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?
...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.
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
I hope you go to jail.
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.
Don't drop the soap...
On second thought, I don't give a fuck if you drop the soap. I hope you get ass raped for your little illogical lie.
Don't nerds have an additional grudge because he exploits the common meme that video games are just for kids?
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 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!
Gotta love Slashdot. Idiots like this clown running their mouths off about crap they haven't a clue about.
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
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."
The Re5ignation trouble. It
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.
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.
Is it possible for someone to make it look like your IP address is downloading from a torrent when you are not?
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."
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...
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.
something done STATEtS THAT THERE HOBBY. IT WAS ALL
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"
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.
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?
"This practice, which the EFF has been calling extortive and 'mafia-like',"
I think the comparison to the mafia would only work if they went around suing random people. Instead, they're suing people who broke the law. Does the mafia only go after people who break the law?
Trying to win these cases. He has to convince a jury his movies are worth paying for.
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?
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.
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.
"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...
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?)
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 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.
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 was on Ars some two to three weeks ago.
... 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?
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
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.
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?
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...
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.