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Dallas Buyers Club LLC Abandons Fight Against Australian Pirates (theage.com.au)
New submitter aphelion_rock writes: It's a happy day for Aussie pirates: The Hollywood studio behind the film Dallas Buyers Club has abandoned its fight to extract huge sums of cash from alleged copyright infringers. Dallas Buyers Club LLC had until midday Thursday to lodge a second appeal against an August Federal Court decision which effectively prevented it from engaging in so-called 'speculative invoicing' in Australia.
Sometimes I'm shocked that Hollywood couldn't police itself better. I know that there are people here that are perfectly content that there are huge swaths of the world where downloading an unlicensed copy of a movie can't be stopped, but I think it's crazy that abusive plaintiffs have made essentially any of those types of copyright claims untenable. In the Southern District of Georgia, for instance, you can't even get to the subpoena stage- not even if you promise the court it can review ANY correspondence to identified customers before it is sent.
Anyway, to think that a few bad plaintiffs upended the system without any change to actual legislation amazes me.
pls give context
"Dallas Buyers Club Movie Producers" and "Media Pirates" would stop some of us from worrying that the real life club (landmark group!) was having shipments intercepted.
I don't know if this is a coincidence, but Dallas Buyers Club went live on SBS On Demand service on Thursday. So if you're Australian, you can watch it for free, legally, right now.
Haven't seen it myself. No idea if the movie is any good. But there you go.
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I hope ya Chooks turn into Emus and kick ya dunny down.
Ya Wankers.
Signed,
Australia.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Or as Americans might say, the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law.
Justice Nye Perram was forced to agree with DBC LLC over the matter of copyright infringement, so they won on that case. However the Justice was also aware of what happened in the US when the studio's lawyers were permitted to go on a fishing expedition through the ISP's customer records then send them what amounted to extortion notices threatening an expensive law suit if they didn't immediately pay a sum of money. So called "speculative invoicing".
To prevent this, the justice made DBC LLC pay a bond of about A$600,000 which would be forfeited if they tried speculative invoicing. The agreement meant any communications with the ISP's customers had to be vetted by the courts. After having repeated attempts rejected because they asked for far too much info and were pretty much a prelude to speculative invoicing it became clear to DBC LLC that they would never make a profit on this and simply cut their losses.
I think I'm pretty safe in saying that the reason DBC LLC has withdrawn their case is just to get their bond back. Dallas Buyers Club was technically in the right, but did everything in the wrong way. That being said, I doubt the Justice was ever going to let them profit on it, setting a precident that you shouldn't go after end users in Australia, even if you are technically right.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yes, you've got it. It was the speculative invoicing that was the problem, not the copying/distributing. I very much doubt that this will go to the High Court (the last course of legal action in Oz for all you non-Aussies), but I'd expect that they would also reject it. A good sense judgement imo, regardless of the infringement.
Just a correction. They never lodged the $600k bond in the first place. They tried to negotiate multiple different letters and approaches with Justice Perram first. They also wanted to claim damages based on whether the person had shared / downloaded works by people unrelated to DBC and they wanted to claim damages based on the downloader having obtained an international distribution license.
In the end Justice Perram cracked the shits and said ffs stop with the pissing around and either comply with my requirements or fuck off. You have until COB Feb 12th to come up with something not stupid in your letter.
Zero chance of going to the high court. The high court would refuse to hear the case as DBC won the case. You can't appeal to the high court a requirement to act in good faith.
> That being said, I doubt the Justice was ever going to let them profit on it, setting a precident that you shouldn't go after end users in Australia, even if you are technically right.
In Australia, you can only sue someone for the damages that they have caused.
If DBC LLC could prove in court that someone downloading DBC had caused the company $5000 in damages then the court would be open to listening to that.
If someone in Australia seeded DBC on bittorrent and had a seed ratio of 100, DBC LLC would be able to claim 100 times the cost of lost BR/DVD sales (or about $4000 dollars) - if they could prove in court that someone had done that. Plus costs incurred to bring that claim to court.
That's how it should work.
If 4000 people leech a movie via bittorrent, meaning you lose $1,600,000 in lost sales in stores, why would you balk at paying a bond of $600,000 in order to recoup the lost sales and your costs?
