Slashdot Mirror
Uwe Boll, Other Filmmakers Sue Thousands of Movie Pirates
linzeal writes "Directors whose films have done poorly at the box office are increasingly being solicited by high-powered law firms to file lawsuits with offers of settlement. This practice, which the EFF has been calling extortive and 'mafia-like', has resulted in courts starting to rule in favor of the consumer, and in some cases throwing out the lawsuits. This is all fine and dandy, however, when you are considered the world's worst director and you largely finance films through your own holding company. At that point, the rhetoric and ridicule gets ratcheted up rather quickly."
Are they seriously trying to convince me that someone would want to pirate Uwe Boll's movies?
I'm in favor of these lawsuits, to tell the truth. The more people get sued, the more ridiculous it will seem to the outside observer, and the more support there will be for copyright reform. If only we could have every owner of every piece of music and every movie suing every person who had ever connected to a torrent of that material, I have to think we'd be certain to see the whole thing collapse.
You'd have to sue me to download this guys stuff.
Now we have "You pirated my movie!" trolls.
Can we get back to dealing with real criminals?
None of these people are proven to be pirates. Uwe Boll claims they are. But that doesn't mean you get to report that they are. The headline should be "Uwe Boll, Other Flimmakers Sue Thousands of People".
Slashdot could be sued for this headline.
This is hilarious. It's like these failed directors and musicians are holding us at gun point, forcing us to watch their garbage and pay for it.
"Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
It limited them to 24fps and I think it shows.
These ludicrous lawsuits are already in jeopardy, as the judge has ruled they have to prove a valid legal reason to roll up all these John/Jane Does in one lawsuit. Rightfully so. I have no problem with them suing these people, but trying to roll them up into single lawsuits so that their filing costs and complexity remain low is abuse of the justice system.
Living With a Nerd
Aren't Uwe Boll's films financed by the public in the first place?
Tell me why we shouldn't have on-demand refunds from movie theatres, in order to protect us from bad movies? If I, the person who paid to see the film, thinks it isn't worth the money I paid, then I should get my money back, or at lesat 50%. Should I sue them to get my money back?
I made my choice years ago. Not to watch any of it. But if I was going to, I'd toss a Jolly Roger on my car and drive around yelling YAARRRR! At passing motorists.
Om, nomnomnom...
Sure fire 100% guaranteed way
...to not get sued for pirating movies.
Don't pirate movies.
Actually, you are wrong, I can sue you for just about anything I want, but that doesn't mean the courts are going to rule in my favour, or even have the lawsuit at all, they could just through it away, like they are doing now.
But all in all, there is no way sure fire way to not get sued.
I'll ignore the whole bit about pirating movies and why some people do it, that's a broken record that can be found on about 10% of slashdot articles.
I had not heard of any of this latest batch of lawsuits being thrown out. Where's the link to that story?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Er, they've sued innocents before... I'm sure that's not true in the majority of cases but it does happen.
Sorry, but your expectation rest on the assumption that politicians gives a flying f_ck, and that somehow common sense would prevail in a system where every politician is bought and paid for by special interest groups.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I hereby declare that on July 1st through July 4th we will celebrate the Independence of these United States by having a four day hunting season on trial lawyers. No bag limit! We do need certain rules to ensure fair chase:
1. No hunting within 200 feet of an Ambulance.
2. No standing on a corner yelling "Free Scotch".
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Shill! You're attempting to generate piracy and it shows.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Problem is, it's not. It's only about a 99.9% sure-fire way, give or take. :S
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
There's multiple problems:
1) The software they use to determine who is downloading a movie may not give accurate results. This was particularly true with Kazza Lite. You could ask it for a list of IPs of people on a share and it would return incorrect results. So, maybe your IP got reported incorrectly.
2) Your ISP could give them incorrect information. Perhaps their logs of who had the IP at a given time were incorrect. Let's not pretend like software never fucks up. Perhaps they got tampered with (it is just text files after all). Maybe one of their admins was doing the downloading and falsified the logs to cover his tracks.
3) Your net connection could have been used without your knowledge. Unless you are really serious about wireless security, someone could have used it. Many people run open APs or WEP and that can easily be bypassed. So it is perfectly possible for someone to have used your connection to download.
That is one of the many problems with lawsuits like these. You really can't be sure that the people being sued are the people who did the downloading. So not doing it is NOT good enough to prevent you from getting sued. You could still find yourself hit with a lawsuit. You claim "But I didn't do it!" and they say "Ya right, pay us the extortion money or we take you to court."
From the article I linked to:
"A brief entry in the official court docket lays out the order. "MINUTE ORDER requiring Plaintiff to show cause in writing no later than June 21, 2010 why Doe Defendants 2 through 2000 should not be dismissed for misjoinder under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20," wrote the judge in The Steam Experiment case. The same order was repeated in a separate case targeting 4,577 users alleged to have shared the film Far Cry."
