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Hurt Locker Studio Begins Requesting Canadian ISP's Subscriber Info
New submitter Nerdolicious writes "Ars Technica reports that Voltage Pictures, the studio behind the infamous Hurt Locker debacle, has requested subscriber information for thousands of TekSavvy customers in relation to alleged copyright infringements. In their official blog, TekSavvy clarifies the situation and provides further reassurance that they will not release any private customer information without a court order. They have also posted the legal documents containing both the official notice and list of films that are the subjects of the alleged infringements. However, several questions remain to be answered: will Canadian courts be amicable to these tactics after changes to copyright law were made specifically to prevent the predatory legal entanglement of Canadian citizens? Will the studio actually attempt to pursue the situation beyond the proliferation of threatening extortion letters? How would the already-clogged courts react to what amounts to denial-of-service attack on the judicial system?"
I am not a movie pirate and I have never seen this movie, but this bullshit makes me not want to see it. Fuck the Hurt Locker.
I own this movie, it sucks. It's not terrible but it's certainly not good.
This review off rotten tomatoes says it all
"Lacking a narrative arc. There's no central conflict to keep the audience interested. Instead it's just repetitive unrealistic war scenes, and it really drags throughout its long running time. Yawn."
I'm confused by all the good reviews.
sue your fans! see if they EVER support you. idiots.
I paid money to watch Hurt Locker at the movies. Two hours of my life I'll never get back.
with a letter stating that you are paying the requested amount in order to protect yourself from being sued but the Rights Holder as stated in the original notice. Then charge them with extortion.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
will Canadian courts be amicable to these tactics after changes to copyright law were made specifically to prevent the predatory legal entanglement of Canadian citizens? Will the studio actually attempt to pursue the situation beyond the proliferation of threatening extortion letters? How would the already-clogged courts react to what amounts to denial-of-service attack on the judicial system?"
The better question is: What incentive is there for the industry to stop? The United States has proved militarily, economically, and in many other ways that shock and awe are a powerful combination to ensure compliance. Not that they're the first -- the Romans did the same thing, as did many cultures before them as well. The fact is, the only thing they're losing is a tiny amount of money and they're getting huge amounts of press out of it.
Has it ever occurred to anyone that the laws and lawyers and letters and posturing isn't meant to actually have an impact? Statistically, it can't. If right now, today, everyone who was sharing files just for today was dragged into a court action, our justice system would be busy for the next ten years clearing the backlog for just today's infractions. By itself, there's no way that any law, legal action, or technical solution, can even scratch the surface. But what if the point is publicity? A shock and awe campaign that uses lawsuits instead of bombs. The more outrageous, the more press, and the more press, the more people become fearful. Have you noticed that these press releases, actions, and articles, occur on a fairly consistent tick-tock cycle of about three months? It has been going on for years.
This is a public relations campaign... and whenever you're asking how X will react to Y, you're playing right into it. X and Y don't matter. No, honestly, they don't: Statistically, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than getting in trouble for file sharing. My service provider is one of those who promised to impliment the new "six strikes" policy, to much hoopla in the press. That was six months ago. Every month since then, I've downloaded an average of 960GB of pirated material, a lot of it on the "Top 100" list off The Pirate Bay. No letter. No e-mail. Not even a peep about the bandwidth being used. I'm supposed to be in that "top 1%" that they insist they're pursuing all possible legal actions against. No knocks on the door. No black helicopters. My life has continued just as it has before. And I've been doing this for over a decade. I'm not hiding behind proxies, or encrypting my traffic, or doing anything special really at all. It's all right there for anyone to look at.
Nobody has. Even with all the automation, all the legal power, all of the everything that you've heard about... there are still hundreds of millions of people just like me worldwide. Statistics are not in their favor here guys. So the question isn't how Canada will react... the question is: How will you? Because that's the goal of all of this -- it's changing your behavior through fear and doubt. It's an appeal to your emotions -- visions of going to jail and losing everything you ever owned and loved while they parade you out in front of the media. That's the big sell.
