Judge Prevents 23,322 Filesharing Does From Being Sued For Now

An anonymous reader writes "The Judge overseeing the US Copyright Group's lawsuit against 23,000 individuals sharing 'The Expendables' has shut the door on progress. In a ruling made yesterday, the judge has ordered the US Copyright Group to show cause as to how all 23,322 fall under his Court's jurisdiction. Considering the US Copyright Group's failure in the past to show cause on jurisdiction, this could be the beginning of the end."

Comments

I Can Has Subject Title?

[wintercolby]

Pardon my ignorance, but can anyone say what "23,322 Filesharing Does" are?

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

John Does

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Krneki]

Pardon my ignorance, but can anyone say what "23,322 Filesharing Does" are?

a typo.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[The MAZZTer]

"John Doe" is a generic term for an unidentified or unknown individual, in this case shortened to "Doe".

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does, as in John Doe. Very poorly worded.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Nidi62]

23,322 unnamed (read: unknown and unidentified) defendants. When a person is unknown, they are referred to as John/Jane Doe.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pardon my ignorance, but can anyone say what "23,322 Filesharing Does" are?

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doe

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[wintercolby]

I'm damn glad I didn't say anything about bucks, hunting season, or road kill then. Thanks for explaining it, the title really could have been worded better.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doe, a deer, a female deer.

Deer are notorious for running file sharing software, it's actually what got Bambi killed.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Harold Halloway]

Downloaders on a deer-to-deer file-sharing network.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[betterunixthanunix]

"Doe" as in "John Doe" as in they are anonymous for the time being, because USCG has not been able to determine who they are.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[YodasEvilTwin]

THIS.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Stenchwarrior]

I had no-eye-deer that was how it worked.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[betterunixthanunix]

Imagine how many bucks the MPAA could have made if it were not for these people.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the British folk, maybe this would be better:

"Judge Prevents 23,322 Filesharing Smiths From Being Sued For Now"

Smith as in John Smith :-)

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Downloaders on a deer-to-deer file-sharing network.

...who were about to be sued for a lotta bucks.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Fizzl]

punters?

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Mashiki]

BAHRAMYOU! We ewe's are in the network, chewin' on your grains!

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doe a deer, a file-sharing deer... Ray, the guy who sued the deer! Me the guy who laughed at Ray...
Far is how long this will go in court...
So they shared a lame-assed show!
La the only thing we know...
Tea the bagging that will be....
and that will bring us back to dough dough dough.....

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[cbiltcliffe]

Exactly my thought.

Bambi's sharing Disney movies on eMule!!

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Paradise Pete]

If they asked for not only 100 male deer but also that many female pigs they could potentially cash in for as much as a hundred sows and bucks.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, and I cannot say with certitude that one of them is not me.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[iluvcapra]

The MPAA doesn't make money on films. In this case the money would have gone to Lionsgate, the distributor, then Nu Image and Millenium Films, both smaller companies known for downscale genre fare and many direct-to-DVD films. And then to Avi Lerner and the producers, then the upfront split that Stallone and Willis probably got (Stallone also directed), and then royalties to all the actors, the writers (including Stallone) and Brian Tyler, the composer.

The reason you're seeing these lawsuits from shops like Voltage Pictures, of The Hurt Locker fame, and Nu Image is because they're tiny and don't make a lot of money, and just can't afford (in their eyes) losing so much money. The big studios treat it like spoilage at a grocery store, but these are really small companies that make payroll with box office money.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[bmo]

>serious answer
>pun thread

*whistle*

--
BMO

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[TeknoHog]

Just like "Peer" is a generic term for an unidentified Internet user in Norway.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

MPAA? I know what you mean, but the distributors would have made the same amount as before. These people weren't going to see it in the theater anyways, or they would have done that rather than downloaded a crappy pirate copy just to check it out.

It's like saying if I put a copy of the Expendables on the background of a party, Lionsgate is losing $20 for each person who took at look at the screen.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[WiglyWorm]

I get enough pun threads on Reddit. I come to slashdot because there's usually some semblance of intelligence.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[delinear]

Which is exactly the position they claim - why do you think bars have to have a license to play music in the background, even though the average bar isn't full of audiofiles listening intently to the music, it's mostly incidental.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

and Gynt is generic for arsehole?

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[iluvcapra]

When a piece of gear downgrades your Bluray to 480p it's suddenly a vast government conspiracy that merits paragraphs of whingeing about freedom and the right to access "my movies." But when a small business loses hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue because people are too friggin' cheap to go watch something on Instant Queue, it's a moment for lolz. Noted.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anrego]

It's actually not. They are refering to "John Doe" in a plural sense.

And I really don't like it. It completely screws up whatever part of the brain does language parsing. I practically get like a mini-headache every time I see "Does" used like that.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

deer-to-deer? that answer is flipped around and backwards

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[S.O.B.]

I'm damn glad I didn't say anything about bucks, hunting season, or road kill then. Thanks for explaining it, the title really could have been worded better.

Hunting season?

Rabbit season! Duck season! FIRE!!!

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

No he doesn't.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

so that's what the vegan zombie said....'grains'

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[metlin]

You must be new here.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[bmo]

You must be lots of fun at parties.

Say hello to your new status. Plonk.

--
BMO

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[hoytak]

It's the new slogan of the pirate bay, similar to Motorola's "Droid Does" slogan. The 23322 is elite speak for zeezz, but you'd have to get them to explain that one.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doe, a deer, a female deer.

Ray, a drop of golden sun

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

To me I would classify "Does" as being both "John Does" AND "Jane Does". Males are not the only people who use filesharing. In this case, "Does" is much shorter than specifing John and Jane.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Antisyzygy]

I thought Godzilla stepped on him.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[iluvcapra]

Went to a party recently, my director on Dance of the Dead remarked that both his features now were available on FilesTube!

When you actually know and work with the people who are supposed to get paid for this stuff, and your paycheck comes from that money too, it sorta rubs you a different way.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doe, a deer, a female deer.

Ray, a drop of golden sun

You've just been Rogers-and-Hammerstein rolled !

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[g0bshiTe]

No way, there's no mention of Ray in there. Shaq, Indiana Jones, and Jackie Chan and a few others but Godzilla did not step on Ray.

Citation: http://artists.letssingit.com/lemon-demon-lyrics-the-ultimate-showdown-6ztn912

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[nschubach]

Well, there is "some" here. But he didn't say anything about "all."

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[sconeu]

Ba dump-dump

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[jd2112]

Pardon my ignorance, but can anyone say what "23,322 Filesharing Does" are?

Doe: A deer. A female deer.

I guess lawsuits against the bucks can proceed. Who would have figured that a lackluster action film with over-the-hill actors would be so popular with woodland creatures...

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[X0563511]

Sounds like someone's setting up a very inappropriate film venture to me...

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[bmo]

Let's get something straight. You don't know me. Attributing things to me in your head because you are butthurt is just this side of nuts.

