Filmmakers Ask 'Pirate' to Take Polygraph, Backtrack When He Agrees (torrentfreak.com)

The makers of Dallas Buyers Club (a 2014 movie, which won three Academy awards) are going to great lengths to crackdown on BitTorrent pirates. According to a report on piracy news blog TorrentFreak, the filmmakers challenged an accused pirate to submit a polygraph test to prove that he didn't download a copyright infringing copy of their movie. The accused pirate, California resident Michael Amhari, insists that he did not download any pirated copy of the Dallas Buyers Club and agreed to take the polygraph test. Upon hearing this, the filmmakers, who had imposed a $100,000 fine on Amhari, retracted the offer. "When plaintiff's counsel then agreed to take such a test with the proviso that defense costs and attorney fees be covered, plaintiff then refused to pay costs and revoked his offer to conduct a polygraph," said Amhari's counsel Clay Renick. TorrentFreak reports: "After receiving exculpatory evidence and the sworn declaration of defendant, Mr. Davis then refused to file a dismissal and proceeded to demand that defendant appear in the action or he would file a default." The defendant's counsel added: âoeThis behavior is galling and it should not be permitted by the court.â Because of these dubious tactics the court should set aside the default that was entered earlier this month. According to Renick, Dallas Buyer's Club has nothing more than an IP-address to back up their infringement claims, which is not enough to prove guilt.

Comments

American Psychological Association Says

[Anonymous Coward]

"For now, although the idea of a lie detector may be comforting, the most practical advice is to remain skeptical about any conclusion wrung from a polygraph."

Source: The Truth About Lie Detectors (aka Polygraph Tests)

Re:Polygraphs are easy to cheat on

[geek]

And their results cannot be used as evidence in court.

Criminal court. This is a civil case not a criminal one. It's very admissible.

Re:Nothing but an IP address?

[MightyMartian]

I'm not even clear why a polygraph is even in the mix here. Frankly, I think the things should be outright outlawed, and it should lead to prison sentences for any officer of the court to try to use one. It's pseudo-scientific quackery whose only purpose is to bully the uninformed.

Leave the e-meters to the $cientologists.

Re:Smart pirate

[tlhIngan]

As a bit of background, polygraphs don't work. They are glorified stress detectors so in some circumstances, they can detect the subject's fear of being caught in a lie. Much more often, they detect the stress of the interrogation with spikes every time the subject is pressed to answer immediately.

Polygraphs work. They're just graphing multiple biological signals (heart rate, skin conductivity, breathing, etc), hence the name, "poly" and "graph".

The real leap in logic is that a polygraph can be used to detect truthfulness (to which there is no causal link - while stress can be caused by lying, in general the exam itself overrides any possible stress indicators). The only real way they work is the interrogator catches the suspect in a contradiction (which is also non causal since the suspect may simply be tired or just wants to get it over).

There are lie detectors that DO work quite effectively (fMRIs, for example, are very effective since different areas of the brain are activated and easily detectable). They are, however, expensive to administer and fidgety since you need the suspect to stay relatively still.

Re:Lawyer sense tingling

[cdrudge]

If you read the defense's legal filing, it sounds as if the plaintiff was negotiating with the defense's lawyer for the polygraphy, the defense asked for 14 days and only got 7. When the defense agreed to the polygraph on the condition the plantiff pays for it, plaintiff immediately files for entry of default judgement.

Plaintiff also is accused of making bad faith verbal promises that they reneged on that they would dismiss the case if he tool the polygraph. That is why further filings weren't made initially as timely as they could have been.

If you read the whole thing, previous case law would seem like the defendant likely will get the default judgement set aside. Courts rather get things right and hear a case rather than just give the case to one side without good cause.

Re:Smart pirate

[ooloorie]

There are lie detectors that DO work quite effectively (fMRIs, for example, are very effective since different areas of the brain are activated and easily detectable).

fMRI has not been proven to work as a lie detector.

Re:Nothing but an IP address?

[MightyMartian]

As to your first point, it isn't reliable nine times out of ten. It's likely no more accurate than a placebo (i.e. having the suspect give testimony into a microphone hooked up to a computer and claiming the computer can determine whether he is lying or not).

As to the second point, it's just a prop.

As to the third point, yes, it has a psychological effect providing the suspect believes it is effective. But relying on the ignorance of suspects seems a pretty piss poor way to guarantee you're getting useful testimony.

The American Psychology Psychological Association has a pretty good writeup on it:
http://www.apa.org/research/ac...

In particular:

The accuracy (i.e., validity) of polygraph testing has long been controversial. An underlying problem is theoretical: There is no evidence that any pattern of physiological reactions is unique to deception. An honest person may be nervous when answering truthfully and a dishonest person may be non-anxious. Also, there are few good studies that validate the ability of polygraph procedures to detect deception. As Dr. Saxe and Israeli psychologist Gershon Ben-Shahar (1999) note, "it may, in fact, be impossible to conduct a proper validity study." In real-world situations, it's very difficult to know what the truth is.

So we have is a machine built on a faulty set of assumptions about behavior that it is probably could never be verified, which utterly undermines your first point. It simply does not detect lies. Full stop.