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Judge Ends Massive Porn Lawsuit
eldavojohn writes "A recent offensive of porn producers using copyright law against many anonymous P2P users has been terminated by a West Virginian judge. Initially, Ken Ford of Adult Copyright Company planned out nine lawsuits against some 22,000 file sharers, starting with 7,000-person and 9,000-person suits in the first wave. Unimpressed, the judge reduced everything down to one lawsuit against one file sharer, telling the Adult Copyright Company that they are to prosecute each individual separately, as the accused neither participated in the same transaction nor collaborated in these offenses. So, if you're looking to hit 22,000 people with such a lawsuit, the $350 court filing fee will require an investment of $7.7 million ($1.8 million for the individuals listed so far). Ars points out the hilarious fact that 'Ford has sued enough people that lawyers are taking out ads on his company name,' providing an image of an advertisement for such a search. This is separate from a similar showdown in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois."
Do we get a bad car analogy down the line?
Clearly he didn't want to finish...
I was looking forward to _this_ gangbang.
The fact is that the real downfall of the porn industry isn't illegal file sharers, it's the fact that there appear to be a growing number of amateur exhibitionists willing to do filthy things to each other for discount prices, or in some cases for free. Mom and pop (and various other combinations) porn films are kicking the crap out of "mainstream" porn, because the Internet, that great leveler, has given this new wave of pornographers a cheap and universal distribution mechanism.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Didn't they have to begin filing against each individual infringer ?
UPS Sucks
So, what would the internet version of an 'ambulance chaser' be, considering how easy it is to attach ads to search terms?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Thank god, I didn't want the public to know I was downloading "Anal Sluts 13: The Fistening".
--
John Davidson
Perhaps the id10t judges hearing similar cases from the MPAA and the RIAA should do the same thing.
Seems somewhat biased the riaa and other lawyer heavy companies can send out millions of lawsuits but when it comes to the porn companies it's different. What does that do for all the other mass lawsuits that have been or will be sent to other downloaders ?
Yes, but this case is about porn, and therefore more newsworthy.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I imagine short-term nothing unless those Hollywood suits are in the same jurisdiction; but, hopefully, other jurisdictions will take similar actions.
Class Action lawsuits are different from individual suits. A class action can lead to much more money, and cost less to file. Usually a class is many people suing one large corporation. In this case, a corporation wanted to file a class action against many individuals as a group & the judge said "no".
Hollywood, or the RIAA, also must file separate actions against each person. The separate court fees aren't big enough to scare the RIAA away like the guy in TFA.
This ruling should be used as a club against the MPAA/RIAA information gathering suits.
Does this set a precedent making it harder for the 'Dunlapp, Grub and Weaver' lawsuits?
The RIAA/MPAA, and their advocates are going to be pissed....
Eventually something's going to break. The reality is such:
1) 10,000 people can "steal" your digital goods easily
2) You can't currently sue more than one person at a time if they didn't collude
3) It's too expensive to sue 10,000 people separately
4) It's not really the ISPs fault so you can't sue them either
So what DOES someone do who has bankrolled their digital creation and would like to recoup their investment, even make a profit, only to find that it's spread amongst 10,000 people without a penny returned. My thinking: make one copy cost what you hope to earn. So if you make a little software program and it takes you 30 hours at, say, $60/hour...charge $1800 for it. That way, when someone "steals" it, you can sue that single person and get your money back.
Yes, that's a dumb idea. But really, money is going to start failing in terms of something that is essentially eternally renewable. What would clothes be worth if we could 100% recycle them into fresh ones? You have that going on now with software, movies, etc. It's a tricky spot we're in.
Seems somewhat biased the riaa and other lawyer heavy companies can send out millions of lawsuits but when it comes to the porn companies it's different.
Laws will be handled differently by different jurisdictions. In this case, it's not a matter of who has more lawyers; it's a matter of where the filing occurred.
Is it possible that defense lawyers could make an argument that copyright law doesn't constitutionally cover Batman XXX because it doesn't advance arts and sciences?
(I'm not referring to their 1st amendment protection, but rather ability to prevent copying and distribution.)
It's true that it seems that that argument would be going into "viewpoint discrimination" territory, but I would think that's only in reference to banning expression, not restricting its distribution.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Perhaps this may end the RIAA's offense of suing hundreds of people at once?
Also seems like it's judicial roulette whenever a group files a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against a large number of people. On rare occasion, the bullet is in the barrel and the judge is willing to apply the law and make the mass filing party jump through the same procedural hoops everyone else has to or apply actual common-sense protections to the defendants.
That poor bastard. It can't be fun being the whipping boy for the entire universe of illegal online porn downloaders.
Unless you like that sort of thing. Unrelated note: my CAPTCHA is for this post is creamers. What are the odds?
People aren't interested in seeing realistic body portrayals. The extremes are hotter, and more entertaining, and hence more people will pay more money to see them.