Being able to sue someone for $100,000 because they downloaded a movie once is what is wrong. That's the criminal behaviour that needs to be stamped out.
Isn't it ironic that a movie which recounts the story of people smuggling (or simply trying to get permission to use) drugs against the express will of big pharma hits very similar roadblocks with people trying to watch it...?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
If 4000 people leech a movie via bittorrent, meaning you lose $1,600,000 in lost sales in stores
That makes it $400 a copy.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
If 4000 people leech a movie via bittorrent, meaning you lose $1,600,000 in lost sales in stores
That makes it $400 a copy.
Which brings us back to "speculative accounting".
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
It seems that Australian courts actually do their jobs and are not the playthings of the corporations, not like in the USA.
By torrenting a movie, you are not just taking a copy for yourself and for however many people you are seeding to; you are, in the words of the mobie studios, "enabling piracy". The people who get their copy from you also seed to 10 people, who each seed to another 10, and so on and so forth. So by their logic, you are on the hook for every copy that originated from yours, and the studio gets to claim insane amounts of damages from whomever they catch. As someone once calculated, if every pirate was caught and fined according to the studio's schedule, the fines would exceed the total GDP of *Earth*. Now there's a business model for you...
I think that it's ok to go after pirates, but I agree that the punishment should be more realistic: based on nr. of movies downloaded and the seed ratio, times a reasonable (maybe 2) punitive factor, with an additional fine (not damages) imposed. Torrenting a movie is in the same league (but not the same thing, before anyone starts...) as shoplifting, not Enron-level fraud. By the way, I pirate movies... I wouldn't if they would just let me pay for a format that has the quality, convenience, lack of ads and ability to time- and format-shift as the files I get from my favorite seeders. Music studios already offer this, and I'm happy to give them my money.
Is it wrong to pirate? Meh. Let's not forget that copyright is not a natural right, but an artificial and temporary monopoly granted by society expressly for the benefit of society, not authors. Let's not call it "intellectual property" anymore either, for the same reason. I don't feel very bad about pirating movies as long as movie studios continue to abuse copyright the way they do. And this is the stance that our government (in the Netherlands) has held for a good while: as long as movie studios refuse to offer a reasonable selection of normally priced digital content that honours fair use to a good degree, the government refused to do much about upholding copyright law in case of individual infringers. Sadly this policy was recently abandoned.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I think that it's ok to go after pirates, but I agree that the punishment should be more realistic: based on nr. of movies downloaded and the seed ratio, times a reasonable (maybe 2) punitive factor, with an additional fine (not damages) imposed.
I also think it's ok to go after pirates, but not how the studio was doing it. I think Justice Perram was trying to make it clear that, sure, the piracy is acknowledged and you lost $32 per copy due to infringement - that's your entitlement, $32 per copy. What the studio was trying to do was not only charge hundreds of dollars per copy but to also use creative accounting to get double-billing and more for each copy: for seeders, the number of downloads they enabled; plus, for downloaders, the copy they received.
Very well put in, and in the vernacular digger!
Anon due mods.
No it is a LOSS for Justice.
It was such a distraction and cost for the poor old ISP, that they nearly threw their customers to the wolves,that if repeated the same may not happen. Surely it was financed by USA Inc against a small David, to set a nasty precedent. Fortunately arrogance and disrespect lost their case and set a precedent against shall we say blackmailing and double or triple dipping.
The first wrong thing that happened was a very biased JNP awarded costs to DBC's 'Expert' who under cross examination was no expert, and all assurances were worthless and protracted if not made up. A tactic to win, even if its not true. This is a bad precedent, and was not punished. Shades of SCO again. Win to DBC.
The good thing is JNP applied the law correctly and DBC was flat out unwilling to stay within the boundaries - hoping a dopey moment or wearing things thin would work. It did not. A bit more contempt sealed their loss. Its a great pity DBC's tax records were not used to assess claimed loss.This did not happen. Again the very nice justice gave DBC costs in 2/3 bit said 3rd dip was not on, or maybe, but how much?
Well DBC refused to answer that one, although the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings one, would probably set the precedent for 1 cent.
Its a big loss for downloaders, as the gate is still wide open for a smarter action for real costs - not made up ones possibly up to retail sale about or $30 when Netfix costs 40 cents per hour, say 60 cents. If Hollywood wants to win lawfully - it is very easy if they are happy with administrative level fines, BUT will to pay heaps if a forensic expert finds a hole.
