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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
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.
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?
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!
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......
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!
>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
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