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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."
Pardon my ignorance, but can anyone say what "23,322 Filesharing Does" are?
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
"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?
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.
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..
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.
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).
Palm trees and 8
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.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Arrrrgghhh, start downloading, me mateys!
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Start?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Was this because watching that movie is punishment enough?
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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.
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.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
the lawsuit is in danger of suffering the same fate as the movie - falling into complete obscurity. Talk about self referential.
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...
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Until this post I'd never even heard of that flick. I think I'll download it when I get home...
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... 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.
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BMO
Runaway legal system brakes in time for 22,000 filesharing Does.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
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
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
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!
>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.
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BMO
Eldred v. Ashcroft settled that one pretty firmly, and not in the direction that you wanted it to. Move on.
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.
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?
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?
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
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.
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.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Let us know where you found this semblance of intelligence so we can track it down and crush it with aluminum baseball bats!
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. :-)
Quoting a line from a Cameron flick that seems to accurately describes MAFIAA and their lawyers --
Now only if we can crush them with a hydraulic press... (Yes, I inserted the bit about moral.)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Yeah, I'd say that movie had a lot of room for growth.
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.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
...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
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.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
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.
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BMO
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.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.