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$1,500,000 Fine For Sharing 10 Movies On BitTorrent
another random user writes with news that a Virginia man, Kywan Fisher, has been ordered to pay $1,500,000 to porn-maker Flava Works for sharing ten of the company's films over BitTorrent. "The huge total was reached through penalties of $150,000 per movie, the maximum possible statutory damages under U.S. copyright law." The man did not make any defense in federal court to Flava Works' copyright infringement claims, so the judge handed down a default judgement.
"In 2011 Fisher and several other defendants were sued by adult entertainment company Flava Works. The case in question differs from the so-called 'John Doe' lawsuits as the copyright holder had detailed information on the defendants who had paid accounts on the company’s movie portal. For Fisher the trouble started when instead of just viewing the films for personal entertainment, he allegedly went on to share copies on BitTorrent. These illicit copies were traced directly back to his account through a code embedded in the videos. ... The verdict will be welcomed by Flava and the many other copyright holders involved in BitTorrent lawsuits in the United States. DieTrollDie, a close follower and critic of these cases, points out that it will be widely cited in settlement letters to other defendants, but that the case itself is notably different. 'This was not the normal Copyright Troll case – there was some actual evidence beyond a public IP address. Not a smoking gun by far, but certainly enough to show a preponderance of evidence,' DTD writes.
The problem is not Bittorrent. The problem is what you use Bittorent for.
I I use Bittorent almost exclusivly for down/uploading Linux iso's so I think I'm pretty safe.
Or to download them illegally to begin with, instead of actually paying for watermarked movies.
Speaking as someone who writes and self publishes books for a living (see sig), this is an insane judgement. $150,000 per movie? Ten movies?
I don't know how this could possibly be considered fair. Even if the guy 100% did everything that he is accused of, what's the real cost of his actions? If each film is, say, $10, then this means he cost the porno company 15,000 sales, per movie.
The problem is it just doesn't add up. Something free isn't the same value as something paid. I've given away approximately 20,000 books on Amazon, but I've sold about 1,000. I didn't lose 19,000 sales.
Every retailer knows if you give away free samples or even free products you're encouraging people to come back. To buy your new offerings. People are creatures of habit and once we like something we want more of it. This massive giveaway probably did wonders for their signup rates.
But I understand that putting *every* piece of your product online is bad, and making them permanently and easily available is damaging to sales especially in the short term.
But that much damage? 1.5 million bucks total? This is ludicrous. It's insane. There are punishments for real, genuine crimes with real, lasting harm to a person that are less than that. How is he supposed to pay?
So as a media producer, I think that bankrupting someone for sharing ten films online is completely immoral. It's just wrong.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
So what Flava Works is saying here is that Kywan Fisher would have been better off had he never paid for his Flava Works pornography in the first place. After all, if he hadn't done the right thing and supported the studio, they never would have had his credit card details to begin with, unless his credit card info was stolen...
To those of you who think purchasing Flava Works's "works" is a good idea, let this be a less to you and torrent their content. What if your computer get stolen and the thief takes your porn collection and posts it to bittorrent sites? What if you get a virus and your porn files leak? What if you share a Flava Works file accidentally? I realize that that's a little hard to do with bittorrent, but you get the idea.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
No, the real lesson is DONT PAY FOR PORN!
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The only thing stupid here is your entire argument. If the distro box got rooted, they could start seeding child porn ANYWAY. They don't need torrents to do it either, they could just start up Apache serve it up on port 80 over HTTP.
This is just thinly veiled FUD to try to stop people from downloading and hosting files from the internet. Well, fuck that. That is the whole POINT of the internet, it is how webservers work, it is how mail servers work, it is how chat servers work (streams instead of files though), and people caving to fear that assholes like you spread only hurts it. OH NO! SOMEONE MIGHT ROOT MY BOX AND START HOSTING ILLEGAL MATERIAL!
Get. The. Fuck. Off. The. Internet.
Interesting notions but you assume that the lawmakers actually care about common sense.
They don't. They care about keeping their palms greased.
No good deed goes unpunished. Someone actually paid for some content, and this lawsuit is his reward. We ought to make this into a lesson for the copyright holders. Never buy content. Let them go out of business. They deserve to, for suing their own customers. But, there is another way.
No one should ever give up their privacy to pay for a movie, whether or not it's porn. If Mr. Fisher had used a prepaid credit card with no or fake info, he would be safe from this nonsense. What should he do now? Maybe too late for this one, but he could "accidentally" lose his credit card, then claim thieves used it to buy the porn.
Such privacy preserving payment methods aren't as convenient as they could be, but they do exist. From what I've read, you can buy a prepaid credit card with cash. You may have to give a name and address, because many merchants will use that information to verify that the card hasn't been stolen. But, the personal information does not have to be real. It only has to match with the name and address you use with the online merchant. Privacy advocates particularly recommend this Simon Card. Of course to preserve your privacy you shouldn't buy the prepaid card online, have to go to a store where you can buy it with cash.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
He bought something and then gave it away for free without permission.
You are what is wrong with our World, sir.