Slashdot Mirror
MPAA is Awarded $110 Million In TorrentSpy Case
An anonymous reader writes "The MPAA was awarded a staggering judgment in its case against the BitTorrent indexing site TorrentSpy. According to Slyck.com, a judge in California rendered a $110 million victory for the MPAA, and a permanent injunction against TorrentSpy."
Why no jail?
If only there were other sites to use. Oh well, BitTorrent was good while it lasted.
Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
--Ronald Reagan
You won $110 million from a site that doesn't even exist anymore.
What're they going to do? Confiscate their pencils and sell them on eBay for 5 cents?
I'm sure the defendants have no where near $110 million, and if they have to keep paying it out of income they receive in the future, what's the point of even working?
Might as well squat an abandoned building in New Orleans instead. Move to some remote wilderness area and live off the land. Sounds like much better options than paying that kind of debt down.
To put this is some perspective, the US has offered Burma (Myanmar) $3m in aid.
they've spent a fortune on litigation, to obtain a judgement they can't collect on & a worthless injunction, against a site that was never any good in the first place and shut down a few month ago anyway.
More fool them.
The movie companies lost money due to torrentspy's activities, but what is the basis for such a monstrous monetary judgement? Magic eight ball? Numbers out of a hat? How on earth did the movie companies prove this level of loss? Gotta love hollywood accounting, astounding how movies can make nothing and everything at the same time.
Just because isoHunt is in Canada, we can't expect the MPAA not to try and cross the border. I mean, the RIAA has been bad enough about operating in states in the U.S. - why should we expect the MPAA not to do the same?
...there's another site doing the exact same thing, located in a different country.
Attempting to fight these sites is entirely ineffective, and won't even scare the populace like suing individuals does. As for the $110 million, well... good luck? I wouldn't bet on getting more than 1%.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Torrentspy contained ZERO copyright material...ZERO, NIL, NADA, NOTHING. It contained no songs, no movies, no books, no videos, no nothing. It simply provided a search functionality that I could do on google (money grubbing bastards) today: searchword filetype:torrent
Why isn't google or microsoft or yahoo or any other site stopped from doing this...geezus krist, the Music And Film Industry Association of America (MAFIAA) can go MAFUCKthemselves.
Did they not have a posting that says "We are not responsible for the torrents we index" ??? From my understanding it is not illegal to refer instructions for things that may be illegal. For example, I can go buy books with instructions on producing illegal substances, bombs, and weapons. Does that make borders a criminal? If the torrent indexing site was not directly providing illegal property, but only directions on how to get it, they should not be penalized. Oh... And a thought I had today: Lawyers are adults that act like children; trained to help adults that act like children.
good luck getting blood from a turnip
Gone!
No wonder they thought $30,000 per work infringed was not enough. They got the full $30,000 in this case.
Frankly, it's absurd, especially when they paid a hacker to steal TorrentSpy's email. But there's no suppression remedy in civil cases. I sincerely wish they had gotten punished for that hacking. I don't seriously believe that they thought they could pay someone $25,000 to acquire another person's private email via LEGAL means.
But the judge obviously thought they were just pirates that had to walk the plank, so here we are.
Oh well, you know what's funny? We're downloading just as much as ever. Good job, **AA-holes. Arr!
Dr. Evil: Shit. Oh hell, let's just do what we always do. Hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage. Yeah? Good! Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that a breakaway Russian Republic called Kreplachistan will be transferring a nuclear warhead to the United Nations in a few days. Here's the plan. We get the warhead and we hold the world ransom for... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Number Two: Don't you think we should ask for *more* than a million dollars? A million dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days. Virtucon alone makes over 9 billion dollars a year! Dr. Evil: Really? That's a lot of money.
[pause]
Dr. Evil: Okay then, we hold the world ransom for...
Dr. Evil: One... Hundred... BILLION DOLLARS!
If I can not smoke in heaven, then I shall not go. -- Mark Twain
Meanwhile the rest of the world will adapt while we sink further and further into a third world fascist state. While I really hope that we'll see the writing on the wall and our leaders will realize granting themselves and their big business buddies ever more increasing powers over our lives is a dead end road, after watching this march as it continues its dance of failure for the past 20+ years I sincerely doubt we're in for anything other than more of the same: More of the same bad leadership, more of the same bad laws,and more of the same police state crap to protect us "from terrorists and those evil child predators" which is of course a smokescreen for more business and government control over our lives. But that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Now they just need to sue google which does the same thing, cept google has the money...
