.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a copyright infringement verdict against Internet provider Grande, which failed to take action against allegedly pirating subscribers. The jury's $47 million damages award in favor of the major music label plaintiffs is vacated. According to the Court (PDF), individual tracks that are part of an album, should not be counted as separate works. TorrentFreak reports: After hearing both sides, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury verdict yesterday. Grande's arguments, suggesting that the district court mistakenly upheld the verdict earlier, were rejected. "The district court did not err in upholding the jury's unanimous liability verdict because Plaintiffs satisfied each element legally and factually," the decision reads. "The court correctly interpreted the law and instructed the jury on the relevant legal standards in light of the factual issues disputed by the parties, and Plaintiffs introduced ample evidence from which a reasonable jury could find in Plaintiffs' favor." [...]

In addition to the material contribution challenge, Grande and its supporters also pointed out that terminating Internet access isn't a "simple measure," as the jury concluded. Instead, it is drastic and overbroad, which could also impact innocent subscribers. The Court of Appeals rejects this reasoning. Instead, it states that the jury could and did conclude that terminations are a simple measure. There is no evidence to reach a different conclusion. All in all, the Court sees no reason to reverse the jury's verdict that Grande is liable for contributory infringement. This means that the jury verdict is affirmed.
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Appeal Court Affirms Verdict Against ISP Grande For Failing To Terminate Pirates More

Appeal Court Affirms Verdict Against ISP Grande For Failing To Terminate Pirates

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  • lets all go the music label office and upload from there free wifi

  • With all of the lobbyists buying politicians to enact laws that favor the billionaire class and stuffing the judiciary with corporate-first judges, net neutrality and freedom are eroding with haste bit-by-bit and byte-by-byte. Also, it means Google Fiber will start terming customers with too many DMCA warning emails without so much as a shred of evidence or conviction in a court of law. Sounds like Leonard French is about to have more business to push back from this power grab.
    • There's oodles of evidence, don't worry.
      And trust me, you'd prefer it not go to a court of law, because right now you're just getting slapped, and nothing will come from it. 14 days, and you'll have your internet back (assuming you ignored the 3 warnings).
      If it goes to court, they're going to make me produce evidence that you've been doing it for years, and you're now bankrupt. Forever.

      Someone at your IP was sharing copyrighted content, and you got nabbed. It happens. Stop breaking the law.
      I'm not spea

      • How many false positives that you may never even know about?

        • How, pray tell, do we get a false positive?
          Now- I'll grant you, the matching is based on some flimsy scaffolding, but the failure modes are absurd.
          "I swear- that file I was sharing that was listed on that tracker that is literally full of pirated content as 'Deadpool 3.mkv' was actually some indie music!

          • What if it's not under copyright but on your list? What if someone is spoofing your IP? What if your boss tells you to plant data on some target they have a personal problem with?

          • Re:US slowly morphing into klelpto-plutocracy like (Score:4, Interesting)

            by sjames ( 1099 ) on Friday October 11, 2024 @10:48PM (#64858397) Homepage Journal

            There are known false positives out there. One person got a DMCA notice for what turned out to be natural birdsong on a video he had made outdoors. Another takedown for Usher.mp3 turned out to be a lecture by professor Usher, not the artist Usher. It was posted for students who were unable to attend in person.

            As for how we got those false positives, I would have to say overzealous gross incompetence bordering on malice.

            • Those are a very different class of DMCA take-downs than we as ISPs receive.

              Ours are very close to solely based on torrenting, and include the literal filename of the torrent. What you're describing is a YouTube video where they do a shit machine analysis of what is in the video.

              If I ever see a DMCA take-down for birdsong.mp3, I promise you, I'll take a look at it myself and recommend to the customer that they contest it.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by sjames ( 1099 )

                Usher.mp3 was on a university web server, not YouTube.

                The university had an ISP.

                • Then that university ISP was operating like youtube.

                  "Usher.mp3" would absolutely have raised eyebrows at every step of the way in my organization. It's far too vague.
                  The filename is a necessary part of the evidence.
                  As I said- it's flimsy, but generally it's so damn descriptive that the error margin approaches zero. If that becomes not the case, then scrutiny is required.

                  But then again, we're not really allowed to be the agent of scrutiny. We do counsel our customers on how to kick back, though.
                  Anothe

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Rujiel ( 1632063 )

        "Someone at your IP was sharing copyrighted content, and you got nabbed. It happens. Stop breaking the law."

