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."

Comments

$17K

[TechyImmigrant]

Doesn't sound sufficiently punitive to me.

Re:$17K

[captaindomon]

This is a great precedent, though. If every falsely accused person went for damages of $17k, it would quickly alter the landscape for these studios.

Re:$17K

[parkinglot777]

Doesn't sound sufficiently punitive to me.

The defendant did NOT ask for punitive damage but only the rewards which are expenses that the defendant had to pay out of pocket during the litigation.

*** From the court document ***
Gonzales has filed a motion for an award of costs and attorney’s fees. (Def.’s Mot. Att’y Fees, ECF No. 47.) Specifically, Gonzales seeks $264.60 in costs and $17,222.40 in attorney’s fees, for successfully defending Plaintiff’s contributory infringement claim.

Re:$17K

[mark-t]

That wasn't what happened, however. The court determined that it was unreasonable for the studio to continue to pursue litigation when they knew that the person did not live there (irrespective of whether or not he was innocent), and that is why he was awarded damages.

Re:An Adam Sandler movie?

[PPH]

Diminished capacity defense.

More then the movie made...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't $17k more then this movie made?

Re:More then the movie made...

[PCM2]

Not really. Adam Sandler movies are basically massive scams where he makes huge profits by selling advertising into the movie, then writes up giant paychecks for himself and all his cronies. No matter how shitty his movies are, the Adam Sandler business is basically self-sustaining.

falsely accused? how?

[nimbius]

$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.

This is compensation. The punitive part is

[raymorris]

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.

Re:Need a change of leadership

[TWX]

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.

Adam Sandler?

[dirk]

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.