Federal Courts Aren't ATMs, Angry Judge Reminds Copyright Troll
from the fully-justified-verbal-abuse dept
I will never tire of judges handing down benchslaps to IP trolls. Perhaps I’ll never tire of it because it just doesn’t happen often enough. Or perhaps it cannot happen often enough, given the sheer amount of troll litigation judges preside over. Not every dismissed case can be given the court’s full attention. But this opinion, from Judge Royce Lamberth, should certainly get Strike 3 Holding’s attention.
The brutal nine-page opinion [PDF] opens with this caustic appraisal of the porn company’s business model. (h/t Eric Goldman)
Strike 3 is […] a copyright troll. Its swarms of lawyers hound people who allegedly watch their content through Bittorrent, an online service enabling anonymous users to share videos despite their copyright protection. Since Bittorrent masks users’ identities, Strike 3 can only identify an infringing Internet protocol (IP) address, using geolocation technology to trace that address to a jurisdiction. This method is famously flawed: virtual private networks and onion routing spoof IP addresses (for good and ill); routers and other devices are unsecured; malware cracks passwords and opens backdoors; multiple people (family, roommates, guests, neighbors, etc.) share the same IP address; a geolocation service might randomly assign addresses to some general location if it cannot more specifically identify another. […]
Simply put, inferring the person who pays the cable bill illegally downloaded a specific file is even less trustworthy than inferring they watched a specific TV Show. But in many cases, the method is enough to force the Internet service provider (ISP) to unmask the IP address’s subscriber. And once the ISP outs the subscriber, permitting them to be served as the defendant, any future Google search of their name will turn up associations with the websites Vixen, Blacked, Tushy, and Blacked Raw. The first two are awkward enough, but the latter two cater to even more singular tastes.
The court goes on to point out it isn’t copyright law that vindicates the plaintiff but rather “the law of large numbers.” Strike 3 has filed 1,849 copyright infringement lawsuits across the nation (according to Judge Lamberth’s count), resulting in an untold number of settlements. And that’s all this really is: another attempt to force someone, anyone, to cough up some money rather than face off in court. As Judge Lamberth notes, copyright trolls “consume 58%” of the federal court system’s copyright lawsuit docket. They’re a burden on the courts and a burden on the public. Judge Lamberth calls Strike 3 on its copious bullshit:
These serial litigants drop cases at the first sign of resistance, preying on low-hanging fruit and staying one step ahead of any coordinated defense. They don’t seem to care about whether defendant actually did the infringing, or about developing the law. If a Billy Goat Gruff moves to confront a copyright troll in court, the troll cuts and runs back under its bridge. Perhaps the trolls fear a court disrupting their rinse-wash-and-repeat approach: fie a deluge of complaints; ask the court to compel disclosure of the account holders; settle as many claims as possible; abandon the rest.
Rather than be an accomplice in Strike 3’s shady game, Judge Lamberth denies its request for discovery. Without further discovery, Strike 3 can’t serve anyone with a lawsuit, which will prevent Strike 3 from refiling in this court at least, even with a dismissal without prejudice that leaves that door open.
No copyright troll is going to try to keep a case alive in Lamberth’s court, not after this damning summation of their collective efforts:
Armed with hundreds of cut-and-pasted complaints and boilerplate discovery motions, Strike 3 floods this courthouse (and others around the country) with lawsuits smacking of extortion. It treats this Court not as a citadel of justice, but as an ATM.
This will limit Strike 3’s litigation in this particular jurisdiction. But that’s what venue shopping is for. At least defendants have another opinion to quote when fighting back against trolls like Strike 3.
Filed Under: atm, copyright, copyright trolls, extortion, royce lamberth, shakedown
Companies: fox rothschild, strike 3
Comments on “Federal Courts Aren't ATMs, Angry Judge Reminds Copyright Troll”
If I physically acted out my internal reaction to these judicial smackdowns, I could film it and put it on one of those porn sites.
Re: Re:
And then sue people who torrent it illegally!
…Wait.
58%
Wow if that 58% number is correct then these copyright suits are a serious problem clogging the courts over trivial matters.
Re: 58%
Trivial but highly lucrative, hence why the parasites continue. They get slapped down every so often, but generally the most that involves is a judge ripping them to pieces without any attached penalty for abusing the courts for extortion rackets.