That's the real question
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Those poor crew members will get reimbursed for the piracy that has hurt them and their families dearly. You know, the ones in the clips the theaters used to show before previews came on, where some older black guy was claiming how piracy hurts him and his family and every one involved in making a movie. It's quite possible they still show that clip but I wouldn't know since I stopped going to the theater last year because I was tired of the ridiculous ticket prices and lack of original movies the past few years.
I guess that means TorrentSpy is going to have to put up a LOT more of those "find hot women to fuck in your area" ads!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Victories like this will just keep them going and give them more incentive to keep harassing us little people.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The judge in this case, obviously, didn't have time to read this:
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2008/02/default-judgment-denied-in-atlantic-v.html
Chances of the judgement being overturned on appeal: 100%.
Sig this!
that we are a delapidated, third world country. i guess those millions of people from mexico, africa, asia, etc, who come here must be under some delusion. but once they find out you cant set up a website to help people get movies for free, i guess they will figure america is, truly, a third world country, and head back to a mequilladora to make 3 dollars a day
Nice but rather empty victory. Of course the MPAA is going to take little home from this except the realization that under current law there is little they can do that effectively enforces copyright. I imagine that any half-bright executive in the movie industry will quickly come to the conclusion that there are only two avenues open to improve copyright enforcement.
1. DRM
2. Congress
Expect to see both. Heavier use of elaborate schemes like those used for Blu-Ray recordings and downloadable media. Branding the owner's ID into the media so copies are traceable. Real use of certificates to manage keys, mandating only online playback.
More stringent use of legal remedies, and criminalization of copyright infringement. WIPO treaties allowing international cooperation in pursuing violators. Tying government aid to enforcement initiatives.
Enjoy it while the fun lasts.
Hear that sound, that enormous wash of white noise like the mother of all surf on the mother of all beaches?
That's the whole world laughing. At you.
that reading stuff like this makes me wants to download a bunch of movies, burn a couple of cakes of DVDs and leave them around town at various bus stops
Oh well, one falls by the wayside and three rise up to replace it.....
Three bushels of 'em, to be exact!
He was the first person to respond to the original post with something that was the truth. Look, I do not like W. either (look at my freaks; nearly all are wanna be's for Laura Bush), but D'Adredge's post is dead on and NOT redundant. W. has offered to help, but he does not want simple send money and goods and have it go to support a decrepit gov. All in all, The above post was dead on.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You can't do business in the US because there is no free press there. It's the Napster case all over again and the courts have learned nothing in the last decade. Their lust to protect what they perceive as a big US business interest has them reaching these absurd rulings for tenuous secondary encouragement of copyright infringement. The fact that it's impossible for anyone to tell who "owns" a digital file is reason to rethink copyright not destroy people's ability to share things they have every right to share. Decisions like this will leave the US a broadcast backwater in a world that's bursting with free culture.
AND LOADS of boats and troops, would have made a BIG difference. As it was, the feds took days to move in, and little aid was forthcoming for a bit of time. Worse, when the aid came it was poorly spent.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe TorrentSpy should open-source their entire system and upload it to TPB...
I bet the MPAA would have settled for ONE MILLION DOLLARS and a couple of sharks with laser beams.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Here's a radical idea. Patents and copyrights need to be completely done away with.
It's not right for a person to come up with an idea, and then collect on that idea while they do no physical labor at all. If a person invents a new gadget, then they need to buckle down and start producing that product. If someone else copies them, this should be seen as competition. Competition is good for the general population. Patents and Copyrights are only good for an individual person or company. Patents serve to make a single person or company rich, while slowing the progress of mankind.
Some people might argue that patents encourage people to come up with ideas, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Besides, corporations or people that use this argument are usually selfish, and tend to have a lot of money to lose if patents or copyrights are done away with.