Let's take a look at Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20:
"Persons may join in one action as plaintiffs if:
(A) they assert any right to relief jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences; and
(B) any question of law or fact common to all plaintiffs will arise in the action. "
Unless all of these people were a part of some vast conspiracy to download the same movie from the same source en mass, they can't be joined together in a single lawsuit. Explain how my post is wrong, based on the entry in the court docket and Procedure 20.
Living With a Nerd
Let's play "who's a bigger threat to society"
On the one hand, we have internet pirates. They click buttons in the privacy of their own homes, and watch movies for free.
On the other hand, we have you, who seems to think getting raped in the ass is a just consequence for copying bits.
So, America. Who would you feel safer living next to?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...to not get sued for pirating movies.
Don't pirate movies.
Also a sure fire 100% guaranteed way to get modded into oblivion I'm sure, but whatever. I just have to ask though: Who the fuck is pirating a Uwe Boll movie? You deserve to get sued morons.
Actually, you're going to (or should) get modded down because this is flamebait. "If you don't want to get sued for doing X, don't do X" is an extremely shallow, closed-minded and unintelligent oversimplification that assumes people should be able to be sued for doing X in the first place.
Also a sure fire 100% guaranteed way to get modded into oblivion
And you'd deserve it because it is false.
But... the future refused to change.
He's preparing for an impending class-action lawsuit by film-goers. I know the first time I saw a Uwe Boll "film" I was told I paid to see a movie and not the disastrous pile of shit that it was.
Well yeah, but if it's illegal and you do it, you can be sued. Talking about whether it should be on /. is a waste of time.
Actually, given the number of people who have been sued, the well-known cases of them suing innocents, and the number of people likely to be downloading movies...
I'd say you are just about as likely to be sued if you pirate as if you don't. The average chance of being sued is near-zero, really, and the chances of them making an error are high enough that the difference between the two likelihoods is statistical noise.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
On the other hand, it's a valid point.
The law is pretty clear on whether copyright violation is legal or not.
Using the "I'm not likely to be one of the people they choose to pursue action against" strategy seems, as time goes on, to be a less-than-optimal one.
But since we're commenting on flamebait mods... the whole article is flamebait for slashdot. The only reason this is newsworthy is because it includes Uwe Boll, make of some of the most nerd-despised movies on the planet. It's no longer news when a media rights holder pursues action against infringers -- the only reason this article made the main page is so we can flame (1) entities that pursue enforcement of their IP rights and (2) that director of tripe, Uwe Boll.
Seriously, it's hard to complain about flamebait posts when that's the very nature of the article.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
People that pirated Uwe Boll movies are now suing to get the 90 minutes of their life back as well as pain and suffering. If the countersuits get lumped together it's believed the pain and suffering for Uwe Boll movies could bankrupt Hollywood.
This is all fine and dandy, however, when you are considered the world's worst director and you largely finance films through your own holding company.
And people said I was dumb, but I proved them!
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
Are they seriously trying to convince me that someone would want to pirate Uwe Boll's movies?
I sure as Hell wouldn't *PAY* for a copy...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Shouldn't Boll be PAYING people to download his films? What Ed Wood have done?
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Wrong.
Not doing something doesn't stop you from getting accused of doing it, and a lawsuit is, after all, just a very formal accusation.
Specifically relevant to copyright and P2P, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the history of Media Sentry and Media Defender.
Wrong.
If it is illegal, you can be sued for doing it, whether or not you actually have done it.
A major purpose of the trial -- which comes after you have been sued -- is to determine whether or not you did what you were sued for doing. If there was away to assure you were guilty before you were sued, we wouldn't need trials.
Is it possible for someone to make it look like your IP address is downloading from a torrent when you are not?
What does people joining together as plaintiffs (Procedure 20) have to do with joining defendants together in court motions?
Your supporting quote is not relevant, whether or not your point is correct.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
While you may or may not be correct in your earlier post, the parent to this post uses the wrong section of Procedure 20. What you should have quoted is:
Seems quite likely that part B may come into play for these type of motions.
:)
Of course, IANAL, etc, but if you're going to ask someone to refute your point given a quoted piece of text -- may be a good idea to cite the relevant material
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
From Uwe Boll's wikipedia entry (this is priceless): "Another reviewer wrote that Alone in the Dark was "so poorly built, so horribly acted and so sloppily stitched together that it's not even at the straight-to-DVD level."[16] For example, in one scene a character who was "killed" can visibly be seen getting up as the actor prematurely made the move to get off the set."
GAH!
Thanks for pointing that out. here is the relevant portion, from the same link:
Persons -- as well as a vessel, cargo, or other property subject to admiralty process in rem -- may be joined in one action as defendants if:
(A) any right to relief is asserted against them jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences; and
(B) any question of law or fact common to all defendants will arise in the action.
Living With a Nerd
I disagree. I had never heard of Uwe Boll until he started his lawsuit campaign. The reason this issue gets under my skin is the egregious abuse of copyright and the court system, not because of the person doing it.
Saying that "it's no longer news when a media rights holder pursues action against infringers" is dangerous- do you want such actions to become the accepted norm?
