Slashdot Mirror
Was the Lokitorrent Suit a Hoax?
kamhp writes "Recently earthreactor.com published an article
stating that the whole Loki Torrent suit was a fraud and that it was all staged to collect donations toataling in the tens of thousands then sell the domain.
"It seems that the owner of LokiTorrent decided to take the donation money and run, and to cover his tracks, scare the hell out of the entire p2p community. The scare tactic was probably nothing but a decoy to convince intelligent people not to ask the right questions" "
LOKI TORRENT LAWSUIT :: A HOAX
:: Sedo.com
:: Explanation
Written by: SharePro
At the end of December 2004, the RIAA and MPAA began an international rampage in efforts to close down major bit torrent and ed2k file sharing sites.
Some sites like Suprnova.org, Youceff.com, ShareTv.com, and others went down without a fight while other sites, including ShareConnector and Releases4U were closed down by authorities.
The lawsuits set off a wide spread of panic and dismay within the p2p community as many of the veteran ed2k and torrent contributing societys soon found themselves "homeless" and their works "confisquated" by investigative authorities.
During the turmoil, one such MPAA targeted Bit Torrent site claimed it was willing to stand up against the evil powers of motion picture media thugs by fighting the legal issues in a court of law. LokiTorrent.com began accepting donations from the p2p community to support what they called "necessary legal fee's".
According to a Slyck.com - January 3, 2005 (Slyck.com promoted people to donate to Loki Torrent), within two weeks (5 days public) of announcing their fund raising campaign, Loki Torrents was only $710.00 dollars away from reaching their initial goal. At the time of writing Slyck.com's initial article, Loki Torrent claimed to have raised an impressive $29,290.00 from the p2p community.
Today, just weeks after the initial Slyck.com interview with Edward Webber, owner of LokiTorrent.com, the entire p2p file share community is back in turmoil.
Quote:
A) Are the logs of Lokitorrent.com in the hands of the MPAA?
B) Where is the money that was donated to the legal fund?
C) Can P2P'rs who uploaded / downloaded torrents be tracked down via the logs.
The above and more were the initial questions most p2pr's had in mind when news broke that the MPAA had gained control of Loki Torrent.
As the writing of this article began to gain momentum, many inconsistencies began arising that clearly show that Lokitorrent is not in the hands of the MPAA (At least not because of a court order), nor we're the owners fined a million dollars.
1) LokiTorrent never provided the name or details of any lawyer representing the internet site. No federal judge's name has been listed anywhere throughout the so-called proceedings. Texas courts have no record of any filed judicial proceedings on behalf of the MPAA against Loki Torrent and/or Ed Webber.
2) During the same period of time that Loki was making tens of thousands of dollars monthly via donations, the owners of Loki Torrent were also actively trying to sell the domain. LokiTorrent.com for Sale
In effort to convince p2p'rs to continue donating and not to believe Loki's intent to sell, this is what the owner published in his defense:
Loki Torrent's Selling on Sedo.com
Quote:
If some guy offers me $75K for the domain name, he's more than welcome to it, and I'll simply move the site to a different domain. Selling the entire site will never happen. I have way too much of myself in this site to sell it for any price (well, 2 million could get me to part with it, lol.. but let's live in reality).
3) The only reports of this so-called "law suit" are based entirely on the front page of the LokiTorrent.com internet site. The MPAA and Texas Federal Court list no public record of a lawsuit nor is the MPAA or the courts willing to back up Lokitorrent claims of being ordered to hand over webserver ip logs and pay a 1 million dollar penalty. J. Borland of News.com (and other related news resources) apparently based their entire news articles by information received directly from Mr. Ed Webber (the owner of LokiTorrent.com). This information was received by calling Mr. Webber directly at telephone number (207) 752-3481.
4) Was LokiTorrent ever actually sued by the MPAA? According to the initial reports published via various websites, most people were led to have believed that the
There's a link to the related press release on the MPAA's website.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
quoting from this mpaa press release:
/. tradition of journalistic excellence, we'll probably see this same "story" reposted several times in the next few days.
"The MPAA's efforts to date have resulted in a 40 percent reduction in the number of servers that continue to operate. One such site that will no longer exist is LokiTorrent -- one of the largest BitTorrent host servers. The operator of that site, Edward Webber, agreed to not only pay a substantial settlement with even greater financial penalties for any further such actions, but by Court Order must provide the MPAA with access to and copies of all logs and server data related to his illegal BitTorrent activities, which will provide a roadmap to others who have used LokiTorrent to engage in illegal activities."
took all of like 3 seconds to find this.
in keeping with the usual
You must mean Existentialism
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
link
So unless the MPAA is also in on this hoax (which wouldn't really surprise me), there are some issues with this story.
It does exist on line.
I'm looking at the docketing sheet right now.
3:04-cv-02642
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc et al v. Edward Webber
Someone didn't check their facts.
I would provide linkage but you need an account to view it.
https://ecf.txnd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Isn't Earth Reactor an Earth Station 5 satelite site? With all the unsubstantiated anonimity claims (amid clients with remote file deletion exploits), and a long history of mud slinging. Why are they a credible news source?
paul reinheimer
Remind me again why we can't mod down stories? The submitter is an idiot for believing what an uninformed 12 year old wrote on some random site. The editor is an idiot for approving such a bullshit "story". We're all idiots for bothering to read past the first post linking to the MPAA press release.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
This article is written by SharePro of ES5 -- the same fellow who was threatening to post pictures and personal information about the bloke who found the 'remote file deletion' utility in the ES5 p2p program awhile back.