So... are you buying?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Considering the new law limits non-commercial infringement to $5,000 per person, what would be the point of pursuing non-commercial infringers? Lawyers fees just to prepare and set out the the threatening letters will likely eat up a fair chunk of that, a one day of examination will likely eat up the rest.
Basically, the Tories, whether they intended to or not, have made pursuit of non-commercial infringers a no-win scenario. The likelihood is that every Canadian who illegally downloaded the Hurt Locker will probably not be liable for more than a few hundred bucks in damages, and if any of them pay a hundred bucks for a lawyer to write a nasty retort to the Hurt Locker's lawyers nasty letter, it's likely the Hurt Locker's lawyers will just abandon it entirely.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That would be $5,069.75 US.
Oh and 1992 called, they want their joke back.
I always assumed if caught I would just grab second hand copies and claim format shifting and an inability to rip my own content. Unless it's some major pre release I don't see how that wouldn't work
As a long-time Teksavvy customer on an unlimited plan, after looking over Voltage Pictures catalogue all I can say is... thank goodness I'm not a Steven Seagal fan.
This doesn't surprise me. People will go to great lengths to get their money. My wife recently got bit by a tick. She went to the doc and they did a bunch of tests and determined she has lyme disease. They sent her to a specialist and the specialist said there was no lyme disease. We paid the doctor bill anyway. One thing we didn't pay right away was the cost for one of the labs done on her. It was $8.11. We completely forgot about it but they ended up sending it to a collection agency and wanted to take us to court, for $8.11. Naturally when I read the letter I just paid the bill, after all it is only $8.11, but to take someone to court over it? Wouldn't the lawyer costs for the company cost way more than the $8.11?
From the court documents, here's the list of films that they were looking for:
Generation Um⦠(2012)
Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010)
True Justice (The Complete First Season) (2010)
The Third Act aka The Magic of Belle Isle (2012)
The Good Doctor (2011)
Rosewood Lane (2011)
Another Happy Day aka The Reasonable Bunch (2011)
Killer Joke (2011)
Escapee (2011)
According to the official documents, this is concerning the download and distribution of the following of Voltage's Works as monitored by Canipre:
Generation Um ... (2012)
Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010)
True Justice (2010)
The Third Act aka The Magic of Belle Isle (2012)
The Good Doctor (2011)
Rosewood Lane (2011)
Another Happy Day aka The Reasonable Bunch (2011)
Killer Joe (2011)
Escapee (2011)
Further in, on page "42" (actually around page 26 of the PDF, I believe), there's another list called "Schedule A" which lists what appears to be all of Voltage's cinematographic works. I'm not sure if that second list is being as aggressively persued as the above. Every title above is contained within Schedula A, also.
Personally, I haven't even *heard* of any of those movies. Can't imagine actual damages could be very high.
When Canada was reforming it's copyright laws it got a specific commitment from the movie industry that they were not interested in mass john-doe lawsuits against consumers. The copyright law was reformed to reflect that. Maximum penalty for _all_ infringements is as much as $5K or as little as $100 and judges are instructed by the law to keep the penalty proportionate to the damages and to consider the hardship of the penalty against the defendant.
Now here we are, the movie studio have proven themselves to be bald-faced liars and are going after consumers in mass john-doe lawsuits.
My hope is that Canadians don't allow themselves to be bullied by these copyright trolls and each and every one of them takes the matter to court. Further, my hope, wish, and desire is that the judges that see these cases see the movie industry for the liars that they are and punish them by awarding the minimum $100 fines.
I am judgment proof (thanks to the crappy economy). So the only way to win is to not play the game. Ignore legal threats, ignore court summons, allow the default judgement, then file for bankruptcy which costs less than than hiring a lawyer.
The surest way to combat piracy will be to require ISP's to map IP addresses to subscribers. Add monitoring and automatic notices that warn of the copyright laws already on the books will follow. Any law that will increase the size of government or more deeply invade the privacy of citizens will be embraced. Prosecutions means more legal busywork, more sentencing, more wage garnishment, etc. All of which bring a smile to the face of our benevolent rulers. Yes, people will be able to encrypt their torrenting and skirt the laws.. but plenty of dumb ones will be caught... enough to keep the lawyers busy and the studios happy.
