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Sony Hack Reveals MPAA's Big '$80 Million' Settlement With Hotfile Was a Lie
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Tech Dirt: For years, we've pointed out that the giant 'settlements' that the MPAA likes to announce with companies it declares illegal are little more than Hollywood-style fabrications. Cases are closed with big press releases throwing around huge settlement numbers, knowing full well that the sites in question don't have anywhere near that kind of money available. At the end of 2013, it got two of these, with IsoHunt agreeing to 'pay' $110 million and Hotfile agreeing to 'pay' $80 million. In both cases, we noted that there was no chance that those sums would ever get paid. And now, thanks to the Sony hack, we at least know the details of the Hotfile settlement. TorrentFreak has been combing through the emails and found that the Hotfile settlement was really just for $4 million, and the $80 million was just a bogus number agreed to for the sake of a press release that the MPAA could use to intimidate others.
4 millions, 40 millions, 4 billions... does it intimidate you any more? It does not matter whether I owe someone 4 million or 4 billion bucks. It makes zero difference AT ALL. In either case I will NEVER work again, knowing that no matter what I do or how hard I even remotely would want to work, I could never pay that. And no matter what I do, I will never get to keep any of the money I earn. Instead, all such a verdict could accomplish is that I will do my best to get by with illegal work and try to do my best to match the damages to the verdict.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sure it makes a difference. If you owe 4 billion you qualify for the Too Big To Fail corporate welfare program.
That they moved the news up from 11?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How many songs or "incidents of infringement" did Sony claim Hotfile was guilty of? What did Sony settle for as the price per infringement. Knowing the price sets a negotiation point for anyone else in a similar situaiton.
If Sony claimed there were 800M bad files sent out by Hotfile and the settlement was $4M then when Sony knocks on Joe Publics door. Joe Public can say "You settled with a commercial infringer for 4/800 = 1/200 = 0.5cents a file. As I am not a commercial operation lets start the negotiation at 1/10th of that or 0.05cents a file."
Makes it hard for Sony to intinidate the public if the settlement cost is going to be less than an hours of lawyer fees.
The judgement was in fact entered for $80 million. That's true. A judgement doesn't mean you're going to get paid. I've had a judgement for $2,500 against a guy for fifteen years. He paid $40. There's basically no way to make someone actually pay a judgement, especially if they are going out of business. The executives take their last pay check and close up the business. The judgement creditor can send demand letters all day long to where the business used to be, demanding that the now non-existent business pay the judgement.
Here, they agreed that Sony would get a judgement for $80 million, so reporting that judgement isn't exactly a lie. In addition, they agreed that the defendant would actually pay $4 million of that judgement, since they probably didn't have the money to pay the whole thing and even if they could, it's pretty easy to avoid paying a judgement in most cases. Just ignore the judgement. Then the plaintiff has to file additional law suits trying to get specific property seized to pay the judgement, after they identify specific non-exempt property that won't disappear before it's seized.