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Federal Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Complaint
cluedweasel writes "A Federal judge in Medford, OR has dismissed a piracy case lodged against 34 Oregonians. Judge Ann Aiken ruled that Voltage Pictures LLC unfairly lumped the defendants into what she called a 'reverse class action suit' to save on legal expenses and possibly to intimidate them into paying thousands of dollars for viewing a movie that could be bought or rented for less than $10."
The judge was not enthused that they offered to settle for $7500 while noting that potential penalties could be as much as $150,000.
It's about time the court system grow a backbone and say something to these wankers. What really needs to happen is a lawsuit filed for intimidation by the defendants.
It's about time judges start to see these campaigns as the mass extortion cases that they are. If this was being done by anyone else there would have been RICO charges filed long ago. These cases have nothing to do with preserving copyright and everything to do with extorting the public. A $7500 settlement instead of a $150,000 for a $10 movie, how on earth can this possibly be anything other than sheer extortion?
But seriously though. I'm happy to see judges starting to take a stand and putting the corps in their place. We need more judges like this and the judge that tried putting Prenda in its place!
Can their settlement offers not be used as leverage to show that their actual damage claims are way out of line?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
If judgments only made me pay for what I stole, there'd be no incentive NOT to steal! It would become a "catch me if you can, then I'll make good" game.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"... the manner in which plaintiff is pursuing the Doe defendants has resulted in $123,850 savings in filing fees alone."
So... they only paid for a single instance of the lawsuit, then unfairly duplicated it, when they should have paid for each individual instance of the lawsuit?
That's lawsuit piracy! Think of all the lawyers who could have been employed had they filed individuals lawsuits.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
How is this different han what DA's do with the accused?
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All in all they have done a very effective job of (1) forcing me to see one of their ads, (2) making it very difficult to actually serve their content to the average viewer, (3) making me never want to go to their web site again (the behavior will continue across their whole web site until you enable Javascript), (4) causing me to re-disable Javascript for their site after reading the article and (5) encouraging me to add them to my hosts file so that I don't accidentally go there again.
I come here for the love
If I was convicted of watching a Steven Seagal movie, I'd ask for at least $10,000 in restitution!
I had to block about 20 objects in order to read the article. The entire right sidebar was nothing but ads.
It sounds like you accidentally failed to install NoScript.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Easy to resolve: if you're using Firefox go to Tools / Options / Advanced - and then check Warn me when websites try to redirect or reload the page.
You'll get a nice warning which you don't allow and can actually read the site.
" (2) making it very difficult to actually serve their content to the average viewer"
The average viewer has javascript enabled.
Oh no... it's the future.
It occurs to me that the movie industry could change its approach here. Why not work with streaming companies and send these people a letter with some choices. Pay for the movie at its real costs, purchase a streaming service, pay a fine, or prove you already have done so. If the government worked with them to make a resonable but annoying fine linked to their taxes so they have to otherwise pay it, the vast majority of people would buy the film or the service. Why not, you get out of trouble but the fine is sane so you feel you have some choice. The industry gets its money, a small amount of which goes to pay the government's costs. The government is happy as fine based systems are vastly cheaper if not profitable for them. Everybody wins.
A person who represents himself has a fool for a client.
- paraphrase of a well known quote whose origins I've forgotten
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
cluedweasel says in the parent post:
"The judge was not enthused that they offered to settle for $7500 while noting that potential penalties could be as much as $150,000."
While technically accurate, it's extremely misleading. That makes it sound like the judge got angry that they were letting people off the hook for "only" $7500 when they could have asked for more. In fact, the judge's point was that a movie that could be legally purchased on Amazon as a disc ($9) or a rental ($3,.99) should not have a settlement offer of $7500. The $150,000 issue wasn't made by the judge and is in fact essentially irrelevant to the ruling. Once again the person who posts something interesting on Slashdot icnorrectly seizes on a relatively minor point as being the key issue of the post.
I once got a letter from the NTTA which purported to be a 'Final Notice' when I'd never previously received any notice whatsoever, for a motorcycle going through a toll booth in Dallas that was not, in fact, my motorcycle.
You couldn't tell what the plate number actually was in the picture (although you could tell it was not my motorcycle due to the tail light positioning relative to the plate). It appeared that they made a list of everyone who had a motorcycle with a plate number matching the parts of the plate they could read, and were cycling through those people, sending the letter out and sending it to the next person on the list when that person could show it wasn't them.
The letter, of course, emphasized legal consequences for not paying an $80 fine for what amounted to $1.50 in tolls.
Code or be coded.
Or, for a source that doesn't blank the whole screen with a meta refresh and demand you enable javascript before it will let you read the article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/us-judge-in-ore-dismisses-movie-pirating-lawsuit-calling-it-unfair-reverse-class-action/2013/05/14/74ca6946-bcde-11e2-b537-ab47f0325f7c_story.html
It should be a fine, like $100, that can be charged to the owner of the IP, a lot like automated speeding tickets. Enough to be a deterrent, but not enough to ruin anyone's life. Like speeding, we know that it is technically wrong, but sometimes we want to do it anyway and run the risk of getting caught. And like speeding, piracy will never be eliminated.
The other thing it would do is eliminate these type of shakedowns. Because there is the risk that one day it is a not so sensible judge, and people's lives are ruined because one time they downloaded a Steven Seagal movie or Paul Blart Mall Cop.