Slashdot Mirror
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.
This has nothing to do with the DMCA, this is a straight out copyright infringement lawsuit being filed.
The real problem is that the methods the copyright holders (or the copyright enforcement goons acting on their behalf) are using to identify torrent users aren't good enough and its good to see at least one judge willing to call these enforcers out on it.
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.
I know you're trolling, but I'll bite anyway.
All the perceived negative effects of porn stem from sex and nudity having been given a historic stigma by the church, for which your kind is to blame entirely. There is nothing evil or harmful in natural sexual processes whatsoever, nor in the naked body, but just the opposite: they provide happiness and enjoyment, and as a side effect produce offspring which was nature's motive for making sex enjoyable in the first place.
The above doesn't excuse non-consensual or violent porn of any kind, nor sexual servitude under duress, let alone attacks on children. Those are all simply criminal abuse, and should have no place in a civilized society. That's not because of religious doctrine but because abuse and duress are a violation of people's personal freedom and safety in a supportive society.
Religion has programmed you into seeing good things as evil without any defensible justification other than historic dictats. You really ought to think about it yourself a little more deeply and logically, instead of blindly adopting what you're told to think. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Somehow I find it unsurprising that pornographers and right wing nutjobs try and use the same scam.
Why is Snark Required?
The motion to quash indicates that 38% of all copyright cases filed over a certain period were Malibu (x-art). Also, it indicates that 43% are based on an IP address. I think the vast majority Malibu's cases are IP-based, though in the past they've gone after web site operators who unlawfully published Malibu's work.
If 38% are Malibu and that's included in the 43% that are IP-based, that means that 88% of IP-based cases are Malibu.
Assuming that Malibu's are a problem, one can solve 88% of the problem by looking at the specifics of what Malibu does and putting a stop to their particular methods. In other words, because Malibu is 88% of the problem, you only need to stop Malibu in order to solve the vast majority of the problem.
Because Malibu did in fact download part of the copyright video from defendant's home, the Washington.edu reference is actually irrelevant. Therefore it seems to me that the one clear problem is that Malibu hasn't followed court orders to file motions under seal. Generally, they do seem to maybe be abusing discovery, though offering to setttle isn't necessarily a bad thing.
They do have a right to protect their rights to their very fappable content, and someone in that household did in fact unlawfully violate their rights, so they COULD bring a legitimate suit and handle it properly. But they don't.
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.
Porn also does not produce children, which in your case is really fortunate for us all, because we won't have to buy them a lifetime of therapy.
It was on behalf of a local author who presented to my user group with a sad little short story. After having published a children's book through Amazon (trade paperback POD, not Kindle) which became popular, some site in the UK popped up with a scanned copy of her book offered for sale. This is apparently a common scam targeting both print and online authors. We filed a takedown, and the pirated content was gone the next day.
DMCA works internationally in "notice and takedown" countries, which include the EU. It's by treaty, somewhat like extradition.
IANAL but I read court documents for fun (Sad, no?) via well-oilied PACER account, and this whole case has made for some very entertaining reading.
Regardless of the merits of the practices that Mailbu Media use, it's hard to see how the film industry as a whole (not just the adult version) can really survive if the standard of proof for infringement is a concrete connection to a specific user AND a requirement that the downloader receive a usable section of the overall file(s). One of the key points in the documents seem to be that the mere possession of a file fragment is not sufficient to rise to the level of an actionable tort is pretty telling, since that would require the court to make some sort of threshold for when a piece of an overall file becomes infringing.
Correction: Someone in that household, or leeching that household's WiFi or someone with a hacked cable modem or someone at the ISP downloaded that content that they may or may not have known was copyrighted.
Or due to a clerical error, perhaps it was another household.
IMO the DMCA is overall a good thing (especially the safe harbor provision) but has two big flaws:
1) Anti-circumvention rules don't permit non-infringing use.
2) There's all of about zero restitution for fraudulent take down notices. (I.e. having somebody swear under penalty of perjury on your behalf is a really weak standard, and is often used to suppress youtube videos within their first four days of being posted, which is when they get the most views and ad revenue for those who post them.)