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
100% sure fire way of not getting sued for pirating movies...
move to Canada. Or most European countries. or other places where corporations don't control the government nearly as much.
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
Given the "evidence" amounts to text files and screenshots collected by the plaintiff, you're insane if you think that it has any bearing on reality.
Hey, look, it seems 0.0.0.0 is downloading a movie!
Great Intellect...
I thought suing was a civil case. If something is illegal, isn't that a criminal case? Different situation - in a criminal case the plaintiff is a government (The State of California, or whatever), whereas in a civil case the plaintiff is the entity doing the suing.
For a country as litigious as the US, I'm surprised you got this wrong :-) Don't they cover basic law in kindergarten?
It doesn't bother me one way or the other. I don't knowingly violate copyright. If copyright law gets changed, then my actions may change. Until then, I buy the media I choose to consume, and if I don't think the price is right -- I do without.
The key reason the pursuit of action against violators is not newsworthy is that we know it happens frequently. This is nothing new. What would be more newsworthy are articles about how enforcement is changing, or articles about how the law itself is changing. Yet another copyright holder suing due to infringement just isn't news anymore.
One other note:
You must be new here :) . Luckily for us, since Germany (and other countries) closed the tax loophole investors in his films were taking advantage of, he hasn't been getting a lot of work. The tax loophole is what made his bombs profitable despite their dismal ratings.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
What I meant was, is it possible for someone to write some sort of program that constantly makes it look like a bunch of people are torrenting a particular file when they are not. They could then put in the IP addresses of a bunch of "enemies" in the hopes that they get caught. Is that possible?
Maybe Ewe should take another route, one that was quite successful the last time he did it.
"I think he's a jerk. This might be PR but I don't want to keep getting punched in the head." Jeff Sneider, 2006
If they don't agree with you, beat the shit out of them.
On the other hand, it's a valid point.
No. In order to be a valid point, it must be true, and the idea that "if you don't do it you won't get caught" has been proven false. Specifically, innocence is no guarantee that you won't get sued.
got a torrent?
Simple answer is, it depends.
IP spoofing is not impossible, but is prohibitively difficult (nigh impossible) on the internet as a whole. It would be possible to do it on smaller networks, however. ISP-level is possible, and I would be surprised if there have not been cases of people tricking ISP hardware into thinking they were someone else. There is quite a lot an "unlocked" modem can do, which is why ISPs will cut your service if they find out you're using one.
So yes, it is possible. However, the number of people sued is tiny compared to the number of people who downloaded the movies. It would not be a good way to get back at people you dislike, since more likely than not it would go totally unnoticed, and it takes an extreme effort on your part.
Now, this is Uwe Boll, so it is quite possible that more people are being sued than actually downloaded the movies. I cannot fathom more than a few hundred people being so desperate for entertainment that they would break the law to see Boll's... erm... masterpieces.
Great Intellect...
Wake me up when they start claiming that 127.0.0.1 is doing the downloading.
"The more I think about it old Bill was right, lets kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight."
The Eagles from "Get over it"
I had never heard of Uwe Boll until he started his lawsuit campaign.
Exactly :-)
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
On the one hand, we have people who copy data without paying the creator. They have a small impact on the creators' financial incentive to create, and potentially reduce the cultural output.
On the other hand, we have Uwe Boll, who produces films that are so mind shatteringly bad that people need weeks of expensive therapy after watching them, taking money away from competent film makers and causing an entire generation to lose respect for the cinematic medium.
Finally, we have people who pirate Uwe Boll movies, intentionally spreading them to a large unsuspecting population.
People in category one are selfish. The person in category two is unfortunate. The people in category three are dangerous sociopaths.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes, kind of. The torrent app will connect to the tracker (usually via UDP) and send it's IP address. There is an (optional) field in the message your computer sends to the tracker that may contain an IP address. It's possible that if you enter your enemy's IP address there, that it might work on some trackers. If not, you could just spoof the packet's source address to whatever you wanted.
So you could, yes, but there are better ways to get revenge.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
D'oh!
Corrected link here:
http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/
I buy the media I choose to consume, and if I don't think the price is right -- I do without.
I applaud you. Sadly, we appear to be a dying breed. I hear far too many cries and justifications for consuming without paying.
It doesn't bother me one way or the other. I don't knowingly violate copyright. If copyright law gets changed, then my actions may change. Until then, I buy the media I choose to consume, and if I don't think the price is right -- I do without.
Wow, someone with a grown-up attitude on this topic, posting on /. Thank you.
Sure fire 100% guaranteed way to not get sued for pirating movies.
Don't pirate movies.
Hhhm, tell that to the printer at UW that got literally hundreds of DMCA notices.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I don't think it's masochism. Sometimes I just want to watch a laughably bad movie. I don't know why, I just do. When I was a kid, I used to love those Saturday afternoon kung fu movies on our local independent station. I didn't just go to see Battlefield Earth, I actually paid good money to see it in a theater. Not even as a matinee. To this day, I'll often watch whatever crapbomb is on Syfy on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. If you think Uwe Boll is bad, try watching Atomic Twister sometime.