While here, FRANCE should take notice of illegal anti EU data collection , and serve DBC with some stiff adjustments after the get through with Facebook.
And that's just it. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement. But these are not cases of mass distribution for profit. There's no facility to cover damages other than the damages that were caused. No massive punitive damages are awarded.
From the very beginning there was the thought that the pirates may be liable for $12.50 which was the price of the movie at the time when the case was brought. Half way through there was a thought that they are liable for legal fees as well but legal fees diluted through the large number of people meant that it wasn't a problem either.
The argument that these people inadvertently distributed content so they should be liable for the distribution license didn't fly as the intent wasn't to distribute or if it was it wasn't proven, thus they were only ever considered consumers of the content.
It's good to see at least some countries still have a sane legal system.
Would that be random shakedown letters demanding sums of money with no proof of infringement or who did anything, but if you fork over everything you own and sign documents saying you'll never use the internet they won't sue you?
Well, honestly, how the hell did shit like that ever become legal elsewhere in the first place?
Oh, that's right, lawmakers are on the payroll of the copyright cartel to give them stupid laws which allow them to do anything.
That's OK, I'm sure once the TPP is ratified the 'speculative invoicing' business model becomes viable again. After all, it's mostly about entrenching further rights for corporations.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The movie Dallas Buyers Club demonstrates how, by braking the laws, people improve their lives and solve their problems.
The irony is that when the movie itself is pirated an issue is taken by the creators of the movie about infringing the very same laws.
I am not defending pirates. But at the same time existing laws and rules related to the intelectual property protection are very much imperfect.
Reminds me of the letter I saw several years ago from the department of Justice in Belgium to the national RIA, SABAM. They said basically:
Do start any lawsuits as long as people are not making money from it. They will be handled with the lowest priority. If they are making money from them, we are happy to help.
This preventedcases against grandma doing some down and uploading. They also tried to ask for info about ISP customers, but the standard answer would be 'FOAD, not allowed to give you any information."So prividers started sending things like 'Well, they told us you were downloading something illigal. We do not know what legal or illegal is. If it is ilegal, we point to our AUP, if it is legal, please ignore this. This is just information.'
So the went after the providers themselves.
The letter was written in a way that it was clear NOT to bring in any 'person X is uploading via Torrent' bullshit as long as they did not make money from it. If they would have done that, I am sure it would not have ended well. I can imagine them saying 'this is a stern warning' to the accused and then going after SABAM for occupying the courts with stoopid lawsuits.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Not entirely sane, we still have so many judges on the take from our right wing loonie party alongside the police. Just don't hear much about it outside Aus, and even still rarely inside as most of us are too drunk/bogan to give a shit sadly.
When I was 12 I went to the county fair with my friend Billy. There was a girlie show. You had to be 18 to get in. Me and Billy went behind the tent and poked our heads underneath. We saw boobies. Real boobies. Real girl boobies. I must have seen 27 boobies. By mpaa reckoning, what do I owe? So long as property includes intellectual property, downloading is stealing, at least by law. Just like what Billy and I did by poking our heads under the tent. But you have to be realistic as to the penalties. When great-grandma owes hundreds of thousands because someone downloaded a porn movie off her IP, something is terribly wrong. When every-single-teen over the age of 10 is guilty of piracy--and technically libel for 10's if not 100's of thousands in damages--something is very wrong. I don't have a solution.
99% of claims were correct. You just heard about the 1% that were not, and the 50% who lied about not downloading anything.
Just wait until the TPPA is in place, they will be able to sue the shit out of people and the governments then.
Yes, there's the thing. In theory, if EVERYone who downloads would have otherwise bought a copy (doubtful) and taking their making available theory into account, if I get caught torrenting a movie, I should be liable for a little less than 2x the wholesale price of a digital download. That assumes a typical torrent ratio of 2.
I say a little less since they didn't incur any accounting overhead. Wholesale because that's the price they get from everyone who buys from them (for example, what Apple would pay them had I gone to iTunes).
I think that was a case of bad maths on the AC's part. 4000 movies leeched then available restitution should be 160,000 + the costs of enforcing it through the courts.