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New Round of Lawsuits in Preparation for Oscars

Posted by Zonk on from the most-people-just-buy-a-new-dress dept.

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."

5 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. Re:150K per file? by DaHat · · Score: 5, Funny

    Stop thinking rationally!

    This is of course the MPAA we are talking about... you know, the folks slightly more sane than the RIAA, but still both less crazy than your average /.er.

    --
    Help Brendan pay off his student loans
  2. remember that nauseating grammy speech? by havaloc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I remember seeing/hearing this speech by Michael Greene in 2002. I suspect we'll hear the same this year, should you be watching the Oscars.

  3. I'm not surprised that they are targeting swappers by Rahga · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. black market ( not file sharing) by free+space · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the article:
    The studios claim they lose $3.5 billion worldwide in annual revenues from sales of illegally copied movies on video and DVD formats in street bazaars and black markets.
    ...
    Earlier this month, the MPAA filed lawsuits against computer networks utilizing a software technology known as BitTorrent, but these new suits were against end users, or people who actually downloaded the films


    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
  5. What Proof do they have? by Z-Knight · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I may be naive, but what proof can they possibly have that

    (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!!!