I dunno, it's just fun to sit there and watch a movie thinking, "Whoa, that's three miles past bad." It's also fun to talk about them with my friends. "Oh yeah? You thought that was bad? Let me tell you what I saw last Saturday!"
By the way, I don't know why you lumped Mortal Kombat with those types of movies. Did it win an Oscar? Hell no, but it was still actually kind of neat and exciting to watch. It actually had some redeeming qualities to it. The fight scene with Subzero was awesome. I thought Linden Ashby's (Johnny Cage) fight with Goro was cool, too. The start of it was hilarious. Anyway, there's a difference between mindless fun action and just plain bad. It was Mortal Kombat. What exactly were you expecting?
Strictly speaking, this doesn't mean these lawsuits won't affect you.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
That was a pretty good summary of the civil court system. :) But you left out the part that you (the plaintiff) may still will in court on an unjustified lawsuit. A lot of it has to do with how good the lawyers are for both sides. If there is a jury involved, it's all showmanship. Whoever puts on the best show wins.
Plaintiff with a big budget versus defendant who can barely afford to keep his Internet connection, I'd wager on the plaintiff.
The only sure way not to get sued is to not be on record anywhere, and never have contact of any sort with anyone. If no one knows who you are, and no one finds out about you, then you're almost safe. That is becoming harder and harder to do though.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
"I've got mine, screw you Jack" is a grown-up attitude?
We need a culling program for sociopaths, and we need it now.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Criminal courts punish people for committing crimes.
Civil courts allow damages to be applied to the victims.
Something can be against the law (i.e., illegal), but not be a criminal violation. Then it's handled in civil court.
Sometimes you can win in one, and lose in the other. Consider the OJ Simpson case. He was found innocent on the criminal charges. He lost in civil court though. I'm not arguing if he did or didn't commit the crime, I'm only commenting on the way it's handled in the legal system.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Trying to win these cases. He has to convince a jury his movies are worth paying for.
Someone who isn't a fucking loser that sits around downloading movies all day. Now go back to masturbating little man, the best part of you ran down the crack of your mother's hairy ass.
Copyright infringement isn't theft. You know that, and you violently agree with it. You just wish you didn't.
I have abandoned movies and TV as a source of entertainment anyway. I have better things to do with 2 hours of my life. Besides, I sit in front of monitors all day, why would I want to sit in front of stupid programming with mandatory ads on another monitor anyway?
I built a race car instead. Now I have no end of things to do with my time and money. Plus the fun of DIY engineering, and the reward of getting to race against others.
So why again did I want to sit in front of a TV, or watch their ridiculous crap?
You think that's my attitude? You're far from accurate.
Since you seem to be a little dense, let me explain my position in full:
In a market-based system, actors in the system make choices that depend on information.
If I were to pirate an album, or a movie, the information I'm giving to the rights holder of that IP is that I want their product, but I'm not going to pay for it because I can get it for free. Their options are then to compete on price (by giving it away for free or nearly free, a losing proposition for them) or to lean on government to enforce and/or change the law re: copyright infringement.
Pirating goods actually makes copyright law *worse*. It is the justification media companies use to get legislatures to pass laws that make punishments for copyright violation harsher. It is a justification media companies use to overprice their goods for people who purchase the goods legally. It is the justification used to lean on governments to sign ridiculous over-the-top IP treaties.
My attitude has nothing to do with "I've got mine, screw you Jack". I honestly cannot comprehend how you would read that attitude from my post.
I think our copyright laws are ridiculous -- not in principle, in my case, but in terms of the punishments for violating them, and in the duration of the copyrights. I would like it very much if the laws changed to make them more reasonable. But I'm convinced that piracy on my part would contribute to making things worse for me, worse for you, worse for everyone.
"I've got mine, screw you Jack" applies much more to the people who pirate goods, that justify the media companies in getting laws and treaties passed that firther restrict *my* ability to enjoy media. The selfish asses who pirate everything under the sun because it's free to them are the ones who have the selfish attitude you wrongly assign to me.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
And that is why it is such a problem. Given that they can show up with some pretty shoddy evidence and your only way to defend yourself is to mount a defense more expensive than paying their extortion fee, you more or less have to pay the fee even if you are innocent.
The idea that you can be sued, successfully, for six figures for supposedly downloading a movie on very weak evidence is a problem. More or less there is no reason for them to try and make sure the suits are legit since people are forced to settle or have their lives ruined.
If this was something like a civil traffic ticket, where you are being charged a hundred bucks and you can defend yourself without drastically increasing the amount, I'd be ok with it. You don't need a massive amount of evidence in that case. However here people are being sued for many orders of magnitude over the actual value of the product on weak evidence, and have to settle for thousands, even if they are innocent.
You could literally shoplift the same movie, a crime which causes actual harm, and be given better representation and face far less sanctions if found guilty. A first offense shoplifting charge here for low values of merchandise will get you a fine of $250 plus the value of the merchandise and probation. That is for a crime where actual harm is caused (the store loses the value of the item you stole) not one with just theoretical harm (in a download, they theoretically lost a sale, but in many cases actually did not).