What needs to be implemented is some actual penalties, way to both punish the parasites and pay off(ideally with a bonus) their would-be victims such that they aren’t out legal fees even when they win/the parasites run away like the gutless cowards they are. If the parasites know that it will actually cost them when they tuck their tails and run I suspect they would be much more hesitant to send out demands, just in case someone decides to fight back rather than fold.
Re: Re: 58%
Penalties like Rule 11 or the loser-pays provision already built into copyright law?
Re: Re: 58%
The thing is, it’s really simple to start an LLC.
So all they need is to have enough settlements before they get smacked down, then form a new LLC, sell it the IP, dissolve the old LLC, and hire the same lawyers.
Sure, a specific judge is going to notice the same paperwork filed by the same lawyers and get annoyed quickly, but there’s plenty of judges out there for them to pick from.
And by definition, the penalties will stick with the LLC which no longer exists.
Re: Re: Re: 58%
Then we need to abolish LLCs for the same reason we need to abolish the DMCA.
Don’t be weak.
Re: Re: Re:2 58%
Yeah, that seems like a reasonable, proportionate response by someone who has clearly thought this through.
Re: Re: Re:3 58%
The litigators themselves need to be taken to task for abusing the court. Penalties should apply to them as individuals on a three-strikes basis. Imagine being banned from a court for shaking people down for suspected infringement. Warms the cockles of my heart, so it does.
Re: Re: Re:3 58%
Well, its at least a logical position. Not a well thought out or researched position, but a logical one. I could see a logical chain
LLC-> Limited Liability Corporation->Limits of Legal Liability prevent personal consequences (by design, as an AC in this thread has described)->Therefore, with no legal consequences, bad actors perform bad behaviors (see also, behavior of large companies and their C-suites).
Personally, rather than scrapping LLCs as a whole, I’d prefer to make piercing the corporate veil easier, especially with regards to matters of legal misconduct, either civil or criminal. e.g. one could still be shielded from debts incurred from say, a business failure or a market downturn, but not from a court sanction or lawsuit award.
Re: Re: Re: 58%
Anyone who can connect the LLCs, their businesses and their shared principles can actually use that action to pierce the ‘corporate veil’, and get the judgements placed against the principles as individuals. The issue being that takes money and time. More money and time than just defending the case.
John Steele attempted the very schemes you discussed. It eventually brought him down.
Re: Re: 58%
Trivial isn’t the word I would use. In aggregate, they’re big business to the trolls, and on an individual basis, an individual who takes the threats seriously could be driven to bankruptcy or worse.
Re: Re: 58%
Since they submit dozens (hundreds?) of requests at a time, RICO applies. Just hit them with that for each IP address they submit. One such finding by a court and the industry would dry up like the Sahara. (They’d have to forfeit every penny they obtained from everyone they tried it on.)
Took you long enough to get round to it!
This is an outrage. IP address isn’t identity. Piracy isn’t theft. Copyright is evil! Anyone who wants to keep their precious content safe can’t offer it for sale! They can sell T-shirts. They still have their files, I haven’t taken anything. It’s just sharing, a natural right. I’d pay if were easy and convenient. I can’t get it where I live because the meanies don’t sell it and it’s not in my language. DRM is criminal. DMCA is draconian. Long live Criminal King Kim Dotcom! Arrr, mates! Now it’s me to go a-downloading and a-watching! I have 53 terabytes including the original "Fantasia", so take that, Disney!
Re: Took you long enough to get round to it!
Thank you, "Genuine Pirate", if that is your real screen name, for so clearly and explicitly stating the pirate’s view of law. You make my case for me.
And IF by some unlikely mischance, we’re on the same IP address, just remember that isn’t identity.
As to the instant case: copyright enforcement is difficult, YES, that’s the ONLY way you pirates get away with it. But you are in wrong morally, as even Masnick admitted, and when the content industries have the information that Google / ISPs can provide, and were put to this very judge, then you would be fined / jailed, open-and-shut cases.
Read Torrent Freak TODAY for how goes the battle. You pirates are losing because in the wrong.
Re: Re: Took you long enough to get round to it!
fwiw, i lol’d
Re: Re: Took you long enough to get round to it!
stares at the matching identifiers on the posts
You aren’t very good at this are you?
