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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."
If you expect to spend $10 on a girlfriend, it's no wonder you have no girlfriend.
...except no one is "stealing" anything.
That is just lying on your part as an attempt to create a bit of melodrama.
Sure they're stealing. They are taking something that is not theirs without paying for it. That's stealing, plain and simple. You may not like to look at it that way because they don't "take" anything that is a "physical" item, but it's stealing nonetheless. You are the one lying as an attempt to create justification for stealing.
As far as the 'disproportionate "punishments"', they are just out of their minds. Only in their wettest dreams are their products worth a fraction of the fines associated to downloading them.
A customer in the past justifies pirating in the future? By that definition you'd pay once, and get to pirate for life.
Most of the things in life are not free. If the price for something is higher than you're willing or able to pay for it then you just don't get to have it - unless you get it as a gift or you steal it. That's just the way the world works. Wanting it, but not wanting it bad enough to pay the price for it, doesn't mean it's OK to just take it.
We all can't have everything we want. Taking something because we want it, but don't want to pay for it, isn't right. Is that really such a hard concept to grasp?
Like the health insurance industry?
I'm sorry to see you were modded as "Insightful." Let me explain this in terms you can (hopefully) understand: "stealing" is the act of depriving someone of the economic value of a thing. Note that the "thing" doesn't have to be a physical object. See that link in my sig? It's the home page for a program I license under the Artistic License. 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. What would you think about people taking code licensed under the GPL and incorporating it into a commercial, closed-source program? That would be stealing, too.
In other words, guess what: rights work both ways.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
While you bitch about you being unhappy if someone stole your work, you fail to bitch about the very people around you stealing your life and livelihood away.
I think your priorities are fucked, pal.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I didn't say it isn't copyright infringement. I said it's stealing. Taking something you don't have any rights to is stealing, regardless of whether it's a physical object, source code, a movie, or a song. Are you more interested in justifying stealing via quibbles over legal terminology, or are you interested in stating your opinion on whether it's right or wrong to do such a thing? Would you be okay with someone lifting GPL licensed code, changing it for their own purposes, and then selling the code without disclosing the source? If so, you support stealing the work of others.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Your entire response is thinly veiled justification, albeit in terms of attempting to marginalize those who would speak up for their rights. It's both laughable and sad, and honestly not worth wasting the time to compose a full reply to.
I certainly hope you're never in the position of having to defend the rights to your own creations against those who would attempt to minimize their economic value. I'll add one note in closing: your definition of "compensated for your labor" (something vaguely assumed to be the satisfaction of writing it or a one-time payment) is most assuredly not the limit of compensation possible under the GPL, something you should ponder for awhile until you bloody well "get it."
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Rights are something you are born with. Don't confuse the word copyright with the limited privs that it grants.
The owners and the only ones with rights with regard to IP are The People. Tens of millions of The People engage in filesharing, thus informing you that the law isn't valid.
If the courts didn't see fit to lie to juries about their obligation and right to nullify unjust application of the law this distinction might be more clear to you.
You're an idiot. I'm not arguing the definition of copyright infringement. Like so many others, you're ignoring the fact that taking the work of others is wrong. Now, be nice and pay attention to what I actually wrote. Thanks for burning the mod points; the community is better of without the influence of someone who can't be bothered to read.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I wasn't talking about the rule of law in the first place. Idiot. Oh, you still haven't addressed my original point regarding taking open source code and using it against the license.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Have fun pirating something that's already free. You've just won an Idiot Award.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Honestly, I don't give half a fuck about the copyright holder. If they're not willing to adapt to changes in technology by themselves, I'm willing to grab them by their wallets and drag them to the internet.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Comment removed based on user account deletion