By this logic, one might also conclude that a musician should actually perform physically if they want to make money, and actors should perform in a theater if they want to get paid. People shouldn't be thrown in jail because they record, photograph, or video tape a performance. Everyone else has to work constantly to bring in an income. These entertainment people are filthy rich because they perform once and get paid forever. It's absolute absurdity. What makes an artists work worth so much more than anybody else's? It is perfectly legitimate to expect artists to work for the same wages as everyone else.
Much like BitTorrent, Inc., TorrentSpy attempted many avenues of legitimacy. This included creating a program which allowed copyright holders to remove indexed torrents, and a policy of blocking US search requests.
Seriously, they did everything AND MORE required by the DMCA. This judge should be taken out back and shot.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
Give them three pirated Britney Spears albums. Apparently that's worth about $110 million according to the RIAA.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The US (or any other) Government believing that people have worth? That can't be right.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Watch the video of our "offer".
Bush turned this from a humanitarian offer to help into part of his "exporting freedom" routine. He wants to have our Navy set up there. He mentions political change.
With what we've been up to lately, can you blame these people for saying no? I can't.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Even if it is not turned over on appeal, it is not like they are even going to collect 1% of that money in the forseeable future.
What I wonder is what happens in a situation like this? If a person has $50,000 in assets and makes $20,000 a year, and they get, say, a $10,000,000 judgement rendered against them, how the hell is it paid for? Debtor's jail doesn't exist anymore, does it?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
If outside commercial pressure is the root cause of the devastation, then the blood price (as the Celts referred to it) should be a function of the gain from that pressure, not simply a function of the need ultimately caused by it. To deprive others of environmentally-provided protection from the inevitable is a crime against society. Indirectness is no excuse if the chain of events is pre-determined and inescapable. However, nobody at this point has identified that that was the reason the mangroves were cut down, so this is no more than an if/then.
If this was an internal political decision, then I fail to see the importance of the politicians. America has never respected sovereign status on any other issue, when it has been convenient, so why recognize it when it is not an issue of convenience but life itself?
If this was a local decision, made in the knowledge that it was completely suicidal, well, if we are now recognizing the right of individuals to terminate their own lives of their own free will, and societies are merely the product of the consensus of individuals, what right do we have to deny soieties the right to terminate themselves? Again, this is an if/then, not a judgement or an opinion of whether this was in fact what happened.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
$30,000 per infringement? Do our Congressmen honestly think this is reasonable?
If they did that, the US would somehow find Al Qaeda there and start bombing.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
to boycott the entire US entertainment industry. If that cannot be achieved, then at least the RIAA/MPAA should be brought into check somehow. We must also push for less restrictive copyrights.
...is online here: http://www.packetlaw.com/documents/public/MPAA_vs_ValenceMedia_final_judgment.pdf
geek. lawyer.
I'm a little curious about how the law is written. Could the MPAA in theory, having won the judgment against TorrentSpy, also go after the trackers and everybody who seeds the torrents and get similar judgments against each of them?
I think you will find the defendents withheld evidence requested by the plaintiffs and got caught. That prompted the Court to throw the book at them rendering a default judgement for the maximum penalty.
They may have lots of money, but it still costs them money and time and effort.
This implies that they were allowed to index copyrighted works before...
Clarification please?
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
Can we just start assassinating all of the lawyers that work for the RIAA and MPAA already? They're the cancer that's killing the American legal system, and at this point the only chemo that will work is hot lead.
Maybe if we kill enough of them, nobody will take the cases anymore and all of this faggotry will end.
Would rule on such an extreme judgement.
Probably could have happened anywhere else too.. california industries and contributions and political connections had nothing to do with the judgement. I'm sure it was very fair and impartial.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This is the end of BitTorrent. But, I doesn't have to end. If only someone would make a torrent index in another country, we could keep torrents alive. Maybe we could use this new thing called a search engine to find another torrent index outside of the US, away from co-op states ran by movie stars.
This judgment was a SANCTION, and was not adjudicated on the merits: "having terminated this case as a sanction for Defendants' misconduct and having entered default, now renders final judgment as to all claims of Plaintiffs against Defendant Valence Media LLC."
Really, I'm not trying to be clever with my signature.
I hope those theoretical dollars are worth it! After all the CEOs/heads of the studios need the money for all there crank/hookers...