I don't pirate. I'm a Linux guy too, so I've gone as far as completely getting away from the "need" to pirate software just to have a functioning computer without being nickeled-and-dimed to death. It's gotten better over the years with movies too. Between Netflix and better selection of movies on demand through my cable operator, the "need" to pirate doesn't exist for me anymore. And there are more of us every day. Long gone are the days when buying a movie meant you had to shell out 99 bucks for something on VHS or Beta in late 1970 - early 80s dollars.

The market has come around to my needs (finally), and the needs of 90 percent of people out there with moderate disposable cash.

Download off of Filestube or torrent? Too much of a hassle. Seriously. It's like the old cartoon of someone giving up trying to download porn over a modem and just giving up and going to the corner store and buying a Playboy.

The only people who are torrenting and downloading over Filestube are people who don't have the cash to buy or rent a 3 year old movie anyway. Which brings me to the point of the futility of this lawsuit. This is clearly an abuse of the system against people who can't possibly pay the ridiculous out-of-proportion fine. The Expendables was a shitty movie and did poorly at the box office because it's a shitty movie. Trying to make up the difference by suing people is a combination of stupid and arrogance that all too often rears its head in this society. The only reason to follow through with such a thing is the mistaken belief that setting some sort of example is going to stop the tide of copyright infringement. Here's a clue, the only way to effectively end copyright infringement is to adjust to the market, as in my second paragraph up there. If I can sit on the couch and point the remote at the TV and get Dance of the Dead for a 99 cent rental, fuck torrents. Want me to watch it? Get Cox to carry it on pay-per-view.

Those that can't afford the dollar, well, they weren't going to give it to you anyway. There are always people who will hop the turnstile and you can't do a thing about it without looking like a goon (like this lawsuit).

So don't come in here all fucking high-and-mighty and say things about me that you don't know. Remove your head from your nether regions.

--
BMO

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[nabsltd]

When you actually know and work with the people who are supposed to get paid for this stuff, and your paycheck comes from that money too, it sorta rubs you a different way.

Well, if they didn't pay you for the work you did, then it's your fault for not specifying that you wanted to be paid up front like everybody else.

By the time a film has been converted to a digital form on a file sharing network, everybody involved in doing actual work on the film has already been paid, and the movie has almost always made a profit for the producers, even though the miracle of Hollywood Accounting allows the producers to claim they have never made a profit on any movie, ever.

Next, you'll claim that this will cause producers not to fund new movies, and so you won't get any new job offers. Since the number of movies being produced each year has increased for the past 5 years, and the total movie industry gross has also increased at the same time, it doesn't appear that file sharing is an issue with you getting paid. On a related note, the producers of The Expendables have about two dozen movies in development at this moment, including a sequel, so I don't think file sharing has hurt them enough to keep them from providing a lot of jobs, too.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[damnfuct]

I imagine it as a rather large herd of female deer that have a damaged set of morals

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[LeadSongDog]

Now playing: Buck Rogers in the Twenty-First Century In the queue: Buck To the Future, The Deer Hunter, and Bambi

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doe, a deer, a female deer.

Deer are notorious for running file sharing software, it's actually what got Bambi killed.

Haha clever!

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could have just used "unnamed defendants" or something else.

I would like to second the proposed moratorium on "Does", in the way it's used here.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent insightful. This is one of the best summaries I've seen of this ridiculous market situation. The lawsuits/butthurt are simply a red flag that your business model has failed to adapt to the new reality.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[mcgrew]

It's grammatically correct and should cause no brain farts at all. Of course, there are some ignorant people who will write "Doe's". If you read ignorant, ungrammatical, and misspelled messageboard postings all day I can see how it might become a problem for some. The cure is reading more books and less internet.

The clue your brain is missing is there's no period after "filesharing".

John Doe's does are all healthy, but Jane Doe's does were all eaten by wolves."

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Antisyzygy]

It was in a Godzilla movie. The intro is Bambi eating some grass before getting stomped.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[iluvcapra]

Well, if they didn't pay you for the work you did, then it's your fault for not specifying that you wanted to be paid up front like everybody else.

I got paid, it's not about that; it's about wether or not they're going to be able to make the next one, or will even want to.

I don't know where you get your statistics, but the number of mass-market studio features has dropped significantly, and any growth I've seen has come from downscale, non-union, crappy genre films and direct-to-home-video titles. (Oh wait, that's what Dance of the Dead was. Shit.) ;)

On a related note, the producers of The Expendables have about two dozen movies in development at this moment, including a sequel, so I don't think file sharing has hurt them enough to keep them from providing a lot of jobs, too.

"In development" means they put out a press release. It doesn't mean they've spent a dime.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

still does not compute...

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Vancorps]

As someone that worked for a non-profit record label I beg to differ. People are in it for the wrong reasons if their intention is to make a lot of money. That's what is wrong with big media today. With us, we had no problem as the community supported our efforts, each album that was release benefited a charity or two stating quite plainly how much of the money spent on the cd was given to artists as well as the charities. Those were the days. Crazy for me to think that was more than a decade ago but I'm happy in that the label is still alive and well and producing great music!

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[iluvcapra]

I don't pirate.

It doesn't really matter for the purpose of your argument, since you defend it. Or rather, you're happy to concede it's an offense, as long as it goes unpunished or the punishment is framed as counterproductive, which is a contradiction if one accepts that nulla crimen sine poena, which I think is reasonable.

If I can sit on the couch and point the remote at the TV and get Dance of the Dead for a 99 cent rental, fuck torrents. Want me to watch it? Get Cox to carry it on pay-per-view.

They did, it's great! People claim as you do that they'd do this, but then they don't. And all the while the salve their conscience with a bunch of rather self-serving rationalization about how they weren't going to pay for the movie anyways, and isn't the MPAA so heavyhanded?, pricks like that don't deserve my money. None of this of course is responsive to the issue that they watched a movie without paying for it, and made a copy of a copyright work without having the right to do this. Nobody wants to talk about the fundamental violation, it's all just a mishmash of unrelated bull meant to blame the victim for complaining too much.

Also, The Expendables did have a $34 mil opening and did great foreign numbers, it made money. It did not do shitty at the box office. The quality issue idunno, but I'd rather ticket-buying consumers decided what was a good movie rather than the tomatometer or the ivory tower of aintitcool.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

The US Coast Guard can't identify them?

- John Doh

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it is John/Jane Doe, which is being shortened to Doe (or Does the plural of Doe).

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[zeroshade]

If you can prove that they actually lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, not only will it no longer be a moment for lulz, but the MPAA and many movie companies will pay you handsomely.

You see, no one has yet proven any lost revenue caused by filesharing, they have only said "hey look, they didn't pay us. They could have paid us and didn't! Thus look at all this money we lost!" potential income is not money lost and thus, until then, there are lulz. =D

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[fast turtle]

Sembalence of Inteligence? This is Earth dam it, there's no inteligent life here.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anrego]

If you read ignorant, ungrammatical, and misspelled messageboard postings all day I can see how it might become a problem for some.

Even including the well written material I read daily, the vast majority of the time I encounter the word "does", it's as a linking verb (or "copula" if you want to get all academic). This takes precedence over what punctuation surrounds the word, in my brain at least. If I read a lot of criminal reports or news articles about unidentified people this might change, however as it stands this is probably the 5th time in my entire life I've seen the word used as a pluralized noun. This is what jams me up.