        That's wrong, IP addresses are not equivalent to people since 2012. This decision doesn't change that fact
        https://www.computerworld.com/... [computerworld.com]

        • That's wrong, IP addresses are not equivalent to people since 2012.

          ISPs know when an IP was leased to a specific subscriber, and can still claim it's a TOS violation for failing to properly secure access to your router if you have no idea* who was using your subscription to unlawfully distribute copyrighted content. So, even if the copyright lawyers aren't likely to prevail in a lawsuit directly against you, you can still end up getting the banhammer from your ISP.

          * But let's be honest, most modern WiFi routers default to some sort of secure state right out of the box. Y

          • most modern WiFi routers default to some sort of secure state right out of the box

            Haha, so wrong! Quite many have no security as default, many have default password without obligatory change at first use, many have that quick secure option on, which is just a security hole itself. And all widely used wifi security means have been cracked. It takes just some minutes to crack a typical wpa encryption.

          • ISPs know when an IP was leased to a specific subscriber, and can still claim it's a TOS violation for failing to properly secure access to your router if you have no idea* who was using your subscription to unlawfully distribute copyrighted content. So, even if the copyright lawyers aren't likely to prevail in a lawsuit directly against you, you can still end up getting the banhammer from your ISP.

            Sure. And now you have successfully moved the goalposts from RIAA vs citizens to ISP vs paying customers.

            This is the fight that the ISPs do not want to have. They do not want to fight their customers. They just want to get paid to provide internet access.

            • You are correct. It isn't a fight we want to have. But we are compelled by subpoena to provide that evidence, and we do. Every ISP does.
              The security of a single customer on my network is not worth the loss of my safe harbor provisions, period. Especially when the evidence is damning.
        • You don't know what you're talking about.

          The MP/RIAA tried to argue that an IP is definitively a person.
          That is absolutely not the case.

          When they subpoena me, I provide the evidence that it is.

      • Someone at your IP was sharing copyrighted content, and you got nabbed. It happens. Stop breaking the law.

        A little birdie told me you can also just use a Seedbox or VPN so the nastygrams never make it to your ISP.

        • Wise move. Unfortunately, the several hundred I get per month didn't do that. Wish they did, because I fucking hate those notices, because I can't /dev/null them.

    • Question in my head is what is the end game?

      People will only tolerate kleptocracy before reaching for their pitchforks or rulings start to cut into the bottom line of other billionaires, which will result in even more spagetti law.

      It will be a strange world when the greatest communication device dies on the vine from being rendered unusable by law.

      • Just how efficient is capitalism? Is capital efficiency different from engineering efficiency, and have economists confused us by implying they are synonymous? What if we gave engineers a strong basic income and let them do efficiency their way (or of course they could choose business as usual, which would not go away, if they are greedy) instead of having to defer to what the finance guys think is physically efficient?

        • Whoa whoa whoa... not argiung for or against any -ism, more a corruption of law and downstream effects should ISPs move to walled-gardens to avoid liability from copyright holders.

          But as far as markets are concerned, they are horribly inefficent, but tend towards the most innovation. The question is a balance of property rights, and specificlly corporate rights.

        • Re:US slowly morphing into klelpto-plutocracy like (Score:4, Interesting)

          by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Friday October 11, 2024 @09:33PM (#64858323)

          Just how efficient is capitalism?

          Well, Adams explained it with his 'invisible hand' metaphor: Markets are efficient because businesses have to compete, and prove their goodwill. Anything that reduces competition; such as perpetual copyright, nearly everything containing intellectual property, patent squatting/trolling, reduces efficiency. Anything allowing businesses to control consumption (the market) and suppress dissent/competition, reduces efficiency.

          Capitalism provides efficiency to supply: With money motivating people to supply more. If people want more tulips or Rhinoceros horn, that will happen. It's a problem with tulips, because arbitrage/speculation means there is less money for buying other goods (a pricing bubble). It's a problem with Rhinoceros horn because, the direct and external costs of consuming a limited resource, increase exponentially (accelerating scarcity).

          • What if the de facto world central bank in control of the world's best money printed enough money to pay the rhinoceros horn hunters not to hunt, and index everything else fully to eliminate the constraint of nominal inflation?

