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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.
This is kind off. There was the VC thing earlier today and I was talking about it. I've also mentioned this before, on an earlier thread, and mentioned it when the opportunity came up way back when.
Anyhow, the DBC is not the movie. There's a movie by that name. DBC is a holdings company. They buy and hold the rights to movies. I don't know if they do more than movies - I think they might do some television shows.
I have a "friend" who emailed me telling me about this group and how it was imperative to get in on the ground floor and to invest. My money would have gone to their fun to buy the rights and, presumably, prosecute. They didn't even want that much, all things considered. I'd have gotten a portion of the profits they made. He was indicating that they were going to be controlling things like rental rights and things like that - not going after pirates.
It didn't occur to me at the time but it makes sense that they'd be going after pirates and I suspect that was their plan all along. It may actually work in some areas.
I did not invest. Like I said, it seemed odd. They didn't want a whole lot, comparatively speaking. The returns they were expecting were much higher than I'd have expected so that tells me that it's probably not ethical and not likely to work. The more you dumped in at the beginning, the more you got for a percentage. They also had a table for how much you put in. If you put in X amount by X date then you get X in return. If you put in Y amount then you get... The numbers really didn't look good. I believe I did the math and it indicated that I could put in several of X amounts then put in a few Y amounts and I'd get 100%+ of the profit.
I believe the minimum buy-in was $70k USD. Which, when you look at what they were expecting, really isn't that much. They had a maximum amount you could put in *at a time* and that wording was what made me look. It just looked weird and, sure enough, it only specifically indicated that you could buy-in at some much at one time. If you did that a few times, which I'd assume several someones would overall, then the numbers just didn't add up Really, one of the higher amounts was something stupidly high like 25% of the profit.
So, that's all I know... But, at any rate, DBC is not the movie. They're just people who buy rights to movies and then re-license them or, seemingly, just go after pirates who may or may not be guilty. I know nothing more than that but, if it's like the last thread, lots of people will think it's the movie. It's not... It's confusing but it's not. It's just some holdings company that's probably funded by a bunch of suckers who don't understand the word "profit" is after expenses and percentages greater than 100% of that profit (not of your investment) are impossible. There's only so much profit to be had and the whole thing reeked of pyramid scam, crossed with MLM, and I believe a part of their blurb was financial opportunities for people who wanted to do a competitor to RedBox.
I'm gonna post this as AC and go to bed. Google will probably give more details. Somewhere, I'll look when I wake up - if needed/wanted, I have an email with an attachment. I'll redact it and upload it - if I can find it.
> 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.