Hotfile Settles With MPAA, Drops Countersuit Against Warner Bros

After winning the right to use the term perjury in regards to Warner Bros abuse of the DMCA takedown procedure, and successfully blocking the MPAA from using the term "piracy" at their trial, Hotfile settled out of court with the MPAA today (mere days before the trial was scheduled to begin). As part of the deal, they are dropping their countersuit against Warner Bros, paying $80 million, and halting all operations immediately. The Hotfile website has been replaced by an MPAA message. From Torrent Freak: "The settlement deal was rubber stamped by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, ... The MPAA is happy with the outcome which it says will help to protect the rights of copyright holders on the Internet. 'This judgment by the court is another important step toward protecting an Internet that works for everyone,' MPAA boss Chris Dodd says."

Comments

Perjury! Piracy! What?

[jeffb (2.718)]

So, after winning the right to use an incendiary term in trial, and blocking their opponents from using another incendiary term, Hotfile... rolled over?

Re:Perjury! Piracy! What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perjury is a legal term. Piracy is an analogy.

Re:Perjury! Piracy! What?

[Travis Mansbridge]

They may have just been flexing their legal muscle to achieve a better bargaining position, allowing them to settle for less than they would have had to pay.

Re:Perjury! Piracy! What?

[Joce640k]

Perjury is a crime. Were the appropriate penalties applied?

Re:Perjury! Piracy! What?

[Bacon Bits]

This is a civil trial. Perjury is a criminal offense, and prosecution must be brought by the state.

Re:Perjury! Piracy! What?

[Richard_at_work]

In the free world you can bring a private prosecution, however in the US this freedom was killed in 1981.

Re:Perjury! Piracy! What?

[Zemran]

They won enough to get in the best situation to get a favourable settlement. They were never going to win.

Re:Perjury! Piracy! What?

[Teun]

One of the many loopholes in the US system, back on subject, just hope you live in Virginia :)

"Everyone"

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Of course, by "everyone" he means the only people that count... rich people.

Re:"Everyone"

[Princeofcups]

Of course, by "everyone" he means the only people that count... rich people.

Not even. Only a small segment of rich people. Their only joy is getting richer than the guys in the other business segments, like Hollywood verses Big Oil.

Re:"Everyone"

[rnturn]

Yep... Dodd also has a different definition of "works" than a lot of people would find to be appropriate. His definition appears to refer to "a mechanism that closes off content until rich folks' palms are greased with enough silver". When he says "works" he's not saying that it does anything for content creators after their initial legal contact with publishers.

Re:"Everyone"

[TangoMargarine]

You really think there's *enough* silver for these guys?!

Re:"Everyone"

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Enough silver for that particular piece of content to be opened. There's always more content to demand more silver for.

surprising

[Trepidity]

The most surprising thing to me here is that Hotfile was profitable enough to have $80 million.

Re:surprising

[paiute]

Considering that no movie ever has yet made a profit, yeah.

term

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright will only work for everyone if the term is dropped to 7 years and no extensions.

Re:term

[mcgrew]

Seven years? Kid, seven years is nothing. How old are you, fourteen? I just published Nobots last month, have been working on it since 2009. I'd have a two year copyright.

The Paxil Diaries aren't even in print yet but the copyright would have expired.

Asimov's Foundation trilogy was out for ten years before Asimov made a dime from it.

The present copyright term is way too long and harms creativity and culture, but your length is equally ridiculous. Make it twenty years, same as patents.

Re:term

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it zero years, and do the same with patents. You can have your government-imposed monopolies in hell. Copyright (and patents) are anti-free market, anti-private property, and copyright often utilizes censorship to try to stop websites from hosting copyrighted materials. Truly a disgusting concept.

Re:term

[Anonymous Coward]

Seven years? Kid, seven years is nothing. I just published Nobots last month, have been working on it since 2009. I'd have a two year copyright.

And did you spend those 4 years working on this book because of a personal passion for the subject or was it solely based on financial motivation? If your concern is some arbitrary ROE then you're not a writer I'd bother to read, and would suggest if you can't earn a living from a product in 7 years you're just too damn slow for the realities of the world today. Certainly artists and writers should be able to earn a living from their creative works, but the current state of copyright is the public domain only exists in the illegal actions of file sharers distributing without licence. The pendulum must swing back, and when it does 7 years is going to seem like a gift from God above.. adapt or die.

Re:term

[Atomic Fro]

In what way is a copyright or a patent anti-private?

The way copyright is intended to work, after copyright expires the work falls into the public domain. Hence, anti-private.
The way patents are intended to work, the cost of patent protection is that the way your invention works is public record. Again, anti-private.

I am not arguing that this is a bad thing, but I do believe his claim is correct.

However, as long as copyright never expires and you can fudge your patent application with false or incomplete disclosure you can argue the other way.

Stupid MPAA landing page

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoting from the MPAA message now on hotfile.com:
"If you are looking for your favorite movies or TV shows online, there are more ways than ever today to get high quality access to them on legal platforms."

How about a list of those numerous platforms? How about a link to an MPAA sponsored page of links to these various legal platforms?

