Round Two for MPAA Lawsuits

An anonymous reader writes "CNET is reporting that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has filed a second round of lawsuits against individuals trading movie files. This follows the lobby's legal attacks on BitTorrent servers a few weeks back. A couple of commentaries on this latest legal barrage can already be found here and here."

Comments

Re:For parents?

[EmperorKagato]

I just used the Parent Search tool and it can't discover eXeem Lite. Also, they think suprnova.org is down.

LokiTorrent

[Eminence]

Let's remember about LokiTorrent's law defense fund. They had the guts to stand for their rights and say no to corporate bullying, and they are doing it for the rest of us too. If they win such lawsuits would have to stop.

Re:LokiTorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give them any money just yet...

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto/01262 00 5c.php

Re:LokiTorrent

[cpt kangarooski]

Actually, the arguments the industries are making in the Grokster case, which goes to the Supreme Court in a couple months, are pretty much along the lines of that technologies that are used in conjunction with piracy should be banned or crippled so as to make them basically impossible to so use them.

Cheers.

Please make your post XHTML compatible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, kids: close those paragraph tags with

!

Re:How much can they really sue for?

[cpt kangarooski]

The answer to your question is at 17 USC 504, 505.

In general though, these suits are brought for the maximum amount of statutory damages. That means $150,000 per work infringed upon. So for a person who rips and scans a CD and puts it on their server, and the CD has, let's say 10 tracks, we could easily see 22 infringements -- the CD as a compilation, each song, each recording of each song, and the artwork. (This is a worst case sort of thing -- it could all be one big work just as easily)

So that's 22 x $150,000 = $3.3 million.

I remember a few years ago that some college students were being sued for billions of dollars.

Of course, the damage award could be lower, but it's still going to be pretty significant most of the time (the least you can normally expect is $700 per work) and the mere amount of the award doesn't mean you can pay it.

Since there's no point in trying to get blood from a stone, and since the cases are slam dunks as a rule, the RIAA and MPAA generally are very kind in agreeing to settle for a mere few thousand dollars.

I download movies but don't share that many because of hard drive space, I only share what I'm still downloading. Once it's done I typically burn it to CD and delete it from the PC, so while I have (insert large number) movies all they see is maybe the dozen I'm downloading. How successful will this be?

Because they watch you get each one, and have evidence of that. And they sue you, and have a discovery request requiring you to tell them and to produce the copies and your equipment so they can inspect it. And because they get a court order to impound the copies you made and go to your house with federal marshalls and take them away.

These suits are not being brought to make money. People don't have enough money to make this worthwhile.

It's just to scare people into not pirating.

Re:Round Two! Fight!

[Kethinov]

3) The "college kids" that are downloading ripped movies are precisely the demographic that the movie industry depends on for generating theater revenue. If it becomes as popular as MP3 sharing, they're going to lose $, hence sue now before it becomes a major problem.

When your target demographic is circumventing your distribution methods on a massive scale, it's indicative of a flaw in your business model. Suing your target demographic on an equally grand scale does not make the flaw in your business model go away...

Re:Absurd!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Since when has stealing EVER been allowed? Yes, it is stealing if you download a song which you have not paid for. You can whine about information wanting to be free and how you wouldn't have bought the album/song anyway but it's still stealing. You didn't pay for it. Period.

Since just until 1997.

Yeah, go ahead and call it stealing if it makes you feel righteous, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that up until the 'No Electronic Theft (NET) Act' was enacted on December 17th, 1997 it was COMPLETELY LEGAL to download and make available for download, a song, or a movie, or software for which you have not paid for. PERIOD.

Don't believe me and not smart enough to read the bill yourself? Just google for LaMacchia, the guy whose prior case proved that such sharing was NOT ILLEGAL.

Re:VERY liberal definitions

[me at werk]

File download page

Thank you for choosing to Download DtecNet Parent File Scan.

Parent File Scan is brought to you by DtecNet Software ApS. This free program allows you to search your computer for installed P2P applications as well as movie and music files. You will then be given the option to remove the identified applications and delete infringing movie and music files in a few easy steps. The program does not distinguish between legal and illegal copies, as it is up to the user to determine, whether the files found by the program have been acquired legally, or whether the material should be deleted. Information generated by the program will be made available only to the program's user and will not be shared with or reported to DtecNet Software or any other body.

Thus, the "user" aka "parent" aka "computer illiterate family member" will have to figure out if you ripped those songs off that cd of the same name over in the corner, or saved time by downloading copies. But would they even care? No, let's just delete them all and if they want them back "they can rip them again". But then what happens to the music you paid for? I don't know if iTunes/whatever has a "yours for life" policy where you can redownload things you've already bought, but probably not. Terrible.