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."
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.
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!?
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."
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!
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
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".'
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?
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
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?
Illegal? Few people contest that copyright infringement is against the law. But immoral? Morality is subjective. Piracy isn't automatically immoral simply because you say it is, basing your assertion on your beliefs about copyright law. Simply because noncommercial copyright infringement is illegal does not automatically make it wrong, and if you believe otherwise, there is no way to have a rational argument with you.
Before people choose sides in the War on Piracy, they ought to be required to have a basic understanding of copyright law. This lets them have at least a slight grasp on the issue instead of just mindlessly yammering about something they don't understand. And I would personally add that those evil pirates are much harder to demonize when you understand what a clusterfuck modern copyright law is and how it is abused by large corporations.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
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.