Lower the fine to a level reasonable with the nature of the crime (victimless crimes like speeding or jaywalking) and allow people to defend themselves in a civil court like traffic court and I'm ok with it. Keep lawsuits in the 6 figure range, and I cannot support something on so flimsy an evidence.
But all in all, there is no way sure fire way to not get sued.
Sure there is! Migrating to Latin America, which is too busy engulfed in 3rd-World poverty to even have a system where commoners know what a lawsuit means. Companies cannot suck money out of citizens, let alone random trolls worth too much time in their hands normally fostered in free 1st World environments. Things like income taxes, forced jury duty, "innocent until proven guilty," patent fights and Common Law do not exist. There are thousands of downsides and physical dangers, but you don't worry about disclaimers, EULA's or having legal copies of software.
LatAm is like the Wild Wild land of China, which you never hear this happening to either. I find myself educating fellow immigrants. The lawsuits, lawyer fees starting at thousands of dollars, crazy payout demands dictated by judges and REAL prison get mentioned when I decline to pirate for them over my internet connection. Old and young people alike think it's a right to own other people's hard work (recent IP) and cash [as legally earned through risky gambles of stocks trade price fluctuation, lottery payouts, bank interest rates] but their own must be kept singularly hidden from the hippie sharing pool.
Please cite your sources, you insensitive clod.
Yeah, I am the same. I just copy movies from work colleagues.
There is an AND at the end of clause A, so that probably means that both A AND B have to be true for this rule to be applicable. It's like Prolog, but in English. I shall call it... PROBOL.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
rootkit necessary.
I would achieve this kind of rootkit how AOL has done it: build some fancy botnet software that gives optimized internet service or a pre-collection of tools that the user doesn't need to spend a thousand of hours otherwise searching and downloading. Then when that CD is inserted, it installs some passive controls that works a HTTP proxy server onto the network, collect localhost and network participant information for what region this host might be located, then wait for a discreet way to makeway to the master botnet service to await the commands. In the meantime, this intelligent passive botnet could participate in some random website viewing to give any NSA eavesropping a reliable profile for the recent behaviors of the end-user...obviously a fetish ever since something something happened...
AOL called their botnet Free Dialup, if I remember correctly. We'll call ours Slashdot: nothing more than a mass of geek-speak encrypted spambots concealing their underly encryption.
When the botnet receives their orders, they swarm data from The Pirate Bay, and the botnet master retrieves the completed work.
You can get sued in Canada for pirating movies (the blank media levy only applies to audio works).
Yes, but if you have never pirated a movie, the odds of them suing you is lowered to at least 50/50.
Now, if you were dead or were a network printer or didn't own a computer , it might be 75% but if you are alive, own a computer, and never ever download anything your odds of being sued are quite low- at least not above 50%.
---
seriously... and I've been saying this a while. It's ILLEGAL and you can get sued. Do it because you think it's moral but never forget it is illegal or you'll be that stupid dude calling the cops because someone vandalized his pot farm.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
yes, what it means is that the people would have to be jointly liable such as a case where a subcontractor negligently left a work area unprotected and someone got hurt, the general contractor and the property owner are responsible for that as well so they can be sued together, you cannot sue 2000 people and join them just because you are suing them for the same thing
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Their options are then to compete on price (by giving it away for free or nearly free, a losing proposition for them) or to lean on government to enforce and/or change the law re: copyright infringement.
This is not true. There are multiple vectors that the companies can take. You have taken two of the vectors and have claimed that these are the only vectors possible. Examples of other vectors include
- Selling higher quality products with more features. Example: Blu-Ray. The digital version of a blu-ray disc is so incredibly large that most people will not download it (8GB, fuck that!)... some people truly appreciate the higher 1080p quality of blu-ray, esp. for sci-fi movies (I just bought myself the Matrix collection last week... fucking awesome in blu-ray)!
- Sell Collections of products that would be difficult to download. Example: TV shows. Sell the entire collection of Lost/House/etc in one boxed set. Make it easy for people to get and easy to store.
- Sell Physical items along with the digital content. Example: Video Games Maps & Game guides. Rather than selling those game guys separately, sell the game guides along with the game. Example 2: Music - Sell the tab to the guitar, or sell the music on vinyl. include a rare book etc (see of NIN sold their last couple of albums).
There are lots of different ways the music/movie/book industry can combat piracy w/o having to sue their customers.
"EFF, Public Citizen, and the Washington chapter of the American Civil Liberties union is intended to support Time Warner in the case."
There's a list of people I never expected to see on the same side of a court case...
The issue here is not about whether downloading movies should is illegal. The issue is that the plaintiffs cannot provide any tangible evidence that a movie was actually downloaded by the person they are accusing, because they have no control nor dominion over any of the computers and networks involved in the transaction.
They get logs from an ISP which they do not own nor manage, produced by software written by a third party, yielding IP addresses allegedly caught transmitting "illegal bits".