You've had your house for 14 years. Times up. It's public property now ? That money in your pension. You have had it for long enough. You don't really want to earn interest on it any more do you. I think the Movie industry is using the law like a scatter gun, but I'm not sure I understand what is fundamentally wrong with IPR.
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
Looks like its gonna spread like wild fire. See this article about pirate bay. http://www.thelocal.se/11614.html/ Is this the end of public torrent sites.
Now that the RIAA has completely solved the problem, they can disband, comfortable in the knowledge they've done their part in this Grand Play.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Yea! they (Torrentspy) go bankrupt, the RIAA gets almost nothing because you can't squeeze water from a dry rag and the lawyers rake it in from the RIAA in Fees.
I believe that there were several different tests done by "Reader's Digest" and various other magazines. One was to drop a cellphone(or in others, a wallet, etc) in a public location, and see whom collects it and if they try to return it.
Several people kept the phone. Some, when approached, vehemently denied acquiring it (though they were on camera doing so). Many of those who acted this way were at the least middle-class citizens, and in a good portion of the cases semi-upper-class or even rather rich citizens.
The poorer people, on the other hand, actually put forth the effort to returning the phone/wallet/etc. The RD crew would ask why they didn't keep it. I remember that the refrain from the poorer citizens was pretty much the same: "I may be poor, but I'm honest, I want my children to be honest, and even having no money I still have my self-respect."
Sometimes poor leads to desperation, and terrible things happen. But in groups, being poor often seems to lead to a policy of community-support, and watching out for your fellows.
If I become rich, I think I'd have a joy in life by visiting "poor" places, and engaging in random acts of generosity. Unfortunately, that mentality means I'll probably never become rich, unless I win the lottery or something to that effect.
Seriously how the hell can you have a crime with no victim? You think it's the MPAA and the people involved in making the movies,music etc? It's not, becuase you can not prove that a person downloading a song/movie would have bought it otherwise. How exactly do you prove damages? You can only say "Well your honor if little Tommie couldn't download the new Emenim song he would have gone and bought it at Best Buy.". Not a single ounce of evadence could be show to prove that is true. How do you prove a song downloaded cost you a sale?
everything in moderation
unbelievably poor taste.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Someone goes around -1 flamebait stamping everyone and I only find out AFTER I've replied to another post in this thread and then gotten mod points.
Seriously, there are artists who deserve to be paid for their work.
Naturally, I hate the RIAA, and most likely, the record companies behind the RIAA. However, the artists themselves I don't mind.
I'm all for screwing corporate bastards. But I'm not going to rape any artists in the process. I'm so disgusted with the whole situation I stay out of music completely, pirated or otherwise.
Someone should look into whether or not these artists have signed non-compete clauses that forbid them from doing direct selling. If not, then we can give the artists the money they deserve without lining the pockets of greedy middlemen.
And if I ever get a chance, I'm metamodding the above as unfair.
How many folks that live in the US can claim a birthright? The fertile crescent has been conquered so many times, I don't think any one "people" can claim unambiguous title. For better or worse, the Jewish people have been a part of that corner of the world for more than 4,000 years. T.
I don't think the judge understands that the torrents are not on the TOrrentSpy server. How can annyone be liable for a list of links!?
There are too many analogies of similar services: Google, Public Library Sites...
My house was broken into last year and they stole about 150 movies. So, if I catch the bastards, am I entitled to 4.5 million? Or will that money have to go to the MPAA? For a cut of 4.5 million, I think even my lazy local police department would be willing to put down the donuts long enough to catch them some crack heads.
Thou shalt not use tools thou does not understand, lest they rise up and smite thee
.. is having a movie star as the governor of Hollywood (California). There should have been a HUGE red flag there! Arnold Schwarzenegger, the current movie star governor of CA, most likely takes piracy personally (although I think it's wrong, I can understand why he would take it personally), so he just lets this injustice happen!
Would you want to see a man who hates black people to be President? Would you want to see a person who hates women to be President?
TorrentSpy can just close down and rename themselves under a different name just like Dyncor. When the government was caught using Dyncor to ship kidnapped children to Saudi Arabia for sex slaves, they just change their name and continue to do the same.