The clue your brain is missing is there's no period after "filesharing".

I really don't generally pay much attention to punctuation when reading. Honestly in most cases, it's not really all that necessary. What gave me the mini-brain fart is that I was expecting some kind of noun after "filesharing" but hit something that my brain traditionally does not read as a noun. Yes, maybe my brain should say "oh, it must be a noun then" and proceed from there, but it didn't. The section of my brain meant for deciphering grammatically correct yet awkward (as evidenced by the number of people on this forum who also had difficulty with this) sentences is just not a part that gets much exercise.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

They did, it's great! People claim as you do that they'd do this, but then they don't.

You're treating file sharers as some sort of collective. How do you know if they do or do not? Before, you likely didn't even know of their existence (because they didn't give any money to anyone for the product).

And all the while the salve their conscience with a bunch of rather self-serving rationalization about how they weren't going to pay for the movie anyways

A valid concern. Instead of, "we lost this this much potential profit, now pay up" it becomes, "we potentially lost this much potential profit, now pay up." Whether they are justifying it to make themselves feel better or not is unknown to you. That's merely an assumption about them on your part. Furthermore, no justification is necessary since absolute morals do not exist (so not everyone thinks it's a bad thing, and they're not necessarily wrong).

None of this of course is responsive to the issue that they watched a movie without paying for it

They're valid concerns because they have, at most, potentially lost potential profit, unlike if you just outright stole something from someone. Whether or not it is harmless (when speaking of the physical world) and if the laws need to be changed is an entirely different matter, though.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Arancaytar]

In any case, why "Doe"? It seems as though placeholders should be blander, more common names, like "Smith".

Of course, when you go up against 23,322 Smiths, you should make sure your attorney is Neo.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[HiThere]

Personally I'd be just as happy if Hollywood died completely. I sure don't support ANY company, person, or organization that likes the current copyright laws, and especially not those ***** who bribed legislators to get the DMCA et seq. passed. This o but definitely included the RIAA & the MPAA, and ALL of their sponsors.

I *am* in favor of reasonable copyrights. Say 5-10 years. Even 20 would be acceptable. The current abuse is not defensible by any sane and fair person.

I do not think that piracy is a good. I should be a crime. But it's so much less an evil than the bribery of legislators that if I believed that it hurt the studios I'd be in favor of it. Those perpetrators (the studios, their decision making personnel, and their lobbyists, AND their co-conspirators) deserve to die a painful death. Well, so do those who took the bribes. I know, isn't going to happen except for a very few for totally unrelated reasons. But if the world were just it would.

The "pirates"? I don't think that those who do it non-commercially should even be considered criminals at all. I'm willing to be convinced, but not by someone who defends the current system. I can't trust them to have any morals at all, other than greed.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[AliasMarlowe]

still does not compute...

Actually, it does.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[AliasMarlowe]

It's like the old cartoon of someone giving up trying to download porn over a modem and just giving up and going to the corner store and buying a Playboy.

Pardon me, but in what way would a Playboy magazine satisfy a need for porn?

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[osu-neko]

I get enough pun threads on Reddit. I come to slashdot because there's usually some semblance of intelligence.

I always find the use of puns highest amongst groups of people who are generally well above average intelligence. It sounds like you come to slashdot for the opposite... which is perfectly understandable, all things considered.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[iluvcapra]

I guess I'll respond to the AC.

Cogitate and assimilate: If you copy something that is protected by copyright, and you did not have license to do so, or you make a copy in violation of your license (be that license a license for home exhibition, the Creative Commons license, or the GPL), you are liable to civil and criminal penalties. It does not matter what you may have done if you did not have the means to make the copy. It does not matter how zealously you are pursued. It does not matter if you violated the rights of a rich party as opposed to a poor party. If your act caused a party a loss, they are entitled to sue for compensatory damages. It does not matter if your act did or did not create any deficiency in the revenue or the profit of the violated party, as far as punitive damages or criminal penalties are concerned.

If you think the law is immoral, challenge the law. Don't complain about how "counterproductive" enforcement it, as if you'd agree with the law if it were better enforced. Don't, as Al Capone said, "say I'm a murder but give me a ticket for spitting on the sidewalk."

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I assume you met Carissa Capobianco?

Cool. So have I.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[osu-neko]

...it's all just a mishmash of unrelated bull meant to blame the victim for complaining too much.

When it's perfectly clear that the "victim" has not, in fact, in any way at all whatsoever been harmed by the actions, it's perfectly reasonable to blame the "victim" for complaining as if they're actually a victim of something worth complaining about.

I don't dispute they are legally aggrieved. I just don't believe there really is such thing as a victimless crime, regardless of what laws say. As a matter of law, they are indeed victims, but this just highlights how far divorced the laws in this area have separated from reality.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[mcgrew]

You folks must be shaking in your boots about Star Wreck. I own a lot of tapes and DVDs, no way will I buy one I haven't seen. No way will I buy a CD from an artist I haven't heard, let alone heard of. I have dozens of Isaac Asimov books, and hundreds from other writers, but were it not for the free public library I'd never had bought a single one of them.

Nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity. The only artists that are hurt by file sharing are talentless hacks. If your films are good, P2P will help sales, not hurt.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[AliasMarlowe]

Sounds like someone's setting up a very inappropriate film venture to me...

I invoke Rule 34!
It's appropriate for somebody, somewhere...

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[iluvcapra]

I *am* in favor of reasonable copyrights. Say 5-10 years. Even 20 would be acceptable. The current abuse is not defensible by any sane and fair person.

I agree with you. What I'm opposed to is people wanting to reform copyright, but instead of fessing up to their position, arguing about how "mean" the MPAA is and how enforcement doesn't work. If you want to decriminalize X, change the law, don't spend all your time whingeing about jackbooted thugs busting down doors, or how the lawbreakers aren't really doing any harm.

I can't trust them to have any morals at all, other than greed.

Well maybe laws should only protect the rights of people that live up to particular moral standard. I'm sure that would work peachy. Greed's bad, but letting people break laws because we find the victim distasteful is barbaric.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[rcharbon]

Why not "Johns"? Oh...

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[iluvcapra]

Nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity. The only artists that are hurt by file sharing are talentless hacks. If your films are good, P2P will help sales, not hurt.

Disease is caused by an imbalance in the humors, the sun rotates about the Earth, and P2P helps sales. Dogma you say? Uncritically accepted by those with the most to gain, you say? Nonsense, it's just common sense.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

RIAA / SONY hates Bambi!!!

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[iluvcapra]

It depends... I don't think copyright in the US is about protecting the particular income of particular people as much as it is about making sure that creative works are still available. Copyright lets you do this because you can attach conditions to a copy that benefit you, either making people pay money, or, as we've seen more recently, making people always publish their source code, or making people always give complete attributions. Would you say it was a "victimless crime" if NCR were to ship a Linux POS system without releasing the source?

