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Lionsgate Sues Limetorrents, Played.to, and Others Over Expendables 3 Leak
hypnosec writes Lionsgate, the film company in charge of distribution for Expendables 3, has filed a lawsuit against unknown individuals who shared a DVD-level copy of the movie and six file-sharing sites known to have the links through which copies of the movies are being downloaded illegally. An advance copy of Expendables 3 was leaked online in July, and it was downloaded as many as 180,000 times in just 24 hours. The movie, which is releasing on August 15, is said to have crossed two million downloads already.
In addition to the lawsuit, the Dept. of Homeland Security is on the case.
For a civil matter relating to a MOVIE? Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck, America?
I'm glad to know that DHS has solved all the critical security issues of our nation so that they can devote their resources to Expendables 3.
I feel safe and secure now.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Their biggest loss will be the revenue lost from all the people that will get to see ahead of time what a turd this will be - BEFORE the Hollywood Bullshit Mega-Hype Machine has a chance to launch the hypnotic media assault that will try to trick the masses into thinking it's a good movie.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Meh. A marketing plot of Lionsgate to promote another movie. At the same time that they victimize themselves while criminalizing their clients.
Don't mind that those dreaded pirates helps them to rake so much money from people's pockets.
Or maybe someone should tell you that if they spend millions of dollars on something it is their right to sit on it as long as they want to. Since when is it your right to tell them what to do? Do you think you will be happy if Lionsgate takes your personal documents with the argument that you should not be sitting on it for so long?
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Do you think spending Federal Dollars on law enforcement to make sure you keep the stuff in your home from criminal gangs is a good idea? Because they are preventing you from profiting from your work too.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Thank you slashdot!
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Imagine if you were an author who wrote a book... with said book being pirated before it even was released, only to be downloaded a couple million times. How would that make you feel?
Assuming that by piracy you mean "shared for free" and not taking over of oil tankers off the coast of Somalia, I'd be laughing all the way to the bank because...
a) a book downloaded million times even before it's out would also be sold in millions of copies because it is clearly a most wanted book;
b) all those prizes for literature I'd rake in - again, cause it is such a fantastic book;
c) future contracts for my other books based on being "one of the most sought after and most read authors of our time";
d) FUCK YOU SHAKESPEARE!
e) movie rights;
f) merch;
g) "More people read this book than the Bible - find out why" sells;
Also, every single book by Stephen King is out there in a scanned and OCR-ed form, yet people still keep buying his books, old and new, while publishers keep paying him millions of dollars on a promise of writing a new book.
And last I checked Metallica still keeps on making and selling albums despite Napster forcing them to sell both their kidneys, lungs, livers, testicles and feet to pay for piratizing costs they had to face.
It's free publicity.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Wanna sue the gov't for something meaningful? Sue to get ALL of it (DHS, FBI, local cops, whatever) away from filling the welfare trough for the studio scum.
The Blu-Ray for "Under the Skin" has 11 MINUTES of uninterruptible BS before the menu (but, yes, she IS that hot). The torrent is a better product; "let the marketplace decide".
A movie not released yet only available to those who have a stake in it is released seems to me someone doesn't believe its worth it or doesn't like their boss BTW I believe a movie ticket DVD or blu-ray is over priced
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
You obviously don't work on anything creative or else you might think differently.
You claim to speak for all people who work on anything "creative"? And what does what he works on have to do with the validity of his arguments? It's always funny to me to see people say that the people directly involved in the situation are more right than anyone else. Have you ever heard of something called "bias"? Of course people who stand to gain from a policy are going to support it in most cases! They're not any more incorrect, either, because people's arguments stand on their own merits.
Just because you don't want to pay for content does not mean you have the right to obtain it for free because the creator is not missing out on selling it to you.
I do have a right to free speech and my own private property. People voluntarily send me data (free speech) using their own private property (private property rights); the person or people who originally organized the data are almost never involved in this process, and at most, they simply do not gain; that is not the same as losing something.
Yet, some people think it's okay to have the 'right' to have government-enforced monopolies over ideas that infringe upon free speech and private property rights. I'd prefer to let the free market handle things; if you can't figure out a way to profit in the Age of Information, then you're going to fail, and that's really how it should be.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Because they are preventing you from profiting from your work too.
Copyright infringement, at most, causes you to not gain something (other people's money, which they chose not to give you); it does not cause you to lose anything tangible.
If you honestly think that the government should waste money trying to stop people from voluntarily copying movies and such using their own private property, then I think you may be a bit mentally unstable. Copyright is anti-free market, anti-free speech, and anti-real private property.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
While this has probably lost them some money, I have always felt that one of the reasons that the movie industry hates torrents is that it gives people such a wide choice that crappy films don't end up being downloaded. How insulting must it be when your precious darling of a film is so undesired that people won't even take it for free.
Not to mention that movies that aren't being "professionally" distributed suddenly have some traction.
Or maybe someone should tell you that if they spend millions of dollars on something it is their right to sit on it as long as they want to. Since when is it your right to tell them what to do?
People are entitled to "tell" them what they like. (*) They don't have to like, nor follow that advice, but the OP is perfectly entitled to free speech on the matter- that doesn't infringe upon their right of ownership as you seem to think it does.
They're free to do what they want with their intellectual property, but they're not exempt from having people be able to say that what they're doing with it is stupid. Your implication appears to be a not-so-distant relative of the ever-popular "If you don't like it, you don't have to buy it, so you have no right to criticise it" fallacy.
Do you think you will be happy if Lionsgate takes your personal documents with the argument that you should not be sitting on it for so long?
No, I think Lionsgate would be entitled to tell him what they liked, and he'd be entitled to ignore their advice and tell them to p**s off if he so wished.
(*) Not, realistically, that they're likely to even notice- let alone care- about what a random person on a geek website is advising them, but that's beside the point here.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
You seriously want to put this to jail time?
Two million people jailed a year for downloading Expendables 3? Who's going to man these jails? Who's going to pay for them.
Let's be fucking realistic please. Make it 10 times the retail cost of the copyright infringed item plus court costs and call it a day. But the person sueing has to prove that you're the one that infringed copyright. Not just a blind IP address.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
That's like suing the contractor that built a freeway because the freeway was used to transport drugs. Even if, by some absurd chance, you win, there are a thousand other torrent sites out there and your movie was on them within hours. Knocking out a couple of those sites will have absolutely no effect on piracy. If you want to stop leaks go after the leaker. If you've got any sense at all, each of your DVD screeners has unique watermarks and can be traced to the person to whom it was issued. Fire that person, sue that person, and blacklist them. That at least would have a chance of reducing future leaks.
Theft of intellectual property should be a criminal matter.
Copyright infringement should be a civil matter
Perhaps it is the August heat.
But don't see any meaningful distinction here.
The geek wants to share the unlicensed movies he has downloaded with 10,000 of his closest friends on the P2P nets.
But when his own IP is threatened he will be the first to call the cops.
How easy it is to ignore the fact the that the people who created this movie need to be paid.
They're paid for services rendered at the time of completion.
Not only the actors, writers, directors but the hairdressers, electricians and even the computer special effect workers.
All these people are paid just like you would pay any other contractor. They do the work, you cut them a check. They all work for a set, specified rate, not for any cut in the profits. Those who do earn based off ticket sales are usually A-listers with enough clout to negotiate for a cut of the gross, not the net. So no matter how poorly it does in the box office, these people still get a cut of whatever it brings in.
And God forbid that investors who fronted the money in the hope of a return on their investment should realize a profit.
ANY investment prospectus will tell you that "All investment carries some degree of risk." This means that when you invest in something, yes, you expect a profit. But you also have to accept the possibility that the money you put in will go up in smoke. By your logic, I should be able to sue whoever I invest with if my mutual fund doesn't give me a 500% ROI. They decided to invest in something, they knew it was a risk. Lets not forget that the investors are going to be the LEAST damaged by any of this, since one film is simply a line-item in their ledger.
That being said, downloading films in this manner IS ethically questionable. Mass downloading can make a studio earn a reduced profit. But reduced profit is not a monetary loss. The real loss is that if the profit reduction is large enough, they have less incentive to produce any more films that require actual effort. The more this happens, the more you get dreck that caters to the lowest common denominator (such as The Expendables whose mass downloading furthers the cycle), and filmmaking is reduced to an exercise in formulaic cinematography to maximize monetization and merchandising paradigms (and other such buzzword-y bullshit). THIS is the real cost of mass copyright infringement - an art form reduced to a paint-by-numbers affair where no one dares to make anything truly unique. And to me, this cost is far, FAR worse than any perceived monetary loss.
At least the Capitalists who wish to to profit from the labor of others paid for that privilege unlike simple thieves.
How many times does it need to be said that COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS NOT THEFT?. Theft is the taking of something tangible which deprives the individual owner of its use. Downloading a copy of some bits does not deprive the original owner of said bits. They still have them, and can still use them for their intended purpose.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."