Take whatever this man says with a grain of salt and call me in the morning...
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
It's perfectly real. I downloaded the court documents from Pacer (the online docket system of the US Courts) and put on my website. It includes the permanent injunction signed by the judge that closed the case.
I also found this within 10 seconds. Simply go to google and do the following search:
site:mpaa.org lokitorrent
It is the first and only article that comes up.
Considering the amount of comments that people have left without even checking to see if that is really the case or not, this has obviously damaged the reputation of the person in question. The person who wrote the article should be ashamed of themselves, and cmdrtaco should have done the slightest amount of checking before he posted this. This is absolutly absurd, and if the post on the main page is not edited by the time I get home from work, I am going to make a concerted effort to not read slashdot ever again.
Remember CmdrTaco... In some situations the early bird may in fact get the worm, but in journalism the second mouse always gets the cheese.
Divx sucks, nobody has used that crap in a long time. If you use compressed content then xvid is current. Since DVD burners have gone sub $100 and 3mbit connections are common, actual dvd-r images are becoming vogue. You are a couple steps out of date. ;)
Not to mention that article was written by SharePro. For those of you who don't recall, he was one of the creators of ES5 (Earth Station 5). He promised a p2p app to end all p2p apps, which ended up being released several months later then promised. When we were finally able to use it we realized it was not only a piece of crap but it was also a trojan.
8 8219&tid=158&tid=172&tid=185&tid=17
/. did was give his site a spike in hits.
There was even a slashdot article on it: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/04/1
I would never trust anything SharePro says, he claimed numerous times that his network had millions of users, among other things. All
This is the first I've heard of this story, and I don't know what went on. However, I checked the Northern District of Texas's online docket system (PACER), and the lawsuit was filed, and was terminated with an agreed judgment. I have pdf copies of the amended complaint and the judgment. If someone has a place to host them e-mail me (tvanmeir //at\\ gmail //dot\\ com) and I'll send you a copy.
You clearly did not RTFA. The lawsuit was a hoax, start to finish.
You clearly did not read the relevant documents the article's author didn't bother to look for.
Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
Eathreactor is Run by Sharepro the same sharepro who Ran the dubious Earthstation 5 forums so no news here if you go look at Slyck you will threads about this got closed of flamed out of existence.
.The Million dollar settlement was potetial losses the record caompanies claim he wasnt fined 1 millon . /. is getting bad if they post this crap
Loki has a out of court settlement that was notarised by the federal court judge
I agree, the author of the article bears some scrutiny. SharePro doesn't exactly enjoy a high standing with many memebers of the filesharing community. It's interesting that Slyck.com is mentioned in this article. A critical commentary on the demise of Earth Station V (SharePro is the forum admin for ES5) was recently posted on that site. SharePro states that: "Slyck.com promoted people to donate to Loki Torrent". In the context of the recent article, it could be construed also as an attempt to tar Slyck by association.
The reason 60% of movies conveniently never make a profit is so that they don't have to pay the relevant taxes.
The movie industry are the kings of fiddling the books.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
I downloaded PDFs of the complaint and the judge's order from PACER. They're definitely real, and they're linked from my blog:
o rrent-lawsuit-no-hoax/
http://www.joegratz.net/archives/2005/02/24/lokit
Seeing as I have an account on the PACER system already set up, here's the case summary:
...
3:04-cv-02642 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc et al v. Edward Webber
David C Godbey, presiding
Date filed: 12/14/2004
Date terminated: 02/16/2005 Date of last filing: 02/16/2005
Case Summary
Office: Dallas Filed: 12/14/2004
Jury Demand: None Demand:
Nature of Suit: 820 Cause: 17:501 Copyright Infringement
Jurisdiction: Federal Question Disposition: Judgment - Judgment on Consent
County: XX US, Outside State Terminated: 02/16/2005
Origin: 1 Reopened:
Lead Case: None
Related Case: None Other Court Case: None
Def Custody Status:
Flags: CLOSED, COPYRIGHT, RAMIREZ
Plaintiff Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc
(followed by contact info and list of other movie studios, presumably all the MPAA members).
The last document filed in the case is a "Consent Judgment and Permanent Injunction", signed and dated February 8th 2005. The guy's attorney signed it on his behalf, and apparently Mr. Webber *AGREED* to pay a million dollar judgement to the plaintiff - there was no trial ever held. I have to assume there is some side agreement that waives the financial agreement if he complies with their terms and plays nice or something like that, as I'm presuming this guy doesn't just have a million dollars to throw at the MPAA.
Oh yeah, and the Consent Judgment states that the defendent waives any and all right to appeal the Judgment, to have it set aside, or to obtain a new trial. So I don't understand how this guy claims he was going to put up a legal fight when it sounds like he rolled over like a fifty cent whore.
See this site. -- Will
IANAL - and even if I was, I wouldn't be a lawyer in the USA. Just thought I'd better mention that.