I've seen crowdsourced / Creative Commons projects, and they're awful. They make The Expendables look like Die Hard. I just have no confidence in such models sustaining the creative arts, unless you were to arbitrarily draw a line around some media, the cheap medias, and assert that they're the only ones worthy of protection, and any media that could only sustain itself by selling DVDs was illegitimate and unworthy of creation in the New Copyleft Order.

(I mean that's what I see lurking in the background of many of these comments in thread: people hate Hollywood, want to see it dead, and think that the entire craft of filmmaking, in excess of a camcorder, is frivolous and doesn't meet their standard of what's art. Changing copyright is just a smokescreen for censoring the Hollywood aesthetic.)

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[X0563511]

Pick your favorite animal, and favorite euphemism or term for a sex act, and Google. You shall not be disappointed. Unfortunately, IMO, but whatever 'floats' your 'boat'.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cogitate and assimilate: If you copy something that is protected by copyright, and you did not have license to do so, or you make a copy in violation of your license (be that license a license for home exhibition, the Creative Commons license, or the GPL), you are liable to civil and criminal penalties.

I know. I didn't say anything to the contrary.

If your act caused a party a loss

Whether or not the "loss" (which isn't a physical loss) harmed them is still being debated.

If you think the law is immoral, challenge the law.

I didn't say that it was.

Don't complain about how "counterproductive" enforcement it

When did I do that? But, really, I believe that concerns about the effectiveness of enforcement are valid. It's difficult and costly to catch these people. I don't suggest it being better enforced (since that would still be costly, would probably violate civil rights, and would likely be almost useless).

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[CCarrot]

Imagine how many bucks the MPAA could have made if it were not for these people.

I thought you need Does to make Bucks?

It certainly seems like that's their replacement business model...

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Forty Two Tenfold]

I practically get like a mini-headache every time I see "Does" used like that.

How about that:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe?
If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,
Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy."

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[jc42]

And in a separate filing, the RIAA has brought similar charges against 57,823 stags. They're all downloading songs they can learn to impress the does during the next rutting season.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[bmo]

>Pardon me, but in what way would a Playboy magazine satisfy a need for porn?

Confirmed as someone about 20 to 25 years old that never had to download anything over a phone line.

Also, confirmed as someone who's never heard of Rusty & Edie's BBS.

--
BMO

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[MarkOnBoat]

Perhaps old habits... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doe

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[bmo]

> I don't think copyright in the US is about protecting the particular income of particular people as much as it is about making sure that creative works are still available.

Copyright has nothing whatsoever to do with availability. Indeed, it hinders availability. There are "orphaned" works that lurk in limbo where the publisher has decided that it's not cost-effective to publish, yet it's still under copyright so /nobody else/ can publish it either.

Then there's the "well, nobody would publish it if it's in the public domain" which is entirely false. There is no shortage of old books that have been republished because they are out of copyright and a publisher can make copies to sell. Penguin Publishing does this all the time, it's their entire Penguin Classics line. There is nothing preventing another publisher from doing the same thing, but Penguin has figured out how to make a buck.

Indeed, I have various anthologies of HP Lovecraft stuff and every single last one of his stories are public domain.

>Not about enriching certain people

You haven't paid attention /at all/ to the history of copyright laws since the last 40 years. Life plus 90 years no longer enriches the original author and only encourages rent seeking by his progeny. Corporate copyright is essentially infinite now, because companies like Disney outlive humans.

Ever since Sonny Bono, it's been all about rent-seeking, and the Framers of the Constitution thought this was a bad thing, among other people, like economists. The current state does not inspire the creation of new content. It inspires people to sit on their collective asses and rent-seek.

--
BMO

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Anonymous Coward]

They tend to tick off the media companies and spread Limewire disease.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[bmo]

Furthermore...

Don't get me wrong and assume that I think all copyright is bad.

The copyright rules we had in the early 70s were fine. They were still a good balance between public and private interest. The shenanigans by media companies since then have twisted copyright into something unrecognizable.

>I've seen crowdsourced / Creative Commons projects, and they're awful.

I think you are misunderstanding Creative Commons licenses. They do not put things in the public domain. Such works are not without copyright.

What makes Creative Commons films bad is bad writing, not the license. The license is incidental.

>people hate Hollywood, want to see it dead, and think that the entire craft of filmmaking, in excess of a camcorder, is frivolous and doesn't meet their standard of what's art. Changing copyright is just a smokescreen for censoring the Hollywood aesthetic.

Bullshit. You have a persecution complex. Get rid of the tinfoil.

People hate being stomped on by mega-corps like Universal, Warner, Sony, et al.

Also, Lars Von Trier can make a film with a fucking camcorder and make a buck and win awards. It's not about the tech. It's not about the copyrights. It's not about anything else but good writing and a compelling story. Unfortunately, too many producers in Hollywood think that lens flares make a good movie (the latest Star Trek).

--
BMO

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[bmo]

I'm going to disregard much of your message because it is nothing but insult.

The only part that is not insult:

>The quality issue idunno, but I'd rather ticket-buying consumers decided what was a good movie rather than the tomatometer or the ivory tower of aintitcool.

So you're blaming the critics for people not seeing movies, because every Uwe Boll deserves to make a dollar.

Wow. And you talk about the self importance of other people.

You're a cunt.

--
BMO

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[wintercolby]

I can say that when I first saw id Software, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, that a friend had pirated it. I'll also say that I paid money for Doom, Quake, Quake II (twice, had it installed on 2 computers), Quake III (2 windows copies and 1 Linux copy). Did id lose money on one copy of one game, or did they save money on marketing and inadvertently acquire a customer who then paid for several games to come?

I saw "Evil Dead" for the first time at a friends house, they'd rented it. I didn't pay a dime to see it. Later I bought "Evil Dead 2" on VHS, and paid for tickets to see "Army of Darkness" in the theaters twice. Did the movie industry actually lose money when I was able to see the first movie for free, or was there a profit when I liked it and paid to see sequels later?

I have a few friends who are artists that make money off of their work. They're always asking how they can get InDesign or Photoshop or for free and crack the licensing. I ask them if they expect people to value their creativity and pay for their art. They say that they've given away plenty of free art to get their name out there. Does Adobe have their name out there? Why should they give you their software for free then?

Each year there is a maximum of 3 movies that come out that are actually worth my time. If they're worth my time, then they're worth my money. If I wouldn't pay to see it, I won't waste my time to watch it. There are far more useful things to do than watch a bad movie. If all of the good parts are bundled into the trailers for a movie, and I end up wasting my time and money on it, I'll remember the names of the producer, director and actors in that movie. I won't again waste my money or time on anything they do from then on. Personally, I hope their careers bomb, because they're in the wrong business. I hope they do go broke. I hope they find something productive to do with their time instead of waste mine. People who acquire unauthorized copies of movies are doing themselves more of a disservice than they are the MPAA.

