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New Round of Lawsuits in Preparation for Oscars
An anonymous reader wrote to mention CNNMoney's coverage of the latest round of MPAA lawsuits targeting end users. From the article: "The civil suits against unnamed "John Doe" defendants seek up to $150,000 per downloaded digital file and come as the film industry prepares for its annual Oscar telecast in Hollywood where awards for top films and stars are given out."
Because if you steal something, then get caught, you don't get to just pay for whatever you stole. I can't just shoplift something, and then give them the money for the item if I happen to get caught later. Same deal, you steal the movie, you're taking a risk. You get boned it's your own fault.
I'm nout surprised that they are targeting file swappers... I mean, it would look bad if you had to sue your own people after they leak the movies.
>That'd prove far more agreeable to the users and pirates
Yeah, but it's not about the users and pirates, it's about the dinosaur trying to survive the meteor impact. And it'll destroy every single small mammal he can to try and perpetuate the species.
Why try to adapt? Changing your corporate ways is always a risk, it's much better when you can scare everyone into submission with absolutely insane punishment to give example.
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Apparently, they're currently targeting the distributors who are selling illegally copied films.they should stick to that strategy, as it 1) focuses the attacks on what hurts them most (since black market targets customers who pay for the stuff) and 2) less likely to make consumers hate them
You're mistaking what the plaintiff is asking for in damages with what the actual damage amount is. It's pretty common in civil cases to ask for a huge amount of damages (whether they can be supported or not) to make a splash. They could just as easily ask for $20 million if they wanted to. There's no requirement that they show any rationale to support the amount of damages at this stage.
At trial, the plaintiff would need to provide evidence to support their claim of damages. And the actual amount of damages would be determined by a jury. But at this stage, they can ask for however much they want.
This is a "statement" amount--scare tactics. They want to use the amount to make people think twice. And until and unless one of these cases actually goes to trial and comes back with a jury award, the "$150,000 per file" number will be hanging over everyone's head.
you're actually better off by breaking in and stealing 1000 dvd's!
but virtual crime seems worse...
Privacy is terrorism.
I'd like to see some high-profile news articles about MPAA suing the producers, the screeners, the guild members who leak out all those freebie discs. That'd be good for the debate, but I'm not gonna see CNN (a division of Time Warner) covering this sort of thing.
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The only "rights" involved in this story are the property rights of the film makers, which have been violated.
And that's why it belong here. Some people don't think that Intellectual Property is actually property, you see. What has happened is not theft, but a violation of the government-sanctioned monopoly over reproductive and distributive rights for these films. In other words, your right to download and watch whatever you want off the internet like any other site has been trampled on.
Perhaps you think this is right, and perhaps you think this is wrong -- that is up for debate, but either way it is most certainly at least partially about your rights online.
501 Not Implemented
(1) someone is downloading a particular movie/song/etc and not simply a file named as a movie/song/etc? I mean, someone can simply be downloading a file containing PI to the 10,000th digit or something stupid like that? How can they tell that what they donwload is the movie without actually looking at the file themselves? And if they are looking at the files that were download then are they not packet sniffing and hence breaking into people's computers (essentially)?
(2) Secondly, what if someone owns a particular movie on DVD but does not have the ability to convert it to avi or mpg format for his computer...he then downloads it from the internet so he can view it on his trips, etc....does he not already own the movie? How can they sue him for downloading it since he already has it, he just needed a different medium of it!!! To take that a step further...how can the MPAA prove that he doen't own any of the movies that he downloaded? Maybe he does and maybe he broke all his disks or his kid scratched them up...should he be forced to buy new ones when he already bought them before?
Seems to me, that these suits require people to prove their innocence rather than the MPAA having to prove their guilt...that is unconsitutional!!!
The bigest security hole in Hollywood does not come from it's customers, nor the "Analog Hole". It comes from insiders who either stupidly distribute the material to those who ask for it, or those who are bribed to supply it. Pro Pirates can come out with copies of DVDs before the official ones hit the street. How? Because they pay someone working in either the DVD authoring or the DVD pressing to send them a copy of the DVD.
The other way is actually quite funny. My boss has been working in TV for a few decades now. Back when he worked in Network News, they called up the company that produced Star Wars: A New Hope (yes, the first movie) to get some footage for the news. The studio sent them the whole movie over the satelite (which they recorded to 2" tape). Mind you, at this point the movies was still in theaters, and they had their very own high quality copy.
Before the MPAA can do anything about piracy, they need to fix their own security holes first. Consumers aren't going to be doing this proffesionaly and on a wide scale. The people who get to the material before the DVD that gets pressed are.
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Are there any capitalists who aren't scumbags, or is a large business automatically evil?
Large corporations are not necessarily "evil", however one wants to define that term, but in my experience the vast majority of publicly-held companies are amoral, meaning there is no real sense of right/wrong. There is only a sense of what increases the bottom line. These are the kinds of companies that will, for instance, continue to spew pollution as the fines for it are cheaper than actually lowering emissions. Another example would be of an automaker that saves money by settling with plaintiffs as opposed to making a safer vehicle. In general, the law doesn't mean a whole lot to them if it's cheaper to break it than to follow it, even if they get caught. I wouldn't categorically say that all large companies are evil, but I would say that it's a safe bet that most will do whatever makes them the most money, regardless of right or wrong, and unfortunately the upper management of said companies could be considered to be in breach of their fiduciary duty if they didn't.
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