Oh and 1992 called, they want their joke back.
OH MY GOD, did you warn them?!!
Oh and 1992 called,
Did you warn them??
SJW n. One who posts facts.
TekSavvy is one of Canada's smallest ISP's. Large telcos like Telus are required by the CRTC to allow little guys like TekSavvy access to their copper in order to foster some competition in the industry. The big guys dislike companies like TekSavvy because they sell unlimited data plans, and they've been fighting for some time to impose surcharges based on data useage.
When I hear that copyright enforcers are going after a little player like TekSavvy, I can't help but wonder if the larger ISP's are in collusion.
Oh and 1992 called, they want their joke back.
Why? It still gets Canadians all pissed off when you use it. Doesn't matter if its true or not, they still throw a little hissy fit ... you are a prime example.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Can I pay in BitCoins?
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
My old roommate had a letter show up after his next roommate downloaded "the hurtlocker". He plainly just ignored it and never got another letter nor any other form of contact was made. Everyone gets so scared from something that looks as though it might be legal action coming towards you. This company has made more from these letters on this movie than it did from the sale of tickets or DVD's.
Another friend also ended up paying the fee out of being scared (more so his dad paid it cause it was his account it was downloaded on), makes me wonder the percentage of people who actually pay the fee.
They are requesting the list in Microsoft Excel Format.
"Thank you for your request. As we do not use this format, and as all our gear is proprietary, we will require that you send the required equipment, software, and a technician capable of running it. Please note that as we support complete freedom from copyright, we are not able to agree to any license agreements, thus the reasoning behind why you will need a technician capable of running said software.
Your technician will be presented with a comma separated value format file with Unix line endings with the requested information, in 8-bit ASCII format, as a file on an ext3 formatted USB drive. Ensure he is equipped to deal with this.
We look forward to co-operating with the court in this matter, and understand the court would not want to encourage further copyright infringement by requiring we falsely declare our agreement to a licensing contract."
No, but they do accept rape dollars.
It doesn't really piss us off; it's just more fodder for stuff like this.
a couple hundred benjamins?
No, that would be US$20,000, which is far too high.
Why? It still gets Canadians all pissed off when you use it.
Why would we get pissed? Easier to mock you that your median income has decreased by nearly $4k in the last 4 years, while ours has increased by nearly $5k. In turn, you're going to make more money in Canada than in the US.
Om, nomnomnom...
Yeah, but when the government takes at least half every dollar extra you make, is it really that much better?
Be relentless!
..to achieve in court? This is the thing I truly do not understand. So suppose they get names out of those IPs and the bring those poor people to court. What next? All they have is the list of IPs from one of those companies that were mentioned on /. recently. I.e companies that are heavily affiliated with copyright owner. Can this list of IP addresses be hold as any sort of evidence? I mean anybody can go to whois service, get block of IPs Tekksavvy is using and randomly choose N IPs from it. Then sell this as 'prof of copyright infringement'. So whoever is producing this list has clear financial incentive to make it long and there is no way he can prove that that list of IPs was gathered in any way that correlates with any sort of copyright infringement.
Will court accept such 'evidence'? This sounds to me like allowing victim's family to find and bring in DNA of the killer - not the thing generally allowed.
That's still $6.5k more in my pocket than in yours. I have no problem giving everyone their cut to fund education and health care.
Otherwise, we end up in a situation where someone (you) refuses $9k because they would have to pay the government $2.5k.
Yeah, that's a smart choice.
It's fun to speculate, but it's too soon to guess what's coming. At a minimum we need to wait until the case is underway, lawyers have jumped in, and the inevitable appeals have happened.
In the meantime, they're out to scare end users (easy) and probably more particularly, ISPs (not quite so easy, but not hard either). Because it's much, much easier, and quieter, to bully ISPs into monitoring and controlling their customer's traffic.