Your sarcasm here is kind of blind. Blind to the fact that there actually are people in this world that go out and use their wallets when they see what they like. P2P does the same thing for music and movies that radio and television used to do. It gives a potential audience a reduced quality(probably riddled with trojans and viruses instead of commercial breaks) sample of the artists work. There is some percentage of that audience, those that had a sample of your work and liked it, that will pay to experience it the next time around. The MPAA are doing it wrong, they should be running the P2P networks. They should be releasing P2P versions of the movies that are missing minor parts here and there, or have commercials injected into them, and then selling Director's cuts with bonus features. Instead of being creative and insightful about marketing and acquisition of funds, they're reverting to lawsuits and lobbyists.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[mcgrew]

To misquote Pogo, "common sense ain't so common no more". What seems to be "just common sense" (the sun revolves around the earth) is often wrong. Scientific studies (at least the ones not funded by the RIAA) have shown that piracy helps sales, not hurts. Music pirates spend more on music than non-pirates. The RIAA has a dog in this fight -- they have radio, their competetitors don't, and they've shown themselves to be immoral and unethecial liars, cheats, and thieves. Nobody with a lick of common sense would trust anything they say, or any study they fund.

A couple of years ago a book publisher commissioned a study to see how badly book piracy was hurting his sales. Common sense says that "nobody will pay for what they can get for free" despite the fact that million$ are made selling bottled water.

He was amazed and pleased when he found that there was a sales spike rather than a drop in sales when the pirate version hit the web. I'd offer a link, but I'm at work and half the internet is firewalled off.

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[Coren22]

Except Bambi is a Buck, if you were talking about his mother however...

Re:I Can Has Subject Title?

[nabsltd]

"In development" means they put out a press release. It doesn't mean they've spent a dime.

All my information on movie count came from IMDB (not IMDB Pro) for theatrical movies (i.e., nothing with (V) behind it). The box office info is widely known (and trumpeted by the studios and the MPAA). Both are growing.

For not yet released to be listed on IMDB, it needs to have a projected release date (like next year for the Expendables sequel), which usually means that it has some money spent. For release next year, it means that principle photography is likely already done, although they still have a couple of months. For releases in 2013-2014, then at least treatments have been written, but it's likely that actual script drafts have been completed (and writers paid), and possible that a tentative schedule for filming has been blocked out, so that crew can be available.

The only reason that "mass-market studio features" might be declining is because now every studio has 20 "boutique" subsidiaries. This started with Disney and Touchstone to allow them to produce non-G movies (and other studios to pigeon-hole movies, like Warner putting sci-fi under the "New Line" label), but it has now expanded to allow the big studios a chunk of the "indie" money. So, now, only the $200M "blockbusters" get placed under the flagship label, and I think we can all agree that it's a good thing for those to be cut back. We'd all rather see 8 good $25M movies than another "Fast and Furious Transformers of the Caribbean".

Woo! Hoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrrrgghhh, start downloading, me mateys!

Awful Headline

[heptapod]

"Judge Prevents 23,322 Filesharing Does From Being Sued For Now"

Reads more like a word salad. "...Filesharing does what from being sued for now?"

Perhaps it should be changed to John Does, janitors?

Ridiculous

[Lunaritian]

I wonder how many people they still will sue until they realize that piracy can't be stopped anymore except by shutting down the whole Internet.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Shutting down the whole internet wouldn't stop it either.

Re:Ridiculous

[WiglyWorm]

People have been forever. Shakespeare was a pirate. As were most playwrites of that age. They would literally sit in the audience and copy the play down as it was being performed.

Re:Ridiculous

[nschubach]

Don't copy that floppy!

Re:Ridiculous

[jonbryce]

Mozart managed to pirate Allegri's Misereri from the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week 1770 using only his ears and his memory.
He attended the Tenebrae service where it was performed, then wrote it down from memory. He then attended another performance to correct errors in his original transcription. After that, he sold bootleg copies of it to various sheet music shops around Europe.

Re:Ridiculous

[TWX]

As long as it's copyable it'll be copied.

If the Internet no longer supported file sharing, people would do it by USB flash media. If somehow they managed to make USB flash media DRMed, people would do it via LAN Party. If they somehow managed to make that not work, people would burn things to CD. Even if they somehow managed to completely eliminate the possibility of digitally copying the files, two people would hook up the analog-out of one device to the analog-in on another and hit play and record.

If you want to stop movie and music piracy, price the product appropriately so that it's not worth the effort to pirate, and use a format that is inconvenient to pirate through. It took a long time for significant software piracy of video game consoles to really take off, and from what I've peripherally seen, it still seems to happen to mostly old ROM cartridge systems, with no more profitability left for the original publisher anyway. There's some early optical piracy, but that doesn't seem too widespread.

If the music industry had any brains, they would have worked with the CD hardware manufacturers to develop firmware that didn't support reading an audio CD at anything more than 1.1x playback speed. This would have allowed enough read-ahead for skip protection and ECC, but would have made it difficult for one person to engage in large-scale piracy. DVD could have had the same thing, in the sense of using an alternate file structure for movies along with firmware that restricts read speed on that file structure or for all discs with that structure. Additionally, with CDs, had they chosen to make the audio quality much better, the files themselves would either be too big (at least at the end of the 20th century when this became a problem) or so lossy that people might have actually been unsatisfied by the output. If these various industries would have done all of this and then also priced their products appropriately, I'd bet that most people would have opted for the legitimate distribution.

A counter argument to the "23000 people would have bought our products if they hadn't pirated them!" is that most of these people probably wouldn't have bought the product if it weren't available through piracy. If it's free to pirate it then the opportunity cost is obviously low to nil, especially if it's difficult to find and prosecute pirates. If the product costs $20 for ten songs, then the casual listener probably wouldn't have bothered to buy it, especially for songs that are overplayed on their local FM stations. As for movies, I'd also bet that if the movie wasn't available through piracy, most of the viewers simply wouldn't have ever seen it or even heard of it. I'm not going to argue that piracy is helpful as the converse, but it probably doesn't cause nearly as much harm as content sellers would like to argue.

Re:Ridiculous

[synapse7]

The comment, the only way to stop piracy is to shutdown the internet, made me think of this exact example. The piece is somewhere around 10-12minutes long, the King decree it was so moving it could only be heard once a year.

Re:Ridiculous

[amiga3D]

Killing the internet wont stop file sharing. We made copies of cassettes before the internet became a household phenomena and if they kill it we'll burn copies of movies and cd's.

Great news

[iONiUM]

I'm pretty happy that this is going in the right direction. While I don't live in the United States, I'm hoping if these things are shut down there, they may be less aggressive on neighboring countries in enforcing such crude copyright laws..

Re:Great news

[Anonymous Coward]

You're such an optimist. Cracking down on frivolous stateside lawsuits may very well displace all the **AA aggression so it spills over onto you folks even more-so.

Re:Great news

[erroneus]

That's where you are wrong. The 3-strikes, laws we keep hearing about would never pass in the US so easily. It is easier for the US government and US companies to influence foreign government than it is for the US government to influence its people.

In a way, it speaks well of the US people, not not really... we rolled right over when it came to terrorist laws didn't we? But worse than that -- saw a news story about certain parts of town where violent things have occurred. The news people played comments by people demanding more police and cameras and other measures to "keep us safe." So we still have a long way to go (or have slipped way too far down that slippery slope). You will find people of the US not worried about losing freedom, but they are worried about losing convenience!

