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Falsely Accused Movie Pirate Deserves $17K Compensation, Court Says (torrentfreak.com)
An Oregon District Court has sided with a wrongfully accused man who was sued for allegedly downloading a pirated copy of the Adam Sandler movie "The Cobbler." According to the court's recommendations, reports TorrentFreak, the man is entitled to more than $17,000 in compensation as the result of the filmmakers "overaggressive" and "unreasonable" tactics. From the article: The defendant in question, Thomas Gonzales, operates an adult foster care home where several people had access to the Internet. The filmmakers were aware of this and during a hearing their counsel admitted that any guest could have downloaded the film. [...] "The Court finds that once Plaintiff learned that the alleged infringement was taking place at an adult group care home at which Gonzales did not reside, Plaintiff's continued pursuit of Gonzales for copyright infringement was objectively unreasonable," Judge Beckerman ruled. "The Court shares Gonzales' concern that Plaintiff is motivated, at least in large part, by extracting large settlements from individual consumers prior to any meaningful litigation. "On balance, the Court has concerns about the motivation behind Plaintiff's overaggressive litigation of this case and other cases, and that factor weighs in favor of fee shifting."
Doesn't sound sufficiently punitive to me.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The title as is implies that the man is a movie pirate and was falsely accused (of something)...
Or just change it to "Man falsely accused of movie piracy..."
The actual article does it better, although they added the quotes to 'falsely' too for some unknown reason...: Court: ‘Falsely’ Accused ‘Movie Pirate’ Deserves $17K Compensation
Diminished capacity defense.
Have gnu, will travel.
Isn't $17k more then this movie made?
$17000 is a little absurd considering how many safeguards the industry puts in place to ensure false accusation doesnt occur. For example, does the accused sink, or float in water? is he capable of reading aloud holy scripture? these are valid and important precursors to ever filing a lawsuit for copyright infringement. For example, almost never has anyone accused of copyright infringement been brought before a court to testify after the MPAA has performed the important dunking and crushing under boulder tests to ensure the individuals absolute guilt prior to litigation.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The current ruling is about *compensation*, not punitive damages. If he wants to file for punitive damages, he's now in a position to file for that. It's two separate things.
Jack Valenti, who shaped the modern era of the MPAA as its President for 38 years, was not Jewish. His parents were Italian immigrants, so it's fairly likely that he was Catholic.
On Valenti's stepping-down in 2004, Dan Glickman was made President of the MPAA. He admittedly was Jewish, but he doesn't appear to have changes Valenti's policies too dramatically.
Glickman left the MPAA in 2010 after only six years, to be replaced by Chuck Dodd, who is not Jewish.
So for the last fifty years, someone whose religion can be described as Jewish was the head of the MPAA only 12% of the time. This seems to rather invalidate your argument.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Surely being falsely accused of watching 'The Cobbler' is the bigger crime? The guy may have lost his job and family over crap like that.
The reason he deserves that much (and maybe more) is because his reputation is totally ruined. People now believe he actually wanted to watch The Cobbler with Adam Sandler and there is no coming back from that.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
You have to bring a separate civil suit against the government for compensation. It's the whole criminal vs. civil trial thing - a criminal trial is one the state brings to you with you being free (not guilty) or jailed (guilty). A civil trial outcome is usually just monetary to make whole.
As we believe jailing an innocent is very bad, that's why a criminal trial standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt" whereas a civil trial is either "preponderance of evidence" or "reasonable belief" (basically who made the more convincing argument)
But it's perfectly fine to bring a civil trial to get damages caused by a criminal trial. It's how OJ Simpson was both guilty and not-guilty.
You are conflating two separate issues. No defendant in a criminal trial can sue the government for compensation for actions taken as part of the prosecution even if they are found not guilty by the jury. There are extremely limited situations under which you can legally sue the government and damages from a criminal prosecution are not one of them. Even in cases of gross negligence. You can sue if you were incarcerated for a long period and found innocent but only for lost wages and only in the states that have allowed that (not all have), the Fed's don't allow compensation in such cases.
The OJ Simpson case did not involve OJ suing anyone for his prosecution, OJ was sued by his victims relatives in civil court even though he was found not guilty in a criminal trial. This is a totally different thing than a defendant suing the government for prosecuting them as the OP stated.