        • Efficiency in capitalism is measured by its supply chains. It's very good and efficient at the thing it's meant to do: ensuring producers produce enough stuff, distributors get it to where it needs to be, and retailers make it available to consumers. That's it. If you have further expectations, it may or may not be good at delivering on those.

      • With modern militaries once you give up democracy it's over you're not getting it back. Not unless some external force puts pressure on you something stronger than your own local government.

        What I'm saying is the time to stop your country from becoming a kleptocracy is before it becomes one. Afterwards it's too late

      • People will only tolerate kleptocracy before reaching for their pitchforks or rulings start to cut into the bottom line of other billionaires, which will result in even more spagetti law.

        You ever actually looked at the number of seeds for any sort of pirated content that isn't particularly new? Surprisingly few people bother to pirate content these days, and most are just fine with watching/listening to something else if their first choice isn't available on a paid service.

        There's not going to be any raising of torches and pitchforks so long as people can still watch whatever is trending on Netflix.

    • America is an Oligarchy (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Friday October 11, 2024 @10:24PM (#64858367) Homepage Journal

      source [washingtontimes.com].

      You may note that this is an old article. And it discusses even older material. America has been ruled by the wealthy elite for quite a long time. And they don't even hide it. They don't have to. Most of us just ignore them and continue to believe that we have any political power at all.

      It's a farce.

      The only silver lining here is that they need there to be a certain degree of economic health and stability in order to retain their wealth. If the economy falls apart then they fall apart with it. So, many of the decisions they make benefit the rest of us "to some degree," even if they benefit the elites quite a lot more.

      On the flip side, if every decision of economic consequence was completely under the control of the voting populace, we would have utter chaos. Things WOULD fall apart because most people simply don't have the specialized education necessary to even understand the issues, let alone make good decisions about them.

      So, our true rulers are a necessary evil.

    • Re:US slowly morphing into klelpto-plutocracy like (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gtall ( 79522 ) on Saturday October 12, 2024 @03:53AM (#64858725)

      The Fifth Circuit is composed mainly of the judges put there by the former alleged president and the Federalist Society. They support a corporate takeover of American Institutions.

      • "The Fifth Circuit is composed mainly of the judges put there by the former alleged president"

        6 of 17 Circuit Judges and 0 of 9 Senior Circuit Judges of the 5th Circuit were appointed by Trump. 0 of 3 judges that heard this appeal were appointed by Trump. (One each was appointed by Reagan, Clinton and Obama.)

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          "The Fifth Circuit is composed mainly of the judges put there by the former alleged president"

          6 of 17 Circuit Judges and 0 of 9 Senior Circuit Judges of the 5th Circuit were appointed by Trump. 0 of 3 judges that heard this appeal were appointed by Trump. (One each was appointed by Reagan, Clinton and Obama.)

          Regardless, the point remains that the 5th circuit is widely regarded as the most right-leaning circuit in the country by a large margin, and has been for many, many years. Even Democrat presidents have a hard time finding anyone to the left of Mussolini to nominate for the circuit in that part of the country.

          The argument that *should* have been made by the ISP is this: The vast majority of people in the United States have only one usable ISP. Cellular and satellite data service costs are extortionate and

  • The Fifth Circuit (aka "crazyland") strikes again.

  • The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a copyright infringement verdict against Internet provider Grande, which failed to take action against allegedly pirating subscribers.

    Alleged does not mean proven or convicted. Why are they taking action against somebody *before* that person has been proven to be guilty?

    • A quick glance at the PDF, the argument seems to be that ISPs should comply with a warrant for information on who the subscriber is, in order to pursue further investigation, as the ISP is the source that maintains documentation related to the identity of the subscriber.

      Somehow, this morphs into private corporation policing of citizens and the declaration of guilty until proven innocent in a court of law via legalizing the act of doing an end run around the courts and justice system.

  • Play stupid games, win stupid prizes (Score:3)

    by Slashythenkilly ( 7027842 ) on Friday October 11, 2024 @10:22PM (#64858363)
    The buck has to somewhere and if so called "pirates" are being that obvious and ISPs can make any attempt to curb it, then too bad. Nothing here is new. No one doing this is innocent and nothing can be said to justify it other than greed. If you dont know about uploading/downloading copyright content, how to lockdown your WiFi or not give out passwords thats on you and your ISP should be sending you a letter for being stupid.

