All Malibu Media Subpoenas In Eastern District NY Put On Hold

NewYorkCountryLawyer sends an update on the progress of Malibu Media, the company that filed subpoenas and copyright lawsuits over alleged BitTorrent piracy of pornography films: A federal Magistrate Judge in Central Islip, New York, has just placed all Malibu Media subpoenas in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, and Staten Island on hold indefinitely, due to "serious questions" raised by a motion to quash (PDF) filed in one of them. Judge Steven Locke's 4-page Order and Decision (PDF) cited the defendant's arguments that "(i) the common approach for identifying allegedly infringing BitTorrent users, and thus the Doe Defendant, is inconclusive; (ii) copyright actions, especially those involving the adult film industry, are susceptible to abusive litigation practices; and (iii) Malibu Media in particular has engaged in abusive litigation practices" as being among the reasons for his issuance of the stay.

Comments

No

[Anonymous Coward]

DMCA is not the problem. It needs reform, surely, but it also needs to be enforced.

Right now as it is, pirates get away with way too much. There's pretty much no chance of getting in trouble for pirating or copyright infringement. Even if you're caught, the penalty is a slap on the wrist. Oooh, your video is no longer on YouTube. Boo hoo hoo.

Two things need to be done to fix copyright.

1) Reform copyright terms to 5 years by default. Copyright owners can extend it for an increasing fee, indefinitely if they wish. This fee will eventually be so high that they will be better off releasing it into the public domain.

2) Copyright law must be enforced, and seriously. It must have sane penalties though. Simple infringement for personal use should be a misdemeanor. However, sites should be forced to police themselves better, and there should be more police effort to stop infringement.

Right now copyright law is useless because it is ineffective and ridiculous. If copyright law is sane and actually risky for people to break while still aiding the public domain, it will be a much better solution.

Re: No

[Anonymous Coward]

The fees idea is bad. In order to have any fairness with things like independent movies, or copyleft licensed code, you'd need to make it dependent on how much money the company makes with the content. And over the years, companies have collected tons of ways how to "enhance" their books so that it seems they are poor, and make no money.
So the only thing this ruling will create is that the rich companies will be abled to protect their content indefinitely, and the smaller ones will lose protections very fast.

And I haven't even mentioned those works yet, where the creator didn't prolong copyright beyond the initial term because they haven't thought it would be successful, and then the work does become a success, where publishers make all the money, and the creator doesn't see a penny. Right now its easy to prevent this: just don't sell any rights. This comes for free.

Re:No

[Intrepid imaginaut]

1) Reform copyright terms to 5 years by default.

This severely penalises small content producers in favour of massive corporations, all a publisher needs to do is wait five years and they can leverage their marketing and distribution might to completely own a franchise while the original creator gets nada.

Re:No

[jabuzz]

In addition anything less than Berne Convention for copyright is a none starter; that boat has sailed. However Berne Convention is a lot less than what we have currently in both north America and Europe. Rolling Copyright terms back to Berne Convention should be the initial goal.

Righthaven

[Required Snark]

The "Motion to Quash" (gotta love that name) references Righthaven as an example of abuse of copyright.

Federal courts have addressed such practices regarding plaintiffs "attempt to create cottage industry of filing copyright claims, making large claims for damages and then settling claims for pennies on the dollar." Righthaven LLC v. Democratic Underground LLC, No.2:11-cv-01356 (D. Nev. April 14, 2011).

Somehow I find it unsurprising that pornographers and right wing nutjobs try and use the same scam.

Re:Righthaven

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

What is right wing about that process? The Democrats support the movie industry, not the Republicans.

The fact that Democrats support something doesn't negate the possibility of something being right wing. The Democrats are not ideologically pure, or ideologically homogenous, and very few of them can be considered "left".

To me, pretending that copyright is only about property rights, and ignoring the fact that copyright was also supposed to be about free speech and about making material available for free to the public after a limited time, is definitely "right wing".

Re: DMCA needs to die

[Anonymous Coward]

Porn doesn't become unhappy with me after I refuse to buy it a second brand new luxury vehicle.

Porn doesn't then divorce me, claiming I physically abused it, and have a court blindly accept this false accusation.

Family courts don't award porn 50 to 100% of my current assets and future paychecks to support porn's lifestyle after porn branch-swings to another guy.