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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.
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I think I'm pretty safe in saying that the reason DBC LLC has withdrawn their case is just to get their bond back.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 ?
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.