The whole enchilada is circumstantial evidence to the Nth degree because every step of the evidence collection is flagged with a "maybe". Maybe the ISP's logs were tampered (or redacted), maybe the software throws false positives (hint: it does), maybe you can't track an IP address to a specific person, maybe 20% of all computers are infected with malware that proxies these illegal bits via unsuspecting users, maybe those zeroes and ones actually make up a picture of my scrotum that just happens to look like Alone In The Dark 1 and 2.
There is a very plain reason why the film companies settle with the defendants: they know full well that their court game is weak, and the threat of financial intimidation is far more chilling than a fair fight in front of a jury of "small people" who just might sympathize with the defendant. The MPAA knows this far too well, and are careful to steer clear of such risky assaults. After all, if they could prove your guilt without question, they wouldn't need a trial.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
They get B, but totally fail on A.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
So, does this mean that:
1) All defendants need to be in court at once?
and
2) All of the defendants can pool their money for one lawyer?
(this should.. even the odds?)
The only DMCA notices I've gotten were for things I never downloaded or uploaded.
For example, a Prince of Persia widescreen crack. After examining the files the torrent listed, I deleted it and played it on my older PC with its 4:3 monitor.
Sure enough, a month later, I got one of those notices. Game piracy... haha!
It's especially funny, because I bought two retail copies, because I thought so much of the game. This whole industry is clueless.
It's extortion, that's what is mafia-like.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
They're suing people who they claim broke the law. I am mystified by the number of people who just automatically assume that accused = guilty, without applying even a smidgen of critical thought to the matter.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
You have proof of this, in order to even accuse someone of breaking a law you need hard evidence beyond reasonable doubt. Also they need to break an actual law, the Mafia-like organisation is not suing for punishment, they are suing for compensation.
Which is pretty much what they are doing, pay us or we'll sue you into oblivion (CLUE, this is the dictionary definition of extortion). Also they are abusing the US court systems by lumping thousands of individuals into a single case in order to lower their costs but demanding individual compensation from the defendants. Hopefully a US judge with a clue will smack this down.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That is like saying it is the best porn musical, which sadly never made it past the late 1970's when the nation collectively ran out of the good drugs and had to start using blow.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I, on the other hand, hear far too many cries and justifications (from copyright holders) for being paid without repeatedly producing.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
I am not embarrassed at all regarding Rampage. I was pleasantly surprised and I sincerely think that anybody interested in a study of the origins of violence should give it a try.
Any citizen who has experienced violence first hand (and not just through the media) will find the scenario quite realistic and an objective profile of a non-ideology, non-politics driven unstable zero-the-hero who flips out and becomes obsessed with cleaning up the mess.
The main character is played by an inexplicably good actor. Maybe he draws his performance by externalising the little Zorro or Superman hiding inside all of us. His parents are the real horror. If we were also offered a peek at his school life, the portrayal would have been complete.
Finally, the cinematography is not that bad. I've seen much worse van Damme and Seagull films.
I think the Mafia should be offended at the comparison, and give the *AA, Boll, et. al. a good bitch-slapping. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I disagree. I had never heard of Uwe Boll until he started his lawsuit campaign.
Sure you have. You know him under the more commonly used phrase: "That crap on the SyFy channel."
It doesn't bother me one way or the other. I don't knowingly violate copyright.
Maybe you don't. A lot of people unkowingly violate copyright though. It all depends on what country you live in ofcourse.
For example; only a few websites actually tells you what license their content is under. When visiting a website, how do you know that you haven't violated any copyright law?
In a lot of cases, the only real way to get a law changed is to ignore it on a very wide scale. Even then it takes a lot of time, but it does work-right now, the marijuana laws are being changed, not on the principle that it's more against the public interest to outlaw marijuana than to legalize and regulate it (though a strong case may be made that this is true), but because it's impossible to realistically do so.
I think the same may be true for copyright. Only the "industries" who produce imaginary property (commonly known as IP) can buy Congresspeople to pretend that shit they make up is not only real but is "property" of some kind. Copyright etc. was never intended as a property right, at least not in the US-the Constitution states not only that it may be taken away after a specified time period, but that it must be. Contrast that with its treatment of real property, where it may never be taken away without just compensation. Its purpose was also clearly specified-"To promote the progress of Science and the Useful Arts." Not to pay anyone, not to protect or establish a property right, not to advance anyone's private interest. Only to advance a public interest-promotion of science and art. If science and art would be best served with no copyright or patent law, this clause would not only allow but mandate that these laws be repealed at once.
I'm not sure that's true. I'd support a genuinely limited time (no longer than 10 years), commercial-use-only copyright, in the interest of said promotion of science and art. On the other hand, suing people for making a remix of a song or movie scene does not advance science or art, it diminishes it. Copyright terms so long that they exceed a normal lifespan do not promote science and art, but diminish it. Ridiculous scope of patentability, from software to genes, does not advance science and art, it diminishes it.
And at this point, no one's around to throw as many bribes, erm, excuse me, "free speech contributions" at reducing the excesses of these laws as at making them worse. The only real chance at reform is to make them untenable and unenforceable, and the only way I can see to do that is to ignore them. By all means, be smart about it-use a VPN, use encryption, use smaller trackers. But the only way I'll voluntarily comply with copyright law is when it comes within reason. I already do that where individuals choose to exercise reasonable terms-I'm happy to pay for music at Magnatune or donate to open source projects. For anything else, you betcha I'll download it, and not feel a single twinge of guilt. If you're going to attempt ridiculous terms and artificial scarcity, I don't feel in the slightest bad about subverting you. Quite, in fact, the opposite.
And to answer an argument so common it's nearly inevitable anymore, such a universe may mean that some business models go obsolete. But if that's the case, they already are obsolete, and we're just propping them up with laws pretending they're not. C'est la vie, so to speak-business models go obsolete all the time. We shouldn't force everyone to pretend the world works in a way it no longer does to prop up an outdated model, we should find new ones that work with the new technology and reality. If that means the end of certain video games, or Hollywood movies, or what have you, well, somehow, the human race survived without those for some time. And it's not like our desire for such things will go away-someone will find a workable way to do them, whether that's raising funds in advance, doing them collaboratively, or what have you, and those who are aficionados will likely pay or participate. If not, they die out, and so their time came like so many things before them.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
The real news (and injustice) in TFA is this:
His production company, Boll KG, exploits a German tax loophole, so even when he films an English-language movie in Canada ... his financiers get a fat write-off from the German government.
So German taxpayers are funding Uwe Boll's movies? Shouldn't we petition Germany to stop that crime against humanity?
This bullshit argument that copyright infringement isn't theft is just a matter of semantics and you know it. Now I hope that they prove it to you in a very real way with fines that will put a real boot to your ass. I'm sick of you little illogical bitches trying to use this unrealistic argument as a way to cover yourself for being little thieves.
I'll explain it to you using small words so you can understand.
If I come over to your house and take a picture of a book you wrote, that is called "copyright infringement".
If I come over to your house, and take the actual book, that is called "theft".
In one situation I made a copy I shouldn't have made, and you still have your original. In the other, I just took the original, leaving you with nothing.
And just for the record, I don't download music, movies, or games, whether I have a legitimate right to do so or not. Just not my thing.
This was on Ars some two to three weeks ago.
Tell that to the people who were sued when they didn't even OWN a computer.
... It can be a multiplayer game.
Send them pics of their kids playing, it will get the message across.
If it's not enough, ambush them on the way home and have a friendly chat. Bring a dozen pals. It's so easy for them to threaten people by mail, but being on the wrong side of a dozen mean guys willing and able to tear them apart is another thing entirely. If they persist, a good beating will set things straight. Break a bone or two, so they will know what the price of playing rough with the wrong crowd is.
And in the end, there's the old-fashioned practice of setting their offices on fire. If someone's inside, too bad for them.
You want to play Padrino, you've got to know there's more than one famiglia in town. Capisce?
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
If I did the copying, I created the data. So why should I pay someone else for my work?
You're missing the point: Not knowingly violating copyright does not protect you from getting sued. The types of evidence used in these trials does not protect you from losing the case.
DHCP log files are not controlled documents. They can be altered without any way to trace this alteration. But it will be presented as evidence. And you can't request an audit of the file to ensure it is as accurate now as it was at the time of recording.
A lot of it has to do with how good the lawyers are for both sides. If there is a jury involved, it's all showmanship. Whoever puts on the best show wins.
There is modern belief that a jury is easier to trick with showmanship or be bribed than a judge is to demonstrate prejudice or be bribed. But it's a lot easier to bribe a single well-known person than 12 unrelated people, and it's a lot more likely that a judge will have particular character traits which every member of a jury will not. This is why we have juries.
IOW, the jury is a slice of society; the judge is an element of one part of society. I understand that the US corrupts jury randomness by allowing lawyers way too much input into jury selection but this isn't an inherent problem with the jury system. The jurors I sat with when I was on a jury were far from stupid - indeed, part of our discussion was on the relative showmanship of the two lawyers and identifying where there were attempts to appeal to prejudice.
It is said that a jury comprises 12 men too stupid to get out of jury duty. And the world comprises 6 billion schmucks too stupid to jump off a cliff, right?
Yeah, you just get a printed copy oft the ISP's log and tippex over the IP address at the relevant entry, then write in your victim's. Simples.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
A 14 year old with a paper round probably makes more money than Uwe Bolls movies. He'll want some of that action! *g*
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Sadly, that state of affairs won't probably last long. French HADOPI is a sign of things to come.
I don't download pirated films either. But consider, under current US copyright law if you make a mixed CD of songs for a friend it's illegal. If you play them a 2 minute clip from the latest NFL game it's illegal. If you rip a DVD to your hard drive so you can watch different sections without navigating through the previews and disclaimers first, it's illegal. (I don't pirate movies. I do rip my kids' DVDs to my hard drive and then re-burn them to another DVD so I don't have to click through 15 minutes of junk just to show them Over the Hedge. I can just put the DVD into the player and it starts playing immediately.)
