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Federal Judge Rules P2P Users Aren't In a Conspiracy
Fluffeh writes "Judge Holderman ruled against copyright holders who were trying to paint a rather distorted picture. They sue just one Internet user, but use that lawsuit as a pretext to subpoena other defendants who had participated in the same BitTorrent swarm. The plaintiffs in these lawsuits claim that the other users had participated in a "conspiracy" to assist one another in distributing particular copyrighted works. Because the copyright holder's threat is based on the cost of litigation (and risk of public embarrassment — as this is a tactic used increasingly by the pron industry) more so than the damages a defendant would face in the event of a loss, innocent defendants have virtually as much incentive to settle as guilty ones do. That's not how things are supposed to work, and more and more judges are refusing to play along. Coupled with recent rulings in Florida, the copyright holders seem to be finding less and less favor with judges."
Please tell me when its not "fact or fiction" day on the internet?
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
The best April Fools stories are those that border between the outrageous and the plausible. I fell for one this year, usually I don't because a friend of mine has his birthday on March 31st but I had a good hangover and forgot. It got me to anger, then to rage, then to "damnit, got me" and was well played. The rest of the day is kind of a waste though. Actually what I found funniest was the reverse April Fools, our version of AP or Reuters called NTB sent out a press message listing the various jokes, except one of those news stories was real. So they had to send out a fairly embarrassing retraction correcting themselves. Then you have all the laughs at other people who did fall for something, not to mention the smugness of not falling for it. Overall lighten up a bit, the world needs one less than serious day a year.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Most federal judges are not impressed with this "settlement extortion" legal strategy, and aren't letting porn companies (and similar plaintiffs) get away with this on the cheap.
It's not the legal strategy that judges have a problem with -- it was allowed for years when the RIAA started doing it. It's only after the p0rn industry started using the same strategy that judges viewed it as extortion.
Now if we could just get some really obnoxious patent trolls, maybe we could get some legal bias against patents.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss