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Mass Piracy Lawsuits Come To Australia
daria42 writes "Remember when the RIAA started sending tens of thousands of letters to Americans who it had alleged had infringed copyright online, trying to get them all to settle out of court? Yeah, good times. Well that style of mass-lawsuit has now arrived in Australia, courtesy of a new company which dubs itself the 'Movie Rights Group.' The company is currently seeking to obtain details of at least 9,000 Australians it alleges has infringed copyright on one film, and it has a number of other films in the pipeline. Sounds like a good time to know an IP lawyer."
It's not really surprising. Almost always anti-piracy groups start making noise when summer is starting. Feels like they're trying to scare off kids.
these "Movie Rights Group" parasites will get the rough treatment from the courts that they deserve.
On a related side note, Pirate Bay has been unreachable all evening.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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Join an organisation like the Pirate Party and help advocate for changes in the law. This sort of predatory litigation is only going to get worse because the law enables it.
legal BS Foster's Australian for Beer.
Dual factor encryption, Bitchn Dog and http://www.privacy.gov.au/law/act
I'm in the process of writing a book, called Lacuna: Demons of the Void, seen here. The first three chapters are available for free, and are CC-BY-SA-NC; this means that you can legally and safely write whatever fanfiction you want, or pass the sample chapters around, or change and remix them or do whatever you want basically as long as you don't sell it, don't change the licence and credit me appropriately.
I did this because if the book (and subsequent sequels if any) gets popular, I didn't want to get old and fat and retarded and turn into the next George Lucas, grabbing hold of my precious precious IP and never letting go.
Anyway.
Regarding piracy, I wrote on my webpage:
First up I don't like the term "piracy". Bleh. But language is fluid and you all know what I mean, so let's go with it.
Real pirates, like those guys in Somalia, are evil. They're not Jack Sparrow, they're not Captain Hook, they're murderers and rapists and kidnappers and deserved to eat a Tomahawk missile in their sleep. They're scum. They're villains. They're evil. They're not some kid who just wants to read the next (awesome, awesome, aweeeesome) Harry Potter book for free or whatever.
I've never understood musicians, writers and artists who get all messed up about digital piracy. It just strikes me as entirely retarded, especially if they're not in full compliance with every piece of software, hardware, music and movies they've ever seen or owned. I'm sure their $2,000 copy of Adobe Photoshop is fully legitimate now and was when they were 14, and I'm sure they've never downloaded an MP3 in their life.
I see this crap everywhere. I see rap artists thumbing their nose at society, waxing lyrical about sticking it to the man, pimping hoes, glorifying robbery, murder and pushing drugs, while at the same time appearing bereaved that their latest forgettable album appeared on The Pirate Bay the day after it appeared in iTunes. I see armies of cocaine huffing, hooker bashing, Harvard educated RIAA trust-fund babies who've never wanted for anything in their life but a full head of hair, going on about how Limewire costs them the GDP of the entire world ($75,000,000,000,000 dollars) in lost revenue and also, simultaneously, claiming to have had one of their most profitable years ever. How do you even rationalize that kind of blatant, intrinsic wrongness?
Fuck those guys.
I don't give a shit if you got my book from The Pirate Bay. It costs $2 to buy and is available in DRM free PDFs, or even DRM free plaintext if you really want it and you're Richard Stallman (I met you once, by the way, and you were cool. You hated my iPhone though. Sorry bro). If you make $15 Aussie dollars an hour, minimum wage, then $2 represents about eight minutes of your time. If you spent more than eight minutes bringing up the highly overloaded Pirate Bay page, finding a correct torrent, loading the torrent into uTorrent, downloading the file, moving it around on your NAS, putting it into iTunes, getting the book's coverart then syncing it to your iPhone, then yeah you pretty much just robbed yourself.
Just saying. You're probably saving money by buying it vs pirating it, since time=money. LOL. This is why CD's shouldn't be so fucking expensive.
But hey, a lot people have genuine and interesting philosophical beliefs against paying for services rather than physical objects ("it's just bits, man! You can't own bits...!"). Other people are unemployed (or underemployed) and couldn't afford the book anyway. How both these types have high-speed internet is a mystery for the ages, but for those people, well, go forth and torrent... I don't care. I just ask that if you believe all that crazy crap and do like the book, then subsequently you think I deserve some kind of reward for creating it, I beg you not to compromise your principles. Instead, just donate $2 (or whatever) to Child's Play, run by the infinitely-more-talented-than-me dynamic duo of
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
http://www.caps-clothings.com/
As of last month Fosters is British for diluted pisswater.