And in this particular case, for downloading one film each defendant is expected to pay a settlement fee of $1500. That's not just punishment, that's not fair compensation for damages. That's a movie studio exploiting unfair laws to make a profit. When you can pay a $4000 speeding ticket and get two weeks in prison for shoplifting a pack of gum, I'll consider a $1500 penalty for pirating one film a fair price. Until then, this is a corruption of the legal system.
Um, what well-known cases?
This isn't the RIAA - this is a different group. They have no track record yet - we don't actually know if they accidentally fingered a bunch of innocent people, or if they were properly diligent and only sued people who were actually pirating the movies.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
But how do we know that this is an abuse of copyright and the court system?
This is one of the problems - there's a knee-jerk reaction on Slashdot (in part because there are a lot of pirates here who don't like anything getting in the way of their free swag, and in part because the RIAA spent years abusing the letter and spirit of copyright law) anytime somebody mentions a copyright lawsuit of this nature. But, this is a new organization, and these are brand-new lawsuits. We honestly don't know who has been sued yet, what the level of diligence was on IDing them, how many are false positives, and how those false positives will be treated.
Until we have that information - and it will be some time before we have it - we have no way of knowing if this is just honest and warranted protection of IP rights, or an RIAA-style extortion campaign.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Mr. Boll, how about offering each alleged pirate the option of meeting you in the ring, if they win they pay nothing, and are cleared of pirating your movie. If they lose they pay double.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Tell that to people the RIAA sued but yet had never heard of Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, etc.
Blame it on dynamic IPs, unsecured wifi, or even malfeasance on part of the RIAA and MPAA but not downloading does not protect you from being sued. Heck, even running tor might possibly be a liability, because you then become part of the distribution network.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I'm with you guys...and won't be posting this as an AC. But then again I've been flamed before for pointing out how Slashdotters seem to have an uncanny ability to justify pirating media ( which I equate with theft...although the folks around here have somehow come up with some weird pseudo-philosophical argument about how it is not theft ).
Those products have a limited market.
Just as easy to pirate
Just as easy to pirate. Game guides or tabulatures can be scanned.
Here's the thing about media products: no matter what, it's cheaper to buy pirated goods. When you start talking about niche-market products, then we're talking about products that make little difference to the bottom line for the megacorps which source most of our media.
I understand that content sellers can try to differentiate their product from that offered by pirates. But I fail to see how the things they use to differentiate their product won't eventually be pirated just as easily. Sure, Blu-Ray (at 8 GB) seems like too big a file to pirate... but in ten years will we feel the same way? What about people who use sneakernet for piracy (like on college campuses)? 8 GB is a small fraction of a sub-$100 USB drive. Sure, sneakernet can't be captured by data aggregating totals from torrent trackers... but you can bet that the media industries include some kind of estimation in their rationale.
Media is going full-digital. Media sellers are shifting (dragged kicking and screaming, really) to digital distribution. With digital distribution, how exactly can they differentiate their product from that offered by piracy?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
My guess is there's actually a positive correlation between pirate activity and a movie's gross revenues. These guys are trying to suggest the opposite.
Think about it. What are you more likely to find on a torrent site? Avatar or BloodRayne? Titanic or some indie art-house film?
I've been through a few jury selections. A long time ago, for a short while, I was trained in law enforcement. During jury selection, it ends up coming up. The question I'm usually asked after I say "yes" to the LEO question was "do you think you know the law better than anyone else because you were involved in law enforcement"? I always answer "no". Every time, the defense has decided against keeping me on the jury because I may be more aware of some of the laws, and I may pay more attention to relevant details. Unfortunately, I can't say that I've never been on a jury to make a decision.
It's unfortunate, I would like to be one who helped make sure the laws were enforced properly, protecting the innocent, and ensuring the guilty are convicted appropriately. That's why I got into law enforcement. Unfortunately, I learned quickly that it wasn't what the job was all about, so I didn't pursue it. Protecting people doesn't equal being an agent of the government to make more money for them (i.e., writing BS traffic tickets).
I've done IT work for over a decade. The truth is in the logs, and people rarely try to shoot at me. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Seriously, lets get a class action lawsuit against uwe boll for making such crappy movies. his punishment should be, at the very least, never allowed to make movies/tv/internet shows again. I'm sure we can think of some other fitting punishments.
Be seeing you...
Piracy is to theft as copyrighted works are to property.
In order for one to be true, the other must be true.
If copyrighted works and physical objects are the same, either:
a) Copyright must be perpetual and last forever
b) Your house must eventually become the property of the public (thanks to whichever Slashdotter has this in his sig).
Which do you prefer? Of course, option c is to retract the assertion that piracy is theft.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
I hate Uwe Boll for what he did with Postal. That could have been the best movie ever made.
I think that after watching Uwe's movies, people deserve their money back. Way to go Uwe! Way to push away what (little) amount of fans you had.