New Round of P2P Lawsuits from Hollywood

An anonymous reader writes "There is a new story on ZDNet about more lawsuits against P2P file sharers. The catch is that Hollywood is using the log files off Bit Torrent sites like Suprnova and LokiTorrent."

Comments

Oy!

[marlinSpike]

And I was so looking forward to offset my higher fuel prices by downloading the summer's blockbusters (have there been any?)...

Re:Imagine...

[epiphani]

Dear MPAA:

Please explain how the logs you cite prove I downloaded your movie. The logs show a 28k ".torrent" file. I was unaware that your movies could be compressed to such a degree! I would now like to direct you to my large DVD collection.

Fuck You,
Your Customer.

Re:Oh goody.

[Mad Merlin]

Illegal does not imply morally wrong. Not all laws are justified or "correct".

Unsecured WAP

[quokkapox]

How on earth are they going to prove that the "John Doe" who was using a particular IP address was actually doing the downloading? There have to be countless apartment buildings nowadays with clueless, naive, rich grannies who got a wireless router to go with their spiffy new laptop which they actually only bought to get online and read emails from the grandkids.

Surely some of these WAPs are located in buildings where the neighbors are leeching free broadband using granny's DHCP server and downloading all sorts of copyrighted torrents.

I wonder how many of these innocent granny types are going to be getting nice subpoenas from the MPAA. If they are senile and ignore them they might get default judgements when the case goes to court. Is the MPAA going to take away their money/home/valuables when they win by default?

Hell, my own home WAP was temporarily wide-open and unsecured for a while when I first set it up. Do I deserve to get potentially sued for being temporarily clueless?

I have such a friend... and he'll probably be sued

[Kamiza Ikioi]

He's a big Star Wars fan (as in actually owns figures, not just a movie fan). He's seen the latest one 5 times that I know of. At a minimum of $8 per ticket, he's given the franchise $40 + drinks/popcorn/milkduds. This is on top of the 3 or 4 collectable box sets of the originals he owns (mucho dinero). He also got one of the downloaded copies of Episode 3. He hates the quality of it, but it's a piece of Star Wars history to him.

I on the other hand saw the movie once, really liked it, but won't fork over any more money to see it again. I'll wait for someone to loan me their DVD to watch.

Now, who should the studios more likely sue, him or me? What's ironic though is that if I'm correct, I'll be the one 100% legal. He'll be the one committing a crime, even if Hollywood benefitted much more from him. It's people like my friend that they are in business at all.

Give them a dollar, and they'll suck you dry. I'm almost scared to use anything but cash at the theater for fear of what other craziness they may come up with next if they had my name on a reciept.

Re:Oh goody.

[hairyfeet]

They just don't seem to get that the low quality of the average "ripped" p2p item makes for an excellent teaser/promo.

I got into Joss Wheadon and bought the entire Buffy/Angel series on dvd because i got to watch a half dozen eps of each on p2p(No WB where I'm at,No cable either).That equals a very big payoff to them thanks to p2p.The same goes for games.I bought the entire Mechwarrior series because of a ripped version of Mech3.

While i don't agree with dvd iso's i don't see anything wrong with the "ripped" versions.They are either lower quality(Videos) or have features removed/missing(games) and are a great way to check out something that if your only choice was shell out cash you'd probably never try.

There is so much money they could be making.Imagine a p2p channel with all the movies over 5 years old for 19.99 a month,Or a channel with all those great games from the 9x era, All you want for 19.99 a month.If they didn't use DRM in return for no support I'd be happy to sign up.Instead they just keep beating the dead horse while wondering why no one wants their latest formula crap.Greed+stupidity+lack of vision=lousy business.Just my 2 cents.

Re:Oh goody.

[FireFury03]

Well, I've said this before:

Most people, given the choice, want to pay a reasonable price for a legit copy of something. However, currently the pirated material is often "better" than the legit version (for some values of "better").

For example, the distribution mechanism for illegal movies is better:
  - You don't have to drive to get to see the movie
  - You don't have rediculously overpriced food pushed at you
  - You don't have to put up with 30 minutes of adverts before watching the show you paid an overpriced fee to see (goes back to the "reasonable price" thing above)
  - Not so much an issue these days but it used to be that a lot of movies were released here in the UK long after they hit the US - I can't see how they can complain too much about people getting impatient to see something they've hyped up (still applies to TV though).
  - You don't get accused of being a copyright infringer when you're infringing copyright, whereas you do if you go to the cinema or buy a DVD.

And yes, I fully agree with you about music - almost all the CDs I buy these days have been (partly at least) downloaded first so I could hear if what I was buying was worth it - the only people who lose out from that are the crap acts who aren't worth buying.