It's great to see so many stories about Aussie on Slashdot. We've been ignored for far too long.
Someone tar and feather the parent, like an IP lawyer.
legal BS Foster's Australian for Beer.
No one in Australia drinks Fosters, that is only for export.
Nothing is too bad for the rest of the world.
In all seriousness, it's not even brewed here in Oz any more, Heiniken International owns the license so it's not even owned by Fosters Group any more. The last time I saw a Fosters was in Singapore. I had the choice between Fosters, Pure Blonde or some local brew I'd never heard of, I took the local brew.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The French Revolution.
The governed will put up with so much, but when the government gets too out of hand, it will be replaced.
Someone here has a tag line down the order of the boxes of government: soap, ballot,ammo. Use in that order.
Looks like the soap box for now.
( hoping the owner of the clever tag line throws in a comment )...
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
You mention $15 AU. That assumes a minimum wage slave has this cash flow 24 hours a day.
WRONG.
Here the crime of "demanding money with menaces" could probably be laid on these guys if they have some sort of autobot making threats demanding money instead of demanding that you turn up in court (with an option to settle). Rememebr SCO? They were relatively quiet in Australia because if people gave into their demands and they sold one bogus linux licence somebody at SCO Australia may have ended up doing time. I'm aware of some people that rang SCO to attempt to buy a licence (for entrapment, general mischeif or just to see how far they could get) and they were put off with the end result that SCO didn't sell any linux licences in Australia.
Judges really hate lazy lawyers and the idea of spam autobot legal threats on slim evidence is likely to piss them off enough to really want to hurt these guys as much as possible. It will be interesting to see when it happens.
"Remember when the RIAA started sending tens of thousands of letters to Americans who it had alleged had infringed copyright online, trying to get them all to settle out of court? Yeah, good times. Well that style of mass-lawsuit has now arrived in Australia, courtesy of a new company which dubs itself the 'Movie Rights Group.' The company is currently seeking to obtain details of at least 9,000 Australians it alleges has infringed copyright on one film, and it has a number of other films in the pipeline. Sounds like a good time to know an IP lawyer."
I know a really good one! Chris Micallef at Marshalls & Dent Lawyers (Melbourne). Tell him you love slashdot and he'll be good to you ;-)
That's pretty much the entertainment industry's view on the internet. It's this big scary beast which steals profit from them, and they should make no attempt to reconcile that by making property available at a rate which people will pay for. There's no good faith here, and there's no good will. Australia's the obvious target because the companies are smaller and the law is less geared towards the people. Nice little test site to set an international precedent, no?
If over 9,000 people downloaded it, maybe it's worth a watch. Gimmie a sec to fire up NZB.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
So is this why I can't find a torrent of the current season of Junior MasterChef Australia? Best damn food show in the world.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Can I please give an example of how this is complete BS.
IP Address does not equal a Person or Company.
This is a real world example. We get repairs in from customers from time to time that have uTorrent running while the computer is booting, it is sometimes seeding a file or what have you. We have all of these either plugged in via ethernet or wireless as we have to do a series of checks on the machine (internet, video stress testing etc) to make sure that it is ready to be sent back to avoid other issues that may have arisen. I am sure a lot of you guys are familiar with this being a lot of IT professionals here.
It is not our responsibility to go around and close uTorrent or any other programs that may be running, and some of these machines may be bench tested for 72 hours or so. We deliberately try and not to close these programs as we are trying to test it in a 'real world' scenario so we let the customers programs run how they should be running.
So am I/ The Company liable for inadvertently downloading pirated files or uploading them as well because of our customers software? I don't think so. Nor do i see how successful they would be at prosecuting this.
I wonder what webserver they use ? Is it the same one as Sonys that had a weekness?
http://httpd.apache.org/security/vulnerabilities_22.html
-CA
Sounds like a good time to BE an IP lawyer...
When can we start killing lawyers?
I'm pretty sure the world would improve... It's at least worth a try anyway. If it doesn't help i'll give an insincere apology just like a lawyer.
Despite the fact that I could rip an entire tv show in 1080p from youtube, I bought it on itunes because I liked the show and wanted to see more. However I bought it even when I had to strip off the itunes drm (required requiem 2 + a video capable ipod/iphone) to play it on my linux box, so the legal way youtubedownloader would have been easier.