Yes, they are out there, but why the hell wouldn't they promote them?

Re:Stupid MPAA landing page

[Anonymous Coward]

Moreover, how about list such platforms usable in places other the US.

Re:Stupid MPAA landing page

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

So where can I get a copy of all the episodes of Robert Morse's wonderul show "That's Life"?

Re:Stupid MPAA landing page

[TechyImmigrant]

>So where can I get a copy of all the episodes of Robert Morse's wonderul show "That's Life"?

Or Esther Rantzen's

Re:Stupid MPAA landing page

[mythosaz]

How about a link to an MPAA sponsored page of links to these various legal platforms?

To which ones? What vendor do you pimp over another vendor? Who does Google sue when you put up the iTunes link? Who does Apple sue when their link is buried halfway down the page? How many people refresh the page and then sue because the sorting algorithm wasn't random enough (like choosing a default IE search provider)? How many of the links does Comcast block or throttle because they are or aren't getting a share of HBO GO or ESPN on Demand?

"Please consider legal alternatives" is fine -- in the bigger picture of things.

Re:Stupid MPAA landing page

[noldrin]

Unfortunately there is a ton of content locked up copyright holders with no legal way to view or access it, whether for entertainment or study. Much of it is decades old and some of it is culturally significant.

Re:Stupid MPAA landing page

[decipher_saint]

This answer is not available in your Region

Re:Stupid MPAA landing page

[Nyder]

Quoting from the MPAA message now on hotfile.com:
"If you are looking for your favorite movies or TV shows online, there are more ways than ever today to get high quality access to them on legal platforms."

How about a list of those numerous platforms? How about a link to an MPAA sponsored page of links to these various legal platforms?

Yes, they are out there, but why the hell wouldn't they promote them?

Because they know people will go back to thepiratebay to get their stuff. Or one of the other many file lockers. MPAA only has a PR victory here.

Re:Stupid MPAA landing page

[GumphMaster]

This is the MPAA, they will not do anything unless someone is paying them to do it. What do you think the MPAA's per-click charge would be? Seriously though, the message is probably court approved and cannot be seen to be commercially preferential to non-parties in the action.

Whoah there!

[pla]

"Perjury" doesn't mean they called Hotfile's CEO mean things and ate the last cupcake. It means Warner Brothers committed a fucking crime. Hotfile can settle all it wants, that doesn't make WB's actions any less of a crime.

So, anyone taking bets on the temperature of Hell when we see formal charges filed here?

Re:Whoah there!

[Jason Levine]

Perjury isn't a crime if a big corporation does it. Just like if you infringe copyright then you're an evil, artist killing individual. If a corporation steals your copyrighted image/photo/etc and uses it for their own purposes, at most they just need to say "oops" and toss some token payment your way. Corporations are people and all people are created equal, but some people are more equal than others.

Re:Whoah there!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had people commit perjury against me in court. Judge didn't do shit. I was able to prove that they had forged a "sworn testimony" against me from a 3rd party by showing that the dates that it was dated outside the scope of when that 3rd party would have had any dealings or knowledge about the case. All the judge did was dismiss that single piece of evidence. You can get away with perjury all you want because judges don't care (they're used to being lied to) and juries will almost NEVER convict someone of perjury -- so good luck getting a DA to prosecute. There is no real defense for an honest man in court against a dishonest man.

Re:Whoah there!

[DrJimbo]

You can get away with perjury all you want because judges don't care [...]

That is only because you are an individual and not a corporation. We live in a feudal society where individuals are serfs and corporations are the lords and masters. The purpose of the courts now is to protect corporations from individuals. Crimes against serfs are usually not considered significant but if an uppity serf rebels against a corporation then there is hell to pay.

Re:Whoah there!

[ihtoit]

there's this thing in English law, I don't know about the US code, that specifies for every civil or criminal offence, a section entitled "Offence by Bodies Corporate", in which the Director of a company is legally responsible - whether he is aware of the act or not* - for every single thing that occurs on his watch.

*caveat: ignorance is not a defence. - seven hundred year old maxim of English case law

There is, of course, an exception to this rule: Section 71 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 provides that a public authority will be held immune from civil claims if it turns evidence in *any other proceeding*.

This exception is widely abused to gain immunity from criminal prosecution as well, as I have witnessed first hand.

Correction:

[larry bagina]

You forgot to mention that Chris Dodd is a disgraced former senator. Why the MPAA would want to associate with a scumbag of that caliber is anyone's guess.

Re:Correction:

[Spy Handler]

He must've done nice things for the movie studios while he was in office. Giving him a nice cushy job after he's out is how they repay their lapdogs.

Re:Correction:

[next_ghost]

Why the MPAA would want to associate with a scumbag of that caliber is anyone's guess.

That's his perfect qualification for the job, of course.

Re:Correction:

[Anonymous Coward]

Disgraced or not, he still retains access to his former Senate colleagues. And by "hiring" him, MPAA gets more lobbyist results than they would get from hiring a K street firm or funding a PAC (although they do that as well). When something the MPAA is interested in comes up, by virtue of his position, they get a head start in influencing the results leaving everyone else to react. This also allows for the possibility of "stealth lobbying", where he can lobby his former Senate Colleagues, and (hopefully) no one will find out.