TekSavvy is making a big noise about not releasing information until there's a court order. Likely that order will be pretty easy to get. Equally likely TekSavvy won't be willing or able to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight the courts that make the order. And of course the big ISPs in Canada are generally owned by very large companies that are also content producers, so aren't likely to expend much effort in fighting to shield customers.
The question of damages is still very much up in the air, and Voltage will surely argue that every separate downstream IP address counts as another unique infringement. It would be foolhardy to think that no judge would accept that interpretation.
Finally, even though the Harper government passed this legislation, and told us how reasonable it was, don't for a minute think that they won't roll over at the behest of the American government or the big media corporations. These, after all, are the guys who are allowing the sale of a big chunk of the Tar Sands to the Chinese government.
Three Squirrels
the maximum one can lose on disability per month is 50$
so if you sue me for the max of 5000 that is 100 months to get your money..8.3 years and i cant lose anymore money per month
you got that once sued you lose it once and thats it go on just add it to 500 years cause ill die and you lose.
haha
welfare is half this amount so double time
and my aspect on this is they are trying to nit pick out disability and wefare people so they can extort off people they can garnish higher amounts
DONT TELL THEM YOUR FINANCIAL STATUS PERIOD and fight cause every time they show up in a day of court = 3000dollars minimum....
my guess this stunt wont work and teksavvy has said it requires a court order.IF the judge understands that 2300 people each wan tthere day in court hes gonna cost the system huge time , money and when harper is trying to balance the books put a lot a hard ship on people for a shit movie...
it's as good as cashmoney, and if they send it back, then the contract is completed. Offer, consideration and agreement. You have no further obligation to them.
Of course, you could demand a trial by jury and put the burden on them to prove it was YOU who PHYSICALLY DOWNLOADED THE MOVIE. In a civil suit, there is no such burden of proof on the accuser; you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Not being in physical proximity to your computer (ie you're in hospital, in a vegetative state) is not a substantive denial. Apparently.
I wish them luck with that.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
It is worth noting that It's not the first time that Voltage Pictures tries to fuck with Canadians. Last year they had a run at a few dozen Quebecers over the Hurt Locker that time:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5999/125/
I never new if they ended up with some settlements or not. What I do know by experience is that when I rented the Hurt Locker I ended up not watching it because the DVD was only in French. French is my native language but I hate translations, they are simply un-watchable. The Hurt Locker was distributed here by Maple Pictures and contrary to 99.9% of DVDs and BDs, they made two different versions for Canada, one in French and one in English. The English version was nowhere to be found in Québec. Talk about under using technology...
I can only imagine the poor bastard that actually bought the movie only in French (without knowing it) and ended up downloading a proper original English version and getting a 'pre-settlement' letter in the mail 2 years later...
Yes, I warned them about various stuff but they either didn't listen or succeed.
;)
Not surprising, since if they listened and succeeded I wouldn't be warning them about those stuff.
Sure. Canadians don't really pay much more than those in the US do (I would know, I just moved to the US and am now paying US income tax). However, for that little bit extra, Canadians get good health care, great public schools and substantially better social programs. For example, my wife can actually take 10 months off after having a baby and not have to worry about money.
Yeah, but when the government takes at least half every dollar extra you make, is it really that much better?
Well I've lived and worked in the US, and I live in Canada and work in Canada. I still have to pay US income tax on my various investments and securities, and the same for my canadian ones. But 10 years ago I was paying less in taxes, talking to friends who live in the same areas now. They pay more than I do in taxes here in Ontario, minus the HST. Roughly it works out to being the same, sometimes less. Especially on investments.
Om, nomnomnom...