It has been ruled in the Netherlands that only uploading is illegal, so if I wanted to, I could have just gotten a youtube ripper or newsgroup downloader and got the content to my disk for free, legally. I think the only reason those groups stay out of europe is because they're lobbying hard to make downloading a criminal offense instead of a civil one. If they ever do implement the criminal offense, I'm going to set up a second internet connection, use it ONLY for a tor exit node and make damned sure nothing ever happens that could break this fucked up law. As far as I can tell, the burden of proof for a criminal law is still 'innocent until proven guilty', so good luck for them proving it was me. Or do they want to have the owner of the line be responsible? What about viruses, spam and rootkits?
Bribery and conflicts of interest in the Judicary is taken a little more seriously in Australia where it is not an elected post but chosen by existing members of the Judicary - theoretically entirely by merit. It's only the high court that gets appointed by elected officials and they have to choose among existing Judges.
Any barrister that is going to be working for this copyright group is at least a couple of decades away from the high court, and for the sort of corruption you are talking about it has to make it all the way to the high court before it would be effective (otherwise grossly injust decisions get overturned).
We've had a few blatantly corrupt state governments in Australia over the lifetime of the current high court judges and they appear to see a major part of their job as keeping corruption out of the Judicary.
Our expert team of legal and technical associates will provide Copyright Owners with a unique range of solutions to protect and enforce their rights, including but not limited to;
Q: WTF is monetization of copyright?
A: nothing but setting up a permanent stream of income i.e. people who cave to these trolls and pay up.
This bunch are instead "toecutters" - criminals that prey on others, in this case extortion of petty copyright offenders. If the extortion doesn't work they'll aparently call in a legal firm.
I'll use the "quacks like a duck" excuse and call them a gang instead of a company. They are not even in the phone book. If they are actually a registered company (which I doubt) it wouldn't be to hard to find their address and send them a tin of spam.
They are based in a small office with a bunch of tax accountants at the arse end of the Gold Coast.
It's probably one guy and a receptionist like the Cape York spaceport scam.
I'm sure the lowest of Lawyers are a much higher form of life.
thankfully Australian judges are usually honest and they are expected to be impartial and not let their political views affect their judgements. Not to say it can not happen it's just a lot harder to do.
ie : catch the judge with little boys etc.
(whoops sorry I made a mistake here sorry Lionel Murphy it was David Yeldham I ment to link to.)
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/s72790.htm (infamous case in australia)
All the craziness (eg, $example1, $example2) in the US has caused me much concern. I've considered moving. Or rather, I've considered considering moving. As I can only speak English that greatly limits my destinations. Australia was one. Sounds like a great place. It's got kangaroos and people who talk funny.
Then I learned it was a great distance away. Walking, even with the map zoomed out so it looks like towns are only a square or two large, would take time. But that can be remedied with an appropriate mount, of which I already have one.
Then I learned much of that great distance was covered in water. Unfortunately I have yet to teach my chocobo mount to swim, but I can surely procure passage aboard an airship.
Then I learned about Australian dingos and their affection towards children. Being an AC on Slashdot, I am incapable of procreation and thus my worries are rendered naught.
Then I learned about how seven of the top ten poisonous snakes live in Australia. Being an AC on Slashdot, all my wants and desires can be satisfied by visits to local merchant NPCs and/or the Internet, so I won't need to venture out into the wilderness.
But now this? Crap. And I've heard that the mobs aggro from really far away.
Piracy of movies and music is a covert way to introduce world communism. Young generations learn everything is free as in bear, because they live in a computer-bound world, where they only need MP3 and MKV rips of any shady source to be happy and occasionally a budget pizza with a soft drink to survive. Money and hard work loses a meaning for younger generations, because they use the net to illegally obtain everything, for totally free, that satisfies their simple minds. Their bodily survival costs peas in Tesco/Walmart, for which they nag their parents.
The losers of this sinister change are the jews, who invented money, economics, entertainment media and the very Internet the movie pirates abuse. If money loses a meaning due to an entirely bootleg-based virtual world, the wealth and banking influence of jews will be annuled. On a greater scale the society also suffers, because the MP3/xvid pirate generation does not produce anything, they are free-riders who spread couch potato lethargy among mankind, while illegally consuming the hard work of others, like movie producers, musicians and book authors.
