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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.
Yeah, we just watch them for the hidden codes, it's what turns us on.
They probably did a steganography on some key frames in the movie.
That REALLY sucks...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
After all, this will clearly be a deterrent. Or he clearly caused millions of dollars in damage while he was playing with himself. Or something like that. Logic is not actually relevant when it comes to copyrights.
Palm trees and 8
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.
Play the video on the screen and record it with your camcorder before you share it. The analog-HOLE will save you from detection.... Unless they do the punched hole technique that Hollywood does on some frames in a movie.... Then you are hosed....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So did the judge watch all of the evidence?
i blame tcp/ip. hacker protocol.
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
As this one was caught via user-specific codes (Something practical only in online distribution, no good on pressed discs), none of that would have helped.
What useful arts and sciences does it promote? And then, why isn't the penalty declared unconstitutional, it is obvious the penalty exceeds the harm done many times over.
"[porn distributor] had detailed information on the defendants who had paid accounts on the company’s movie portal"
Look, anybody who voluntarily surrenders *their own credit card details with their real name on it* to an internet porn distributor just asks for trouble.
The quoted story sounds like it's full of spin. The way I read the story from the BBC was that there were several defendants, most got thrown out of court due to there being no actual evidence of guilt (IP addresses anyone?) and this guy was found against because he didn't bother turning up. Maybe I misread it though.
Korma: Good
I get the joke you're making.
But it wouldn't matter if he had used proxies etc. It wasn't his IP address that got him. It was the fact the video shared had his personal imprint on the file. Flava didn't ever need to see/detect _him_ uploading the video. The existence of the video on the network is enough to press charges.
His best defence at this time would be to say his machine has been hacked by an unknown party who then went on the release the video via torrent. Which almost certanly will become a defence for people in the near future.
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.
No, for the particular use case this guy (and the GP) are talking about, Bittorrent is, in fact, a dumb solution. The downloading isn't the problem, the sharing back of data you didn't originate is.
And more generically, you're wrong anyway. If someone rooted one of the seeds of your Linux ISO and stuck a bunch of child porn in it, you're guilty of both downloading and distributing child pornography at that point. It doesn't matter what you say you were doing, or that you didn't produce the ISO. And you can't really detect there's a problem until you've already downloaded the whole ISO so you can hash the file. Now, maybe you get your .torrent files from somewhere secure, but people get onto distro servers with some regularity.
So, the GP is absolutely right -- using Bittorrent to download and re-seed anything you didn't explicitly produce yourself is, in fact, unsafe, and doing so with content you know is illegal is just plain stupid.
from TFA: >For Fisher the trouble started when instead of just viewing the films for personal entertainment, he allegedly went on to share copies on BitTorrent. what if my computer is stolen or simply hacked and then those films were putted on bittorrent from someone else? Do i have to be responsible of those movies even in those circumstances so, i don't own them but i'm responsible as if i was a co-author ?
Shouldn't the award AT LEAST be limited to the highest conceivable profit those movies could have *possibly* made had they not sold a single one? There is NO WAY they would have made even a fraction of that had this guy COMPLETELY killed their business.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I have had a look myself and reckon you could find enough free porn to watch it for several hundred hours every day. A lot of it is 2 minute excerpts with links to try to get you to paying sites, but there is also plenty of 20-60 minute stuff with no strings attached.
We mainly just put them in jail and punish them for the addiction.
Because unlike all those commie socialist countries in Europe, that actually works. (Or so my Republican candidate for senate tells me).
He declares bankruptcy, and all his debts get wiped away. This could actually help his finances more than hurt them if he is like the typical American and has more debts than assets.
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
Yea, I'm surprised it's not used more.
I heard at one point the RIAA wanted to do the same with music files legally downloaded; put some watermark that no one would notice in the audio portion of the file.
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
This logic gets silly, though. The same could happen if I buy a magazine which somebody has for some reason taped child porn inside, and, say, lend it to a friend or something. Same as how somebody hiding something stolen in my car doesn't make me guilty of handling stolen goods unless I was provably aware of it.
If you are going to sign in to something in a way that can identify you, and then share possibly watermarked files, it doesn't matter what you use to share the files. The files can be traced back to you. Of course you could say you were hacked if the files were not shared from an IP associated with you. I'd say the two - your ip, and the watermark are enough to say it was probably you. Though if you have others in your family, it could have been them. For instance what could they do to two roommates that share a computer? Each could say it was the other one who shared the file.