Re:Great news

[delinear]

Even more likely: they'll just lobby for the law to be changed to cover this situation. The judge has to follow the letter of the law, if a new law allows John Does to be named without establishing jurisdiction, his hands will be tied.

Re:Great news

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

That's where you are wrong. The 3-strikes, laws we keep hearing about would never pass in the US so easily.

Until some Senator or Representative that's been bought ... er I mean to whose campaign the RIAA or MPAA contributed generously ... slips it into a 1500 page "flags for orphans of members of the armed forces killed in action" bill right next to the hundred other "trivialities" that other members of Congress have stuffed into the bill 15 minutes before the vote.

Re:Great news

[jonbryce]

The problem is that the cases are failing on basic Law 101 stuff that isn't that easy to change.

This one failed because they took action in a court in the wrong state/district. I can't really see how you can easily change the law to give a DC court jurisdiction over someone in for example Texas.

The ACS:Law and Righthaven cases failed because, among other things, the person taking the action was not the copyright owner. Changing the law to deal with that problem is even more difficult.

Re:Great news

[Arterion]

Unfortunately, the US people don't influence the US government.

I'm a file sharer/downloader

[erroneus]

Every time I read a story like this, I get a sinking feeling, but then I realize it doesn't apply to me. Turns out, I don't download stuff other people like. Also, I tend to avoid some of the massively popular torrents for that very reason. "Expendables?" Yeah, never even saw it, let alone downloaded it. My musical taste is kind of old too. While it's true that for me to download, someone else must be sharing it and therefore has "some" popularity, I'm still probably in a 1% group while everyone else is in a 90% group.

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[betterunixthanunix]

Turns out, I don't download stuff other people like

...because there are so many people in the world who like Teen Anal Nightmare 2 or Batman XXX: A Porn Parody? The fact that something is unpopular is not a protection from these lawsuits.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/a-new-record-9729-p2p-porn-pushers-sued-at-once.ars

Luckily, these lawsuits were stopped by the judge as well, because of how completely absurd it is to sued thousands of people across different jurisdictions in the same court room.

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[Nidi62]

Turns out, I don't download stuff other people like.

No one liked The Expendables, or even Hurt Locker. That didnt stop the copyright holders from suing people.

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[gazbo]

Hipster poster is hipster.

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[PIBM]

That`s what 90% of people think!

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[Anonymous Coward]

The Expendables was a pretty bad movie (why the f*ck is movie underlined as a typo in Chrome?). I am glad I streamed it off the net rather then pay for it. If I actually paid money to see it then I would have been really disappointed.

The Hurt Locker on the other hand, I found it to be enjoyable. I would pay to see it again (as a dvd on sale, from a rental shop or from the library - gotta love how libraries have dvd movies).

Well, tbh, screw the rental shop, our local Video Ezy has pretty much any popular movie from the past 5 years or so as either new releases or recent releases and charges more to rent them...

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying that Teen Anal Nightmare 2 is unpopular?

I'd actually be somewhat surprised if it wasn't nearly as popular as some current blockbuster movie like The Expendables...

Considering how many computers I get to fix that have massive porn browsing in the history list, and frequently various porn videos saved in "My Videos", too. And anything involving "Teen" seems to be more popular than other genres like "Grandmas"...

I don't think your assumption that porn == less popular is a valid one.

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[PIBM]

They had to find a way to make some money out of that thing..

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[Per Wigren]

(why the f*ck is movie underlined as a typo in Chrome?)

You are probably using a British English dictionary. Movie is an American word. Brits call it "film".

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[geminidomino]

why the f*ck is movie underlined as a typo in Chrome

At a guess, they're trying to court Apple's hipster douche demographic. It's a film, you philistine.

*cue flames about "Casablanca" being a film and "Expendables" being a badly-written, overproduced pile of pandering trash*

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I get a sinking feeling, but then I realize it doesn't apply to me. Turns out, I don't download stuff other people like.

If it weren't for the MAFIAA, I would never have started watching foreign films. Early on I figured the risk of getting popped in the USA for downloading a Korean or Japanese film was pretty much null. So foreign films were pretty much all I watched for over half a decade. Turned me on to some really great cinema too.

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[TheSpoom]

*cough*usenet*cough*

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[Anonymous Coward]

Self-righteous AC is auto-fellating.

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[nabsltd]

Not only did it make money, but it made enough to convince a studio to green-light a sequel.

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[Vegemeister]

Paying to pirate.

Jdownloader is free. In many cases the captchas have been broken.

Re:I'm a file sharer/downloader

[Anonymous Coward]

The risk is so low that it doesn't exist for all intensive purposes. Stop worrying about it. So few people have actually lost money except for those who willingly handed over $$$$ based on threats and nothing more.

As if they want to stop file sharing?

[betterunixthanunix]

Damages awarded in lawsuits are so lucrative that people like USCG would never want to see an end to file sharing. Their business is making money by suing people, and they are getting bad directors like Uwe Boll on board. If people suddenly stopped sharing movies, USCG would go out of business, although they might try a few lawsuits anyway just to keep themselves propped up (e.g. people discussing a movie's script on a forum).

Re:As if they want to stop file sharing?

[UnknowingFool]

They only make money by keeping costs down. To keep costs down, the USCG takes shortcuts like suing a whole group instead of individuals. The filing fees saved are potentially in the millions. Unfortunately for them, that is not always proper. You can't lump people in groups for your own convenience; now they have to show that at they very least, that all 20,000 John Does are in the Court's jurisdiction.

Re:As if they want to stop file sharing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The up-front (and sunk) cost in legal fees is too high to pursue actual lawsuits as a business model. Even if the damages awarded are vast, the people losing these lawsuits are unlikely able to pay a fraction of them before being bankrupted. The profit comes from cowing people into settlement fees without taking them to court; the lawsuits are just a deterrent.

Re:As if they want to stop file sharing?

[cthulhu11]

Since when does the United States Coast Guard sue people for torrenting shitty movies??

The real crime was...

[bennomatic]

The real crime was making that movie. It was terrible. Predictable, trite, and itself a stitched-together copy of all the "hottest" moments of dozens of other successful action films.

The studio should be prosecuted for making such a bad movie. The people sharing it only committed the crime of making people think it was worth sharing. If there were 22,000 people sharing it, that means millions watched it, and thus the equivalent of at least a handful of human lifetimes evaporated in a puff of wasted time. Poof.

The essential irony is that the title of the movie should be a dead give-away. The whole thing was expendable.

Re:The real crime was...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? It wasn't a critique of how modern ageism affects people after retirement? It was actually just entertainment? I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you. I expected better from an industry that call itself the entertainment industry.

Re:The real crime was...

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be amusing to see the defendants counter sue as a class action lawsuit.

Re:The real crime was...

[c]

Speaking of irony, it sounds like you actually watched the entire movie... you didn't give anyone actual money for that "privilege", did you?

Re:The real crime was...

