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Why Copyright Trolling In Canada Doesn't Pay
An anonymous reader writes "In the aftermath of the Canadian
file sharing decision involving Voltage Pictures that includes
an order to disclose thousands of subscriber names, the big question
is what comes next. Michael Geist examines
the law and economics behind file sharing litigation in Canada
and concludes that copyright trolling doesn't pay as the economics
of suing thousands of Canadians for downloading a movie for personal
purposes is likely to lead to hundreds of thousands in losses for
rights holders."
Maybe they should change the law. When someone infringes on your rights, shouldn't you have recourse to sue them for damages?
A studio enforcing their copyright against personal-use downloads might be a somewhat crappy and ill-advised practice, but it's not "trolling". To me if you were going to call something "copyright trolling" it would be more like using copyright letters to silence people, aka SLAPP, not using copyright the way it was intended, to prevent people other than the owner from making copies of the entire media as a substitute to buying it from the media holder.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Umm, that would be because Canadien dollars are only worth like 90 cents.
ruled a suicide of sorts http://lgbts.yale.edu/people/samuel-see
wasn't this to compensate media companies for data copying?
why pay a blank media tax and also restrict what they do online, re: copying?
look, if you start out assuming I'm guilty and force a penalty fee on me, I see no reason to not make the best of it and copy as much as I can, just to make USE of the money you forced out of me.
canada: you used to be cool. what happened?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The way the law works is the copyright levy covers you for downloading, not "distributing". You can't download via torrent without also distributing.
Why don't they just give them all an introductory offer on Netflix or similar? Build some good will and encourage them away from downloading for free.
Lawyers will be the only ones making the money in this case. The settlement will be less than what it will cost for a day in court as the damages are capped.
Apparently I'm actually one of the IP addresses named in the original suit. Funny thing is, I don't know, nor have I downloaded any of Voltage's list of crappy films. They actually have 'The Hurt Locker' (which I haven't seen) in their list but the rest are pretty much B movies. What's even more funny is that the time during which I was alleged to have downloaded some of their stuff was the same time I was in Europe on a two week vacation. There were people looking in on our house and we also have neighbors and such who use our wifi so certainly others might have downloaded movies but not me.
A fun fact about Canadian jurisprudence is that typically the loser pays court costs so if they DO try to take me to court, I think I might exhaust ever single possible legal argument, drag the whole thing out as long as I can before dropping that bombshell. I'm pretty sure that being on the other side of the Atlantic in the middle of the Adriatic on a cruise ship with no internet access proves that I didn't download anything... If I can cost Voltage a fortune in legal fees then it will be a good day.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Geist errs in saying that the costs to obtain IP addresses from the ISP were estimated at $200,000. The actual figure was $20,000. For two thousand odd IP addresses, $10/per makes sense, $100/per clearly doesn't.
Even worse, his estimate of law firm costs compounds the error:
"assume a matching $200,000."
So the two biggest cited costs- totaling $400K or $200 per IP address- appear off by a factor of 10. I think this means that more analysis might be needed to conclude that rights holders would lose 'hundreds of thousands'.
Some people seem to forget that every member of the public is "rights holder" as well, and that our collective rights are more important than those of a corporation (especially one seeking to enforce an obsolete business model at the expense of everyone else).
I'm glad Canada's judiciary knows this.
The media groups are currently using an incorrect thought that one download equals one sale lost. This is incorrect logic as most of the people who download the media in question would never have purchased it to begin with and only downloaded it because they could without paying an enormous ransom. The fact that it cost the people who make the media nothing should also be taken into account. Pirating media is not like physical theft. In physical theft there is an item and the money invested in it that is being removed from the possession of the victim, but piracy is creating a copy of the product and not paying the owner of the original product for having done so. It would be like scanning a statue with a 3d scanner and making a 3d print of it. The owner of the statue still owns his statue and has lost nothing physical.
So using their incorrect model they will assess damages as if you had stolen from them each of the items that you digitally copied even though they still possess the original and you'd never have bought the media so their business has not been impacted by you.
I'm not familiar with Canadian Law but it sounds like that would mean as much as a couple dollars a song or thirty dollars a movie. In the USA they would be awarded a sum in excess of 10K per song and 30K per movie, and heaven help you if they can hang the "distrubution" frame around your neck. You will effectively become their indentured servant for life as they will then be awarded an ammount based on completely fictitious numbers that have nothing to do with how many people actually downloaded from your system. You might as well write them a blank check.
If Voltage sends you a letter, the best thing to do would be to wipe your arse with it and put it in a ziplock and mail it right back to them. That's what I would do personally. Or I would mail them a parcel with one of my dogs "presents" neatly placed in a muffin paper. Let them litigate that.
economics of suing thousands of Canadians for downloading a movie for personal purposes is likely to lead to hundreds of thousands in losses for rights holders."
They just have to sue the one or two that doesn't pay the expensive settlement demand, in order to make examples out of them.
and when they find out everyone they are suing is on welfare that the law states can only take 25$ in anyone month
it will mean they can wait a fookin long time to get 100$ back
haha and the best part you can only get 25$ ONCE per month in other words should that person get caught again and again the max is only 25$
yup get welfare and disability people to download it all and we can all just donate 200$ to them ( allowed ot make 200$ a month YET law still states you can only take 49 off them )
sound like a deal yet?
Stick it to the man i say
And as usual, the pro piracy shills try to frame the issue as "downloading ", rather than the obviously more harmful "distributing".
We pay the tax on cassettes and CDs, and likely to other media at the time (mini discs maybe?). But the tax ends before DVDs, resulting in confused expressions when price comparing similar stacks of blank DVDs and CDs at the store.