...
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.
But his crime was not watching porn. His crime was sharing it illegally. So his addiction would have to be not feeling guilty about being a bittorrent porn leach.
...
Interesting notions but you assume that the lawmakers actually care about common sense.
They don't. They care about keeping their palms greased.
If someone rooted one of the seeds of your Linux ISO and stuck a bunch of child porn in it, you're guilty of both downloading and distributing child pornography at that point.
No, you're not.
With very few exceptions all criminal statutes have intent as a key element of the crime. If there was no intent, there was no crime. In many cases mere knowledge is enough to satisfy the intent requirement, and in some it can be argued that it's sufficient that you should have known. But in the case of downloading Linux ISOs, barring some additional information you had, there's no reason you should have known it contained kiddie porn, and therefore you haven't committed a crime. That's not to say you couldn't be charged and tried (which could seriously screw up your life), but the prosecutor would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you knew or should have known that the files contained illegal material in order to convict you. Which means the government would have to have pretty compelling evidence that you did know, or at least had strong hints. That's pretty unlikely.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
No, the problem is the law itself and the people who support the people who write them
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No you aren't. You only need to provide an offer, good for 3 years, to provide the source code for a nominal fee. If you are distributing the source code unmodified, then you can provide a copy of the offer that you received from upstream[1]. Any Linux ISO that you download will also contain this offer, so by passing it on unmodified you are not violating the GPL.
[1] This actually provides a fairly simple loophole if you're willing to wait three years: take some GPL code, modify it, and give it to a third party. They then sit on it for three years and then sell it as a binary-only product. They pass on your (now expired) offer, and no one has the right to demand the source code from you.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Interesting notions but you assume that the lawmakers actually care about common sense.
They don't. They care about keeping their palms greased.
WRONG metaphor to use with this story, now it will take a few strong drinks to get that mental image out of my head...
Most kiddie-porn statutes do not require ANY intent, just simple possession is enough to get you busted.
Nobody would say "he shared data on http", so please stop confusing the BT protocol with BT trackers.
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.
Is this a reading comprehension problem, or a knee-jerk response to a "zomg, someone saying something bad about something I use" nerve?
Because, while you're quite correct that they could be serving child porn via any mechanism they wanted on that rooted server, this isn't about the bad guy, this is about the GP's assertion that he's safe using BitTorrent because he only downloads Linux distributions. And, for the same reason you don't see lawsuits about people downloading pirated porn movies via Usenet (because they aren't sharing them back), from the perspective of the person downloading the Linux distribution, the difference between getting it via HTTP and BitTorrent is *huge*, from a legal standpoint. (The laws are VERY different between possession and distribution... and to address another comment someone made to my reply -- the question of intent is completely irrelevant when it comes to something like child pornography. Your reputation is ruined the moment the accusation is made, and very few people win with the "it wasn't mine" argument... most people plea out to little or no jail time and registering as a sex offender.)
It's not about the money so much as deterring others. Seeing someone get slapped with a charge they have no way of paying off will probably scare a few people straight.
8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Hmm... don't see any exceptions for "making an example" out of someone... I fact, I would contend, knowing the Founders' feeling about debtors prisons and such, that imposing outrageous fines for the purpose of deterrence is very much an unconstitutional, and thus illegal, act.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It's a hidden code in a movie where every, so taboo!
Oblig ref: http://xkcd.com/981/
Please explain to me, in paranoid nerd terms, what exactly is wrong with watermarking.
You can still format shift and play on any device you want. You can still make backups for your own use. All of the classic arguments about rights restrictions don't apply to watermarking.
The only thing you can't do is share content which you don't own the copyright to.
I'm personally OK with watermarked files, because I can do pretty much everything I want with them, and I don't like stealing content anyway (assuming the payment goes to the actual creators).
The main problem is not the watermarks themselves, but the abusive charges imposed upon the defendant. The watermarks were a tool to single him out and allow for the increasingly absurd copyright laws to be applied over him. I would have no problem with watermarks if he had been ordered to pay U$ 1500,00 for this, but 1.5 million is beyond ridiculous.
Not true. It's rare for child pornography statutes to have strict liability.
For example, New York State's is penal code article 263. Possession: "A person is guilty of possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child when, knowing the character and content thereof, he knowingly has in his possession or control, or knowingly accesses with intent to view, any obscene performance which includes sexual conduct by a child less than sixteen years of age."
The federal statue is what you're most likely to get prosecuted under if they can demonstrate that the material was transmitted over the Internet (and if they don't like you). This is a decent summary, but 18 USC 2252 is probably the most illustrative. Note that every statement in subsection (a) indicates "knowingly".
[1] This actually provides a fairly simple loophole if you're willing to wait three years: take some GPL code, modify it, and give it to a third party. They then sit on it for three years and then sell it as a binary-only product. They pass on your (now expired) offer, and no one has the right to demand the source code from you.
They can't. If they can't fulfill the requirements of the GPL (offer to provide source for 3 years), then they can't legally distribute the code.
So it seems that the ToS made the subscriber accountable for any infringement.
First, it's actually pretty clever that they sign and mark the downloads. They should have informed their users, this probably would make a lot of folks pause to begin with.
The "defendant" (who didn't defend himself) could have claimed that his computer was hacked or someone made copies without his permission. The pressure would be on the company to prove that he uploaded the files himself.
Car analogy: if someone steals my car from my garage, and runs someone over, am I guilty of the hit'n'run?
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I believe the point he was making is that the 3rd party is not required to distribute the source code if it is unchanged, they only need to "forward on" the offer from where they got it. Since where the 3rd party had originally gotten it from is now beyond the 3 year limit, they don't need to provide it either anymore.
IANAL. I'm not saying it is true, or that is how it works. Just clarifying how TheRaven64's claim could possibly work, if all the things he assumes are true are indeed actually true.
It is circumventable... Just like DRM. The difference is that that it does not interfere with the legal use cases of a normal user, while DRM does.
I work for a provider of digitally downloaded music, and we use watermarking.
Several years ago, we had an incident where a high-profile music score was released earlier than intended (a winner of a talent show of some sort IIRC), sold a handful of copies before realising the mistake, and then removing the track again. It popped up on piratebay shortly after, and thanks to watermarking, we were easily able to locate the exact individual who shared the track.
Turned out the marketing guys didn't wanna follow up on the case, apparently because they were afraid to lose reputation with the legit customers.
To this day, I still have this weird "What is power if you don't use it!" feeling when thinking of the case, and I'm regularly annoyed by uneducated masses who essentially doesn't believe such technology exists and can practically be applied.
Posting anonymously for probably obvious reasons.
You are wrong on this point, you do not have to download the whole ISO to verify it. Bittorrent combines all the files to be transfered into one big data chunk and then splits up the chunk into pieces which are individually hashed. The resulting .torrent file ends up recording all the hashes from the individual pieces plus a "master" hash which is the hash of all the individual hashes.
Actually, that's explicitly why I said they needed to compromise the source of the torrent, not one of the seeders. I'm quite aware how bittorrent works.
However (in the UK at least) courts cannot impose a fine/sentence based in any way on deterrent value - you'd be punishing person X for the possible future crimes of unrelated persons Y and Z, which isn't legal.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I think a lot of judges need this 8th amendment tattooed on their foreheads.
The Courts are NOT a method for guaranteeing a company profit, or "setting an example" the punishment for anyone convicted should be based solely on THEIR crime and the damages they've caused.
But Hell, this country is fascist in all but name and admission -- so let's quit pretending the courts care about doing anything but paying lip-service to our constitution. A few more years of electronic voting machines and putting in Corporate-friendly politicos, and they'll have enough stooges to amend this piece of paper.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
The suit was in Illinois and the guy was in Virginia. So you could quite literally be sued anywhere and have to haul your butt across 5 state lines and hire an out of state lawyer with proper standing in whatever jurisdiction you happen to get served for.
That's even assuming that you properly get served to begin with.
I don't think anyone ever established this guy was properly served. He might have found about this the same way that the rest of us did. He might not even know about it still.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Wow, smart marketing guys. That's not something you see every day.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You had no 'power'. You would have to prove the watermarked file was willfully provided by the owner, and a watermarked file fished out of the sea of the internet is not going to cut it.
Apparently it is, as the main article proves.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
You're justifying theft with envy.