Sounds like FUD indeed! To get some perspective, see if you satisfy the following criteria:
If you are one of the 1100 Teksavvy customers who
downloaded via bitorrent,
between 2009 and 2011 while Canipre was monitoring,
and you downloaded one of these movies:
Generation Um ... (2012)
Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010)
The Whistleblower (2010)
True Justice: Brotherhood (2010)
The Third Act aka The Magic of Belle Isle (2012)
Breathless (2012)
Peace Love & Misunderstanding (2011)
Conviction (2010)
The Good Doctor (2011)
Faces in the Crowd (2011)
Rosewood Lane (2011)
Puncture (2011)
Another Happy Day aka Reasonable Bunch (2011)
The Barrens (2012)
True Justice: Lethal Justice (2010)
True Justice: Blood Alley (2010)
Killer Joe (2011)
Maximum Conviction (2012)
Fire with Fire (2012)
Rites of Passage (2012)
True Justice: Urban Warfare (2010)
True Justice: Deadly Crossing (2010)
Rites of Passage AKA Party Killers (2012)
Balls to the Wall (2011)
Sacrifice (2011)
Escapee (2011)
and you were notified via e-mail from Teksavvy that your personal information has been requested by Voltage,
and you receive a settlement letter in the mail sometime after Dec 17 2012 when Voltage claims it will get a court order,
and you don't settle and go to court,
and you lose,
then the judge will interpret the directive that awards must be proportional to infringement
so you will have to pay something between $100 and $5000
Yup, taxes in Canada work out great for you as long as you don't want to spend any of the money. Especially if you use the tax shelters that make it almost impossible to spend without heinous amounts of taxes being applied, such as RRSPs or TFSAs.
Canada, the land where your money is taxed less than the US. Just as long as you don't intend to use it any time soon.
I made a little under CDN$90000 last year. They took about CDN$26000. Plus sales tax, about CDN$7000 in property tax, etc, but somehow, I suspect you pay those extras too, or Canada is some perverse fantasy of yours of the "Soviet Canuckistan" variety. I can't fault you, there are even people here who have such ridiculous views.
[Posting anonymously because I don't want teh internets to know what I make.}
Does this mean, I enable WPS or go back to WEP? Does that sort of defense hold any water here? Time will tell.
My Bakery Since, 1978
Better than the insurance companies and lawyers taking more than that and giving you less for it.
Think it's easier to vote those companies out of power?
via throwaway email:
Dear Voltage Pictures,
I have been informed by my telco that you wish to gather subscriber information with the intention to extort money from them, with the claim that said subscribers have been involved in commercial piracy.
As a subscriber, and irrespective of whether or not I might be named in that information, I have some information for you. It consists of the final two words in Arkell v- Pressdram (1971) [unreported].
Sincerely,
Anon.
PS: if you do happen across my details, take notice that I shall be demanding a trial by jury, that I shall be self-representing, and that I shall be counter-litigating. Bring it.
-
*I didn't post as AC, neither am I resident in Canada. I just wanted to see the reaction to this post (if any) without having to search.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Teksavvy has already sent out an email stating what is going on. They have also stated they requested a court order before they give up names. They have also stated that 1200 people have been notified that they were identified. If I had been one (I am not on Teksavvy (yet), my excuse would have been I have an Open Access Point, oops I broke the agreement with Teksavvy (I assume it has a no bandwidth sharing clause) but prove I broke the law.
Really? I paid 14% taxes last year and that was on $84k. For this year I think it will be in the low 20's.
Explain that one. Our taxes are higher than the states but you need to be making a buttload to get high percentages and at that point you probably need to hire an accountant to keep track of everything.
My paid-for universal healthcare, much more affordable university and decent public school system, more sanely regulated banking system, better social programs, and lower violent crime rates says "yes". You get what you pay for, and that's less than "half" anyway. There's really not much difference.
At least one U.S. judge thinks it actually is extortion: at http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/2012/07/04/judge-wright-is-so-right-copyright-trolling-is-essentially-an-extortion-scheme/ Judge Otis D. Wright writes:
They've asked for $10,000 per person in punitive damages, twice what the current law allows, so they either to think the old rules apply, or they're just trying to scare people into settling out of court.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
They're hoping to get the contact information of Tek Savvy's customers and send them threatening letters. The letters are cheap, and some people will settle out of court on the mere basis of a threat. Actually going to court is unwise, as it costs money.
davecb@spamcop.net
Why are they only going after customers from a very small and specific ISP which is taking business from BELL, Rogers, and Cogeco? Seems fishy.
