Slashdot Mirror
New Litigation Targets 20,000 BitTorrent-Using Downloaders
Hugh Pickens writes "The Hollywood Reporter reports that more than 20,000 individual movie torrent downloaders have been sued in the past few weeks in Washington, DC, federal court for copyright infringement, and another lawsuit targeting 30,000 more torrent downloaders on five more films is forthcoming in what could be a test run that opens up the floodgates to massive litigation against the millions of individuals who use BitTorrent to download movies. The US Copyright Group, a company owned by intellectual property lawyers, is using a new proprietary technology by German-based Guardaley IT that allows for real-time monitoring of movie downloads on torrents. According to Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer at the firm, the program captures IP addresses based on the time stamp that a download has occurred and then checks against a spreadsheet to make sure the downloading content is the copyright protected film and not a misnamed film or trailer. 'We're creating a revenue stream and monetizing the equivalent of an alternative distribution channel,' says Jeffrey Weaver, another lawyer at the firm."
"The difference between the MPAA's past approach and the new one being offered by the US Copyright Group is that the MPAA took a less targeted approach going after a smaller sampling of infringers in a single suit for multiple films, to send a message. In contrast, the US Copyright Group is using the new monitoring technology to go after tens of thousands of infringers at a time on a contingency basis in hopes of coming up with the right cost-benefit incentive to pursue individual pirates."
This isn't a network sniffing thing. They connect to the swarm just like any other user. Encryption is there to prevent man in the middle sniffing in an attempt to evade ISP throttling. Encryption won't help you here.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
That may be the case, but I'd be willing to bet that group filing the lawsuits will offer defendants a standard settlement option which most defendants will accept. If each of those 50,000 people is being sued for ~$100k and is offered a ~$1k settlement, most will take it since a) they did what they're being accused of and/or b) it's less than a lawyer would cost.
Yeah... You're not going to get to tell everyone in the joint you were there because you 'stole' a copy of Twilight.
It's a civil court where these cases are going. Not criminal. Nobody is going to get 'booked'.
Please remember that from now on. Seriously. Having people think something is crime that can be prosecuted in criminal court when it is demonstrably not so, is not a good thing.
Under the law, I've granted the public the right to use that program without paying me any money, but only under the terms I, as the copyright holder, have allowed. If you violate the license, you've stolen from me.
Nice sleight of hand there. And I'm burning mod points here, so be nice and pay attention, please.
Should you so choose you can - under the law - commence charges, in civil court against the violator. You will have to show the court your standing (your privilege to instantiate proceedings) AND what unlawful or tortuous act was committed, and be specific about it.
Your attorney will tell you, the judge will tell you - and yes I'll point it out as well: Your feelings of being "stolen from" don't matter. What matters is the Law - which says you have a violation of Contract predicated upon Copyright Law, not an act of Larceny.
Your GPL example is also not Larceny.
In other words, guess what: No matter how big a bitch-fit tantrum you throw, no matter how much you wish it to be true, what you believe simply is not true - under the law.