  • It's the 5th circuit (Score:3, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday October 11, 2024 @10:40PM (#64858387)
    Famous for being pro-corporate and right-wing and for absolutely bad shit insane rulings.

    The 5th circuit has been targeted for decades for court packing. Remember those judges get appointed by the politicians we elect and they get appointed for life.

    Elections have consequences

    • I don't know why this got labeled troll. It is an accurate assessment of the whores in black robes that occupy the 5th.

  • And (Score:2)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

    Sadly, there was no one in the court room with an IQ over 25.

  • Why aren't the ISPs lobbying for laws on this? (Score:3)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Saturday October 12, 2024 @12:27AM (#64858529)

    We all know that the US is a country where money talks, why aren't the ISPs all banding together to buy some new laws that give the ISPs explicit immunity for the actions of their users? Do the ISPs not want such laws? Is the copyright cartel too powerful for such a thing to work?

    • Exactly, or since net neutrality is no longer a thing, and all of Hollywood now owns their own streaming platform, they should be recouping the money from Hollywood by charging them out the ass to send content over their networks.
  • Someone sues for being disconnected? Does the ISP get screwed twice? The internet is a basic human right which shall not be taken away. It will require someone with big pockets or a class action to do so, though.

    And what happened to the FBI? I thought this was a criminal offense?

  • Wrong word subby, you ignorant fuck (Score:3)

    by doubledown00 ( 2767069 ) on Saturday October 12, 2024 @08:08AM (#64858985)

    "The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a copyright infringement verdict against Internet provider Grande, which failed to take action against allegedly pirating subscribers. The jury's $47 million damages award in favor of the major music label plaintiffs is vacated."

    From dictionary.com: Vacated.
    Law.
    To cancel or annul (a judgment, contract, or charge).
    "the Justices vacated a ruling by the federal appeals court"

    Perhaps the word failmitter was looking for was "vindicated"?

    • Perhaps you should have read TFA:

      "While the liability verdict stands, there was some positive news for the ISP as well. The Court overturned the lower court’s decision on how damages should be calculated. A new trial will determine the appropriate amount."

    • While showing their ignorance themselves. The damages award *was* vacated. There's a whole section in TFA about the vacation of the award and the court document linked in the TFS even writes that the award was vacated in ALL CAPS.

      Now what do we call people like you? Is what you call other's appropriate? A .. ignorant fuck?

  • If an ISP is responsible when its network is used for piracy, then water utilities are responsible if someone drowns in a bathtub. Road departments are responsible when someone drives to commit a robbery. Libraries are responsible if an arsonist uses one of its volumes as kindling for a wildfire. Makes absolutely no sense.
    • I agree ...but if the ISP identifies the user and makes an attempt to warn/stop them, said ISP has done their dilligence. Water, power, and construction companies are sued by federal, state, and private parties all the time for their liability in acccidents, neglect etc.
      • Lawsuits don't usually go forward when they're that frivolous. An internet service provider literally just provides access to the internet, and that's all they do. They are only liable if they take someone's money and then fail to provide internet service on the agreed terms. A car being used in a robbery does not carry legal exposure for the car company, the tire company, the gasoline retailer, companies that did maintenance, safety testers, road construction, cement producers, etc. It's just nonsense.
        • A car being used in a robbery now does carry legal exposure for the car company. If the manufacturer has installed smart systems and collects data which can identify and potentially prevent criminal activity, then it has now been found that they are criminally liable in preventing that criminal activity.

          Tesla comes to mind. Waymo and Uber also come to mind. Disney's attempt to avoid liability regarding false advertising related to food allergies has another court battle to uphold arbitration, as it happe
          • You can find "noise" in the courts at any moment in history, but what you said has absolutely not been found in general. People and business owners are not required to be the Stasi to avoid liability, because there's no law behind it. Nothing whatsoever obligates a water utility to investigate its customers' lives for the possibility they might be a reckless swimmer in their backyard pool.

            Once again, if content owners had any actionable proof of piracy, they could simply get a court order forcing the I

  • ...Terminate Pirates...

    Do they make them walk the plank?

    • Hmm, that might be fun to watch. The thing I've never figured out is how depends trump has never been sanctioned over his years long usage of musicians music without permission. Walking the plank at this point might be appropriate for flagrant copyright violation.

  • Problem solved, everybody happy.

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