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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.
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.
Knowing this, the prosecution thought to use the public misconception that polygraphs are actual "lie detectors" to bully the defendant into reacting in a way that they can use to support their case (probably "if he had nothing to hide, why did he refuse a lie detector?"). Not being a great fool, the defendant chose to accept the offer of a polygraph if the prosecution had something at risk as well. Knowing that the tech is worthless, that their intimidation tactic failed, and faced with the prospect of having to cover the defendant's legal fees, the prosecution retracted the "offer."
Teal Deer: defendant calls RIAA bluff.
Supplemental: Has anyone actually heard of this movie?
Maybe don't post as an AC?
I'm not even running an adblocker on this computer and I don't see any adds on /.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Those are special characters. We can only handle ASCII characters. We are planning full UTF8 support in 2032.
Filmmaker wanted to scare accused person with Voodoo, accused knows it's bullshit and calls bluff, Filmmaker realizes that someone who calls his Voodoo bluff will not be affected by the curse and rather folds than have the Voodoo fizzle because too many people believe in the Voodoo and would consider the person innocent.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And their results cannot be used as evidence in court. The defendant didn't have much to lose by taking one. The plaintiff should have thought through his fear tactic before using it.
But.
Because of these dubious tactics the court should set aside the default that was entered earlier this month.
If the court has entered a default judgement you have already fucked up big time. Usually by failing to do something the court requires of you (like respond to plaintiff's complaint) in a timely manner.
And there is no legal mechanism I'm aware of by which a copyright holder can unilaterally "impose a $100,000 fine." They can offer to settle for $100K or threaten litigation. That'd be surprising, as the copyright shakedown MO is to offer settlement for 1-3 orders of magnitude less, in order to induce quick and quiet resolution. Or you can get a default judgment of $100K if you file suit and defendant does something inadvisable like completely ignore it.
I'm not saying that's what happened here, TFA doesn't give any details on how we got to where we are. We do know that he has an attorney now. And because of how much trouble you can get in for letting your client's case default (your inattention and subsequent harm to your client is actionable malpractice), I would be pretty surprised if he'd had an attorney this entire time and had been otherwise fighting this legal battle by the book, only now to be unfairly blindsided by a default judgment.
(This is all speculation, I'm not your attorney, this is not legal advice, refer to sig, if you experience an erection lasting more than four hours call your doctor, etc etc you get the point.)
Nothing posted to
Maybe don't post as an AC?
I'm not even running an adblocker on this computer and I don't see any adds on /.
I see ads, but they're small, unobtrusive and sit nicely out of the way so you barely even notice them unless you look. They way it should be.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The continuing American fascination with the polygraph totally mystifies me. If the courts have rejected it as non-evidence, why does everyone else seem to think it's fucking bullet proof? Weird as hell.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Yeah?
"Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
That's the actual law in question.
So, like I said, copy right restricts your right to copy (#1 above), as well as some other things. Distribution (#3), performance (#4, #6).
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:
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.