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23,000 File Sharers Targeted In Latest Lawsuit
wiedzmin writes "Subpoenas are expected to go out to ISPs this week in what could be the biggest BitTorrent downloading case in US history. At least 23,000 file sharers are being targeted by the US Copyright Group for downloading The Expendables. The Copyright Group appears to have adopted Righthaven's strategy in blanket-suing large numbers of defendants and offering an option to quickly settle online for a moderate payment. The IP addresses of defendants have allegedly been collected by paid snoops capturing lists of all peers who were downloading or seeding Sylvester Stallone's flick last year. I am curious to see how this will tie into the BitTorrent case ruling made earlier this month indicating that an IP address does not uniquely identify the person behind it."
Since the court ruling of IP address != identity. I would certainly like to see said copyright group charged with extortion.
If all 23,000 customers refused to settle. Would the Copyright Group drop the charges, or would they take them all to court?
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
i have no doubt in my mind that there is a "safe" list of IPs that will never receive a subpoena. i'm sure getting added is just an embarrassing phone call away.
The movie grossed $103 million at the US box office
Assuming a movie ticket price of $20, this means that 5.3 million people saw the movie in theatres. These guys are suing 23222 people, or about 230 times fewer
At $150K per defendant, the potential works out to $3.48billion or roughly 33 times the US gross (and $700million more than the highest grossing movie ever - Avatar
My business pitch to the movie studios would be: "Straight to torrent then litigate - that's where the money is..."
A safe list of IPs wouldn't be practical. It'll be rather less hi-tech than that. When the subpoena results come back, someone is just going to be given the task of reading them all, running a quick google on each name, and striking off the list anyone they find who might pose a problem.
The courts wouldn't see 23,000 cases. The usual procedure here is settlement. The copyright holder just has to make an offer that cannot be refused: Either settle for $7,000 or so, or go to court and face tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees even if you win.
As for the ISPs, I imagine the **IAs would love to see them inconvenienced even further by piracy. It means more of an incentive to put in place technological measures to stop piracy like blocking popular trackers, traffic shaping and tiny usage quotas.