This MP3/movie torrent craze is a big anti-semitic conspiracy of russian origin, that aims to disenfranchise jews of their wealth, eventually phase out money completely and re-introduce moneyless communism and throw all societies into a paralysis of virtual online masturbation. Even the USA and its constitution seem to crumble under this menace nowadays, leaving the jews without a worldly protector. In face of this threat we shall put our final hopes in the Adonai Elohim, who promised that Massada will never fall again!
Shema Jisrael, Adonai Elohemu, Adonai Echad!
Hear o' [people of] Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord who is One and Only!
When you think a lot, a lot more and come closer to understanding the deep meaning of the mysterious word "Echad" you will quit boot-legging and learn to respect the hard worked creations of jews within science, literature and entertainment. (But never hope to fully understand that multi-faceted term, since it is firmly beyond human comprehension and even the most respected "wonder" rabbis could not grasp it in its entirety.)
Looks like you aussies will need to start using VPNs to hide your IP address and protect your identity. I live in NZ and I am using www.cyberdodge.co.nz to hide my IP.
In Poland same thing is happening, on pretty large scale, some legal office - Pro Bono (sic), is sending to many internet users in PL letters demanding paying them some amount of money (from $30 to few thousands) and signing an agreement in which that user agrees to pay and, agrees that he/she is guilty of that CRIME and will cease all the illegal activities online (like downloading movies from torrent sites). What is important here is the way how this office obtained users addresses and IPs. Such info is not available to everyone and can be gathered only with courts permission under specific circumstances. That Pro Bono says that it is their KNOW-HOW how they do that, but is it legal?
Lionel Murphy's "little mate" was a grown man and it wasn't a physical sort of mating anyway :) Not that there's anything wrong with that and the frequent harrassment by members of the "Liberal" party of another Judge that is gay was appalling.
Any deviation from what is seen as perfect behaviour and somebody that sees themselves as being impeded by that high court Judge treats it as if it is a crime comparable to murder.
I'm no lawyer but I get them impression that if this guy sends out a huge number of notices and can't prove that he's been instructed by Anchor Bay Entertainment to do it before it is done then he may be facing jail time.
The legal system really hates people who pull scams that function by fooling people into thinking that they are lawyers without actually being lawyers.
"Sounds like a good time to know an IP lawyer."
Hell, it sounds like a good time to BE an IP lawyer...
being a penal colony, I don't see any wisdom in incriminating the inmates on life sentence already.
It's Confidant, not Cosmonaut. Moron.
Seems there's really not much information on this "Movie Rights Group" - a website with an anonymous host with minimal functionality and some buttons not working (and according to wayback, barely touched since created last year), a spokesman who's linkedin profile jumps from "Australian Air Force - 1980" directly to "VP Sales & Marketing Movie Rights Group - 2010", a head office in a suite off broadwater on the gold coast (not exactly the bustling commercial hub of Australia!).
:)
Interestingly, the original website has this wonderful snippet (god I love wayback)
"If, however, you decide not to settle and wish your matter to be heard in Court, we strongly suggest you engage a lawyer as soon as possible. Be aware that you may be exposing yourself to civil damages of up to USD$150,000 plus costs, per infringement."
However I guess when this story broke they thought it would be safer to change it to
"If, however, you decide not to settle and wish your matter to be heard in Court, we strongly suggest you engage a lawyer as soon as possible."
I guess my internet investigation skills are not l33t enough to find much real information on the company
It would be interesting to know if this is a proactive launch by the MPAA into Australia, or is this just some guy who saw what was going on in America, set up a website, flew over there and shopped around until he got a client who thought "why not, this guy wants to take the risk, we know nothing of Australia" - he's not even a law firm as far as I can tell (he's using a Brisbane one).....the website claims "the directors" have been working in IT for over 15 years, anyone from Brisbane/Gold Coast worked with this guy or know the directors?
Company directors are Richard and Matthew Clapham, both live on the gold coast....if you're interested, the ASIC registry has their home addresses (I won't post for privacy reasons), Movie Rights Group Pty Ltd is a home business at Richards address, interestingly, the houses sold a couple of month ago for $1.1M so there's an online tour - reaaaaaly nice house :) (tisk tisk, didn't update ASIC records)
I can't find anything on them online, so I don't know what they mean by "15 years in IT"