Re:Correction:

[Rakarra]

Was Chris Dodd disgraced for having sex with farm animals? Does the MPAA arrange coke parties at farms so that Chris Dodd can have wild bestial orgies? Or was Chris Dodd the guy who was disgraced for having anal sex with underage boys in the airport bathroom?

None of the above. The only blemishes I could find on his record were that he was fairly cozy with the financial services industry that he was supposed to regulate from his seat as chairman of the Senate Banking Committe, and they heavily funded his 2008 presidential campaign. He was a VIP customer of Countrywide Financial and then voted to give Countrywide a bailout in the wake of the housing collapse. He was probably rightly seen as being deep in the pockets of Wall Street interests. On the plus side though, at least he managed to sneak in a clause limiting "excessive executive pay" for firms that the government loaned/gave money too (though even that was not without controversy...)

The other big blemish would be that he accepted the MPAA chairman role and has been their mouthpiece ever since.

Jurisdiction

[Adrian Lopez]

How does a US federal court gain jurisdiction over a company located in Panama?

A ruling prior to this settlement held that Hotfile could be subject to vicarious liability for failing to comply with the DMCA (they allegedly ignored a bunch of DMCA takedown requests and failed to shut down a bunch of accounts despite repeat infringements), but the DMCA is US law, not Panama law. Unless copyright is somehow a special case (due to, say, international agreements), I fail to see why Hotfile should be subject to US copyright law anymore than US companies should be subject to Chinese or Iranian censorship laws.

What gives?

Re:Jurisdiction

[shentino]

In the US, the government bends over for business.

In China, business bends over for the government.

Re:Jurisdiction

[future assassin]

>What gives?

Where have you been? There's this new law of the world called Intellectual Property which,... wait wait I'll explain it in peasant terms

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!"

See it all makes sense now

Re:Jurisdiction

[X0563511]

(due to, say, international agreements)

That, exactly, is what gives.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Adrian Lopez]

[International agreements], exactly, is what gives.

OK, but aren't such agreements usually limited to those specific terms which signatories agree to incorporate into local law?

Do these agreements instead create a situation where US copyright holders can sue in the United States without regard to what the law says in the defendant's place of residence?

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, US is the new China.

MPAA message wrong (surprise)

[Anonymous Coward]

The MPAA message says that a federal court found Hotfile liable. The court didn't find anything because the parties settled before trial began. It seems a little disingenuous, but perfectly within the normal bounds of the MPAA playbook, to blatantly lie like that.

Bullshit

[Powercntrl]

This really sucks for the Android modding community, as these type of file hosting sites were really popular for sharing ROMs. What really surprises me is that there actually were enough fucktards sharing Hollywood shit through file hosting sites that the MPAA took notice. I thought anyone with half a brain used torrent sites (like piratebay) for movies/tv shows. Hotfile seemed more or less for sharing legitimate files. If they can be intimidated into shutting down, can Mediafire and Dropbox be far behind?

Doesn't copyright start when *published* ?

[walterbyrd]

And not when you first started working on something?

If so, then your argument makes no sense.

> Seven years? Kid, seven years is nothing. How old are you, fourteen? I just published Nobots [mcgrewbooks.com] last month, have been working on it since 2009. I'd have a two year copyright.

No, you would have 6 years and 11 months left.

Re:Doesn't copyright start when *published* ?

[Devoidoid]

Copyright in the US starts at the moment of creation. I don't know if this is further defined anywhere. At the very least it means when a work is first completed. Publication is irrelevant.

Re:Doesn't copyright start when *published* ?

[GumphMaster]

Current copyright in the US exists from the time of creation but the 70 year expiry period does not start until the author dies, which clearly has nothing to do with either publication or creation dates. The assumed death of the author and periods for works-for-hire do not kick in until 95 years after publication or 125 years after creation, whichever occurs first. Publish something in your twenties and the world can expect it to be locked away for at least the next 125 years.

It seems reasonable to assume the AC's great public policy contribution would apply from publication (i.e. the point at which the work ceased to also be a trade secret) but I do not hold much hope of any elaboration on the AC's part.

Re:Doesn't copyright start when *published* ?

[mcgrew]

I published the first draft at slashdot as I wrote it. Hadron Destroyers was published on slashdot on Dec 2, 2009. And as I don't have a huge marketing budget it will take some time for people to discover it, if they ever do. Click my home page link to read the finished version.

And four from seven is three. I released the book November this year, Dec 2 is four years.

Re:insulting lie in the "MPAA message"

[lgw]

It's quite absurd that ripping my Bluray to get "just a damn file" to watch is illegal (and it's not in all countries), but since it is, I have no incentive to buy the Bluray instead of torrenting someone else's rip.

If the MPAA had the vaguest glimmering of a clue, they'd notice the success of DRM-free iTunes and just offer every damn movie and TV show for paid download, DRM-free, from one central site. I'd happily pay to access that site!