You really can't fault the media producers for simply supplying the product that is in-demand. Nor can you expect forced attempts at changing this basic facet of human behavior to work very well.
share that
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
My records were subpoenaed in one of these cases and my ISP turned them over before it was quashed. I've already received a nasty letter demanding $5,000. Am I still in jeopardy here?
Thanks for the nightmares.
So what DOES someone do who has bankrolled their digital creation and would like to recoup their investment, even make a profit, only to find that it's spread amongst 10,000 people without a penny returned.
Invent a different business model. Reality is like this, not everything that's valuable will bring you a profit.
I think a good analogy for this is oxygen. There are many companies selling bottled oxygen, which is a valuable gas for medical and industrial purposes. Those companies get their oxygen from the atmosphere and they don't pay anyone for that.
On the other side are farmers whose plants ingest carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen as part of their life cycle. Those farmers are giving away for free something that gas companies sell.
If there existed some kind of absolute justice like the *AA want, the farmers should get paid for the oxygen their plants release in the atmosphere, but there is no practical way of doing it.
Ford has sued enough people that lawyers are taking out ads on his company name,' providing an image of an advertisement for such a search.
What the hell does that mean? The words are english, but...
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The MAFIAA tried this tactic during the early days of their little war against the pirates, and the judges swatted them down hard.
This bunch never caught the precedence and got smacked for it. Money wasted.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
...starting with 7,000-person and 9,000-person suits in the first wave...
From the article:
Ford's initial lawsuits were releatively small... by late October that he began filing against 7,000 and then 9,000 individuals at once.
From the summary:
the $350 court filing fee will require an investment of $7.7 million ($1.8 million for the individuals listed so far)
Individuals listed? What listing of individuals? From the article:
For the cases severed yesterday, this would amount to $1.8 million...
An "offensive" of porn producers? Is that the collective noun?
Flock of sheep
Wizard of owls
Murder of crows
Offensive of porn producers
Well, I learn something new every day.
when you trade the star for a street hoe
i wonder how scientific those studies you claim and the fact you offer no links and citations as proof. A set of lawyers slowly gets control of the riaa and mpaa....is more like hte truth and these sacks a garbage only care about money....
someone who isn't exceptionally tall with a D cup
Dolly Parton. I love her singing but think she'd gone too far with breast implants especially as she's barely 5 foot tall.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I've never understood the use of this phrase. For me "porn" only applies if there's sex (either with a partner or self).
So you get to define "porn"? At least one dictionary defines porn as "creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire". That was from Macmillan, Macmillan also defines soft porn, as "movies, magazines, photographs, etc. that show sexual images but not sexual acts".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Movie making does not have to be expensive.
Movies involve actors, directors, writers, artists, set builders, cinematographers, musicians, etc, etc.
So do plays but they aren't all that expensive. Actually movies should be cheaper, they can be filmed once then played over and over. But plays on stage have to be performed every tyme they're shown. To show a movie just copy the media or download it then display on a projector. The stage, projector, and other things can be used for other movies. A play though, the stage has to be erected at each location with either the props transported between locations or made at each location.
But even a low-budget movie like Moon cost $5 million.
That's low budget? Then the Blair Witch Project had no budget. It cost "$22,000 to make and made back $240.5 million, a ratio of $1 spent for every $10,931 made."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
and when they cut off piracy aka in htis case its like sampling a piece a new cheese at a deli before you buy a BIG BLOCK. I bought diablo II with the expansion pack after trying the pirated copy of diablo 2 ( without an expansion) i am perfect example in that case. HOWEVER finances changed and i'm dirt poor barely able to afford internet so i know fit in the i have no money anyhting i do get i would not have been able to buy any ways so logically im neither a lost sale nor pirate....pirates profit from "booty" last i checked.
At least somebody in the legal profession can clearly see what the internet was built for!
That's what I said.
but if you don't have studio (or some other well-heeled backer) money behind you it's a serious investment for an individual or two to make.
But it does not have to be a serious financial investment. The "EOS 5D Mark II can record up to 4GB per clip or record up to a maximum continuous video capture time of 29 minutes and 59 seconds, whichever comes first. This means you can get about 12 minutes HD video or 24 minutes of SD video on a 4GB memory card." Amazon lists the price at $2700. I don't recall what camera it is but there used to be an ad on TV for a digital camera, the camera was used to make the ad. While software can be expensive relatively, it doesn't have to be. Amazon lists Final Cut Studio, Apple's video editing suite, for just over $800. For free there's CinePaint which is open source. It started out as FilmGIMP when the author added 16 bit colour depths but the developers of GIMP did not accept it. A number of movies were made that used CinePaint. That about page lists some, such as the "Harry Potter" movies, Sean Connery's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", and Tom Cruise's "Last Samurai".
I haven't done it yet but I want to start a business as a photographer and I may do some videography as well.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?