[wvmarle]

Until now I had never even heard of that flick...

Re:The real crime was...

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet it made more at the box office than Scott Pilgrim (which I bothered to actually buy a movie ticket for, Expendables was a Netflix rental when I had nothing else worth getting in my queue - goes down easy with scotch), which apparently Universal took a bath on in theater sales, just saying.

Re:The real crime was...

[Ihmhi]

Take any one of the leading men in that film. Are you really expecting to walk into film featuring Stallone or Crews or Lundgren and get high art? It's a goddamned action movie. Does a lot of shit blow up? Check. Does the body count go into the double or even triple digits? Check.

I actually enjoy action movies, because it's trashy, violent entertainment. I usually figure out the end plot of most dramas, so I need either comedy or lots of explosions to distract me.

Re:The real crime was...

[oh-dark-thirty]

I made the mistake of renting it, only realizing it was a mistake about 15 minutes in. To feed my masochistic tendencies I forced myself to watch the whole thing, nearly resorting to eyelid speculums towards the end.

I find it amazing that anyone that worked on that film would allow their name to be shown in the credits. I would be ashamed to admit I swept the soundstage floor, never mind wrote the screenplay.

Re:The real crime was...

[sjames]

Why would that be irony? Perhaps he was one of the millions ripped off by a crap movie who wants his 2 hours and $10 back but will never get it.

He said SHOULD be a dead give-away, not that it was.

Re:The real crime was...

[bennomatic]

Yes, I Netflix'ed it, and watched the DVD. I kept hoping it'd get better, but it just kept getting more cliched and boring.

I think I was sick at the time, which was my excuse for not getting up and doing something else.

And yes, I guess it is somewhat ironic. Sad bennomatic is sad.

Re:The real crime was...

[bennomatic]

Stallone's had a couple of gems. First Blood was great. Rocky was great. Copland wasn't bad. It seems to me there was another one, too; I was hoping for something a little different.

And don't forget about Mickey Rourke. Sigh. You're right. I should have just skipped it. The thing is, trashy violent action movies aren't the problem. It's ones that take the cheapest thrills from all the other action movies you've ever seen and redo them with bigger explosions that I don't like. It's possible to make an original, exciting action flick. I swear it!

Re:The real crime was...

[osu-neko]

Stallone's had a couple of gems. First Blood was great. Rocky was great. Copland wasn't bad. It seems to me there was another one, too; I was hoping for something a little different.

*sigh* I remain one of the few fans of Oscar, it appears...

Re:The real crime was...

[CCarrot]

Stallone's had a couple of gems. First Blood was great. Rocky was great. Copland wasn't bad. It seems to me there was another one, too; I was hoping for something a little different.

*sigh* I remain one of the few fans of Oscar, it appears...

You're not alone...

What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an agaisnt the unconstitutional high fines for copyright infingement. But this trend may not be a good thing. How exactly is a copyright holder supposed to protect their works in court if they can't get past this step? What do they need to show? I think this will have a legislative solution if it holds. Where the legislative solution is a special federal court that has jurisdiction over this step of the process.

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[nedlohs]

They need to show that the people they are suing are under the jurisdiction of the court. Which should be pretty trivial, though of course in reality would mean filing a lot more suits in various courts instead of one big one.

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[cbiltcliffe]

They can get past this step, if they do the legwork necessary.

The problem, as the judge sees, is that the rightsholders take every IP address, regardless of where it's located, and sue them all in one court, in order to get subscriber details from the ISPs involved. Well, the judge is basically saying, and rightfully, I would think, that someone who lives in North Carolina shouldn't be sued anonymously in California, just because the USCG has a buttload of lawsuits to file.

Basically, the USCG is trying to save money by filing all lawsuits together, rather than in the appropriate courts. The judge is saying they can't do this.

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of curiosity, how is it "unconstitutional?" Where in the constitution does it say that there is a limit to what dollar amount someone can sue for?

Keep in mind - the 8th Amendment doesn't specify what "excessive" is. For you it may be $1,000. For others it may be $10,000. (Of course, for the record labels, no amount is excessive)

Also, it's *very* rare that a copyright infringement is considered a criminal case. It's almost always a civil case.

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[bmo]

>They can get past this step, if they do the legwork necessary.

The thing is, they can't.

Because the court also vacated discovery. No more discovery. That's it. No more subpoenas will be written trying to attach an IP to a name.

They have to work with what they've got. Which ain't much. This dooms USCG, which I hate to type because it's also the initials for a worthwhile institution called the US Coast Guard

US Copyright Group was just told to go suck on lemons by the court.

--
BMO

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[Anonymous Coward]

No more subpoenas will be written trying to attach an IP to a name.

And for a good reason. You can't really be sure that the person who did the downloading is the same person who owns the IP.

And that's just too bad. The burden of proof is on the accusers, and if they fail to prove their claims (which they most likely always will), then they are simply out of luck. I don't really have any sympathy for people trying to make a business out of suing people because they downloaded copyrighted material which, at most, caused a potential loss of potential profit. Not exactly a huge priority.

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[dbet]

IMO if the only way to protect your IP is with massively unfair punishment ($80,000 per song?), then it should be illegal to try to protect your IP. What will happen? Hollywood stops making films ever again? Yeah fucking right. They will continue, and still make as much money as they always have. Lots of people still like going to the movies, still like owning the DVDs, still like iTunes and live music.

But this will never happen. Not because the legal system cares about Hollywood, but because the legal system care about lawyers. The legal profession makes too much money when anyone sues anyone else. They won't get in the way of their own paycheck. It's just another good ol' boys network.

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[compro01]

The thing is, they can't.

Sure they can.

1. Run IPs through a geo-ip database.
2. File suits in the proper courts for each of the general locations indicated.
3. File subpoena for each case to the relevant ISP(s) for the accounts for each IP.

It's just work they don't want to do.

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[cbiltcliffe]

They may have been blocked entirely for this case. But that's probably because they pissed off the judge by being dicks.
I don't know for sure, as I haven't read the whole article.

However, if they'd done it properly to begin with, and filed all the cases in the appropriate courts, then there would have been no reason to kick them out, from what I understand.

Having said that, IANAL, and IDPOOTV.

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[bmo]

This is late but...

Have you tried plugging in your IP address to a GeoIP site?

It's ridiculously inaccurate. Up here i the Northeast, where the states are small, you're lucky if it falls within your state border.

Now look at the size of the DC court's jurisdiction.

--
BMO

Re:What is the the Copyrights holders solution

[Ash-Fox]

I don't really have any sympathy for people trying to make a business out of suing people because they downloaded copyrighted material which, at most, caused a potential loss of potential profit. Not exactly a huge priority.

As far as I understand, the actual act of suing people doesn't really make money. What does make the money is discouraging people from doing piracy so you can continue making profits from people buying the content legally.

Jurisdiction

[Iamthecheese]

This completely dodges the point I hoped to see addressed: whether copyright law as written stands on constitutionally firm grounds.