They asked a court for the contact information of a huge number of Tek Savvy customers, and will now at least threaten them. we don't hear about any cases involving Bell or Rogers, which suggests that either they didn't ask them for customer listts or that the monopoly players rolled over quietly.
Were I a monopolist, I'd encourage anything that would cause my competitor's customers to be hurt, in hopes the competitor would be hurt.
davecb@spamcop.net
Why? It still gets Canadians all pissed off when you use it. Doesn't matter if its true or not, they still throw a little hissy fit ...
Heh, are you saying that you enjoy reminding people that a CDN dollar was once around 60 cents in US money, and now a CDN dollar is worth more than a US dollar? And you think that pisses off Canadians? Man, I *LOVE* being reminded that my savings have effectively doubled compared to the average American. I *LOVE* hearing that our little country is actually doing better than the sputtering mega-economy on our southern border. So if this is your idea of pissing off Canadians, keep it coming!
The best part is it is hitting the media here and all it will end up doing is informing people of their rights and the limitations that are now in place
Voltage Pictures could hardly have picked a worse country to do this. Canadian privacy laws (which effectively vary by province) are some of the most broad and severe ones I've ever seen. TekSavvy has customers in British Columbia, which means that FOIPPA is in effect. FOIPPA is essentially BC's response to the Patriot Act, in particular to the part of it that states that the US Government may approach any US citizen and demand information from them about another person...and that such a request must be kept secret under pain of imprisonment. Among other things, FOIPPA makes it illegal to divulge private information to an entity under control of a US entity. I know, it sounds like SUCH a blunt instrument that it's hard to believe...but trust me, I've had to deal with it when doing work in BC. It really is that far-reaching and broad.
Where is Voltage Pictures? Los Angeles. Yeah, good luck with that.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Previously, the big ISPs complied with the "notice and notice", forwarding infringement notices onto subscribers, but doing nothing else (even though they weren't obligated to). They are now, but it is business as usual for them, and not news.
Also, TekSavvy is making a big deal about thios too, and that's what helps bring it into the limelight. The big ISPs don't care enough to bother with the news on this, as really, nothing has changed for them.
It's advertising and compensation they want for their DOA movies.
I saw part of Hurt Locker and I couldn't get through it. (It made The Fountain look much more entertaining)
A silent boycott should hurt Voltage Pictures.
IOW: Tell your friends to avoid them because they sue people who watch their movies but don't make demonstrations.
Voltage Pictures is the Metallica of studios
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Can the editors please stop feeding the worst aspects of groupthink and allowing this kind of nonsense onto the site. In no way is equatable to a DOS attack on the justice system. How sympathetic would you be of a bank that took £100 from each customer and then when they all sued used the defence 'all these cases are like a DOS on the justice system'?
Feel free to dislike the tactics and people involved but lets at least keep the level of the front page marginally higher than blatant trolling.
Alas, they're making themselves infamous here, not in the eyes of a random Chatham resident...
dave (a former non-random Chatham resident) c-b
davecb@spamcop.net
I recall watching Hurt Locker for free on Hulu well before its release date. I wonder if Hulu had negotiated rights or if one of the Hulu consortium backers made it available as part of a buzz marketing campaign.
Tek Savvy is doing notice and notice, as per the (new) law, and put one notice on their blog.
Rogers and Bell have been and still are being very close-mouthed about any suits. So far as I know, they do not now and did not in the past do notice-and-notice. In particular I found out about the York University "Norwich Order" against Bell through York and the Slaw legal blog: see http://www.slaw.ca/2009/09/15/york-university-v-bell-canada-enterprises-observations-and-implications-for-future-norwich-jurisprudence/
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I'm Canadian. If you make $90k, your marginal tax rate is most likely over 40%, plus the property taxes, the sales taxes, etc., from enjoying your earnings easily push your marginal rate over 50%.
Be relentless!
My guess is that Bell & Rogers would quietly roll over and give up customer information. Bell & Rogers are media monopolies that, besides being ISPs, also own TV stations and specialty channels that often show movies like Hurt Locker and they wouldn't want to mess up the relationship they have with film studios.