Re:Jurisdiction

[countertrolling]

And it will never be addressed, because it simply doesn't matter. The law only applies to people who can't defend themselves, never to the people who prey upon them. John doe warrants and other 'unconstitutional' regulations are already being used in other ares like 'terrorism' and drugs.. The industry will ultimately get its way here, and the SWAT teams will be knocking your door down soon enough

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Eldred v. Ashcroft settled that one pretty firmly, and not in the direction that you wanted it to. Move on.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Move on, as in do nothing relative to the matter?

Because YOU say so? Fuck off.

Re:Woo! Hoo!

[cbiltcliffe]

Arrrrgghhh, start downloading, me mateys!

...

Start?

Question

[bigsexyjoe]

Was this because watching that movie is punishment enough?

So basically...

[kaizendojo]

the lawsuit is in danger of suffering the same fate as the movie - falling into complete obscurity. Talk about self referential.

Crossley declaired bankrupt

[tttonyyy]

Pertinent to the story, just spotted this in the news:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/367885/acs-law-solicitor-is-bankrupt

Blackmailing filesharers didn't turn out to be the money-spinner he anticipated it to be...

Re:Crossley declaired bankrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Crossley, here are you come-upins you sleazy fucker!

And since you are broke now, consider these pro bono come-upins!

Re:Crossley declaired bankrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

That link has more to the story.
How'd he afford to drive a Bentley and live in a nice house?
I wanna be "bankrupt" too!

Re:Crossley declaired bankrupt

[Vegemeister]

The word is comeuppance you dumbass.

Re:Crossley declaired bankrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on your dictionary. Just like I'm not a dumb donkey.

Re:Crossley declaired bankrupt

[thetartanavenger]

Blackmailing filesharers didn't turn out to be the money-spinner he anticipated it to be...

I'm not sure I agree. From your link:

Andrew Crossley continued to reside in a £700,000 home with a Bentley in the driveway.

Just another slimy conman working the system.

Re:Crossley declaired bankrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh be still my beating heart!! :)

Re:Crossley declaired bankrupt

[Scott Scott]

Just goes to show that slime pays.

Expendables?

[Stenchwarrior]

Until this post I'd never even heard of that flick. I think I'll download it when I get home...

Re:Expendables?

[Virtucon]

You're not missing much. The funniest scene and about the only scene in that movie that was any good was Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Stallone in a Church. The dialog between Arnold and Stallone was the only bright spot in that movie.

Frankly, they should just give the movie away.

Pissing off the Judge...

[bmo]

... is generally a bad idea.

He's the guy who says what you can get away with. If you're the plaintiff in a lawsuit, you don't want him holding you to strict rules. You want a "we're all just amicable people trying to figure out the answer here" kind of deal.

Not this.

This copyright group is toast.

One wonders what Judge Learned Hand would have said in a situation like this. It would have been colourful.

--
BMO

Alternate title:

[steelfood]

Runaway legal system brakes in time for 22,000 filesharing Does.

Sued for pirating The Expandables?

[fafaforza]

Of all the movies you can pirate, can you imagine getting sued for watching that turd? The viewers should be the ones suing the studio -- to get their money back!

Re:Sued for pirating The Expandables?

[Anonymous Coward]

What money?

This article is innaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I saw a doe on the side of the road with a burnt dvd by its hoof, the number should now 23,321.

Whew..

[Anonymous Coward]

For a moment, I thought I was on the list. Then I remembered I PAID to see that movie, but the experience had degraded in my mind to the level of a torrent.

Re:Whew..

[cashman73]

Maybe they wouldn't have lost 20% of their profit on that movie if they didn't have to overpay Arnold Schwarzenegger for his 30 second role in the film?

Class action results

[levis501]

Any time I've been in on a class action, I've found that the plaintiffs receive only a small percentage of the lost value of the goods or services in question. According to this article, this copyright group is seeking $2000 per instance for a movie worth $10-$20. They must be out of their minds, right?

Re:Class action results

[oh-dark-thirty]

Crazy like foxes...as you've also found in class actions, attorney's fees make up a disproportionate amount of the settlement. If anyone thinks these guys are doing this to protect and serve the rightsholders, they haven't been paying attention in class.

Where?

[Benfea]

Let us know where you found this semblance of intelligence so we can track it down and crush it with aluminum baseball bats!

Working Properly?

[lymond01]

Isn't this how people want it to work? Don't sue the ISP or threaten the University. Go after the individual file sharers. And now that they're doing it, people are trying to stop the process? Ugh.

Musicians should go back to performing for money, rather than just selling their recordings. Too much hassle. :-)

Re:Working Properly?

[robot256]

Isn't this how people want it to work? Don't sue the ISP or threaten the University. Go after the individual file sharers. And now that they're doing it, people are trying to stop the process? Ugh.

What you see here is known as "due process". You cannot sue someone if you have no information on them, no real evidence against a real person. It has already been determined that an IP address does legally point back to an individual without extra evidence. We really do want this suit to fail too, so that copyright holders will realize that fighting consumer "piracy" is pointless and go back to only suing commercial infringers.

Musicians should go back to performing for money, rather than just selling their recordings. Too much hassle. :-)

Exactly, and they should accept filesharing for what it is: free publicity. Who knows, they might even start providing a product we would actually want to pay for at a price we can afford. (Streaming & non-DRM downloads, concert tickets for less than a month's rent, etc.) So far those services have met with stiff resistance, but the ones that withstood the flood of lawsuits are flourishing.

Re:Working Properly?

[levis501]

The purpose of copyright law is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Unfortunately copyright law doesn't appear to be promoting the progress of music except for an elite few. Most musicians see little benefit from copyright laws.

Re:Working Properly?

[levis501]

The purpose of copyright law is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.", but currently is only benefiting an elite few darlings of the record industry. Is this how people want it to work?

Craziness

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't anyone see how crazy this is? I mean, how in the hell can deer download movies? First humans and now deer?

That won't stop the MAFIAA

[Lead Butthead]

Quoting a line from a Cameron flick that seems to accurately describes MAFIAA and their lawyers --

It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. It has no moral. And it absolutely will not stop, ever...

Now only if we can crush them with a hydraulic press... (Yes, I inserted the bit about moral.)

Re:That won't stop the MAFIAA

[osu-neko]

A lawyer is (arguably) a person, not a story, so you really shouldn't expect one to have a moral.

"The Expandables"?

[LiquidLink57]

Yeah, I'd say that movie had a lot of room for growth.

On the 23,322nd day of Christmas

[sean.peters]

...my true love gave to me: 23,322 filesharing does, 23,321 bit torrents, 23,320 subpoena'd IPs, 23,319 intellectual property lawyers suing, 23,318 FiOS connections, 23,317 copyright trolls a trollin', 23,316 music executives, a 23,315 GB hard drive..... and RMS in a pear treeeeeeeee

Watch the hand, no, no the other hand...

[Have Brain Will Rent]

I would wager that at this point copyright infringement lawsuits are being maintained as simple misdirection. Something to keep the opposition focussing its energy on the wrong target, or at least diverting significant portions of that energy to the wrong target. Meanwhile legislation is arriving which just makes the copyright owning companies able to do what they want in a much easier way. Magicians do it all the time.