An outdated law giving trolls a $150K club to scare people with when often the clip is sold for $2.00 is stupid.
A legal system that gives trolls all of the devices and passwords in the home to go trolling, often ignoring the courts instructions to limit their scope, where even the lack of evidence is shown as “proof” they are more skilled than their experts.
Ummm jailed… I do not think you understand how civil cases work, but then given your flawed understanding of all of this I shouldn’t expect you to be very bright.
Allowing trolls to turn $1 videos into multimillion dollar blockbusters via the court was never the intent of the law, it has been perverted to protect an industry scared of its own shadow, living in the past, ignoring the reality everyone else lives in.
Begone, you have now power here. Leave before someone drops a house on you too.
Re: Re: Re: Took you long enough to get round to it!
Piracy is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Throw up a new film on BitTorrent and the “evil” companies don’t need lawyers or civil suits, because the FBI will do their work for them, get warrants, question the IP owner “did you download this?” and lies are punishable as perjury. Meanwhile, the small producers lack this enforcement arm because they just aren’t important enough.
In this scenario, piracy becomes de-facto legal against everyone BUT the very “evil” companies everyone claims to hate.
The logical answer on the civil end would be to allow for extensive prefiling discovery to ascertain if the IP address is in fact an indicator of who pirated the material. Since, by the court’s own admission, the correct defendant cannot be located, let the copyright holders determine this through prefiling discovery, in miscellaneous cases which have no defendant. The IP owner would be a witness, and witnesses are not prejudiced if they happen to witness something relevant to litigation.
Problem solved.
Re: Re: Re:2 Took you long enough to get round to it!
Ummm the FBI doesn’t give a shit about films on BT.
The FBI cares about terrorists selling the movies to fund terrorism… except the terrorists can’t make any money selling discs on the street because they can’t compete with free.
“extensive prefiling discovery to ascertain if the IP address is in fact an indicator of who pirated the material”
You mean like the filings that, IIRC it was MM who got smacked, who filed lists of 1000 other things the ip allegedly pirated (of which they have no interest in) and somehow child porn & bestiality titles were included on these public documents. While attaching their name to fetish porn is upsetting, hinting they enjoy child porn or fucking animals really sped up the settlement payments. Or the deep dive into their online accounts where they might mention they like game of thrones oh hey there is game of thrones on our list of accusations, generated by a secret black box out of the country that you can not question or test, so they must have stolen our movie!!!!!! They never mention if they checked to see if the person was a subscriber to HBO or not.
“The IP owner would be a witness, and witnesses are not prejudiced if they happen to witness something relevant to litigation.”
Something something settled case law that citizens have no fscking duty to the movie makers to secure their connection or maintain logs on the off chance someone might come knocking at some point in the future.
But do go on making an ass of yourself.
Re: Re: Re:2 Took you long enough to get round to it!
Piracy is a crime punishable by hanging.
Copyright infringement is generally a civil matter.
Re: Re: Re: Took you long enough to get round to it!
Not to defend the village idiot, but the matching snowflakes were part of their point, as nonsensical as it is.
Re: Re: Re:2 Took you long enough to get round to it!
I knew I’d eventually meet the wise Village Oracle!
Re: Re: Took you long enough to get round to it! He cried tearfully
“You pirates are losing because in the wrong.”
You can’t even fail properly.
Re: Re: Took you long enough to get round to it!
HAHAHAHA. Sock puppets…
Re:
You mock people for believing all of this, and yet…
…everything you said that wasn’t obvious hyperbole or true mockery is pretty much backed up by reality itself.
Re: Re: Re:
Re: Re: Re:
Counterpoint:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170822/09555538058/if-everyone-just-wants-free-stuff-is-responsible-piracy-why-cant-nintendo-keep-classic-consoles-stock.shtml
People want to support content creators. They do so by paying them money, following their work, and forming sub-cultures around them, among other things. That’s literally what it means to be a “fan” of something. If someone doesn’t want fans who follow their work and devote portions of their life to essentially worship them, just because they aren’t being paid enough money, then that someone has “sold out.”
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
“People want to pay the check when they dine out at a restaurant…”
How generous.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
If people are so good as you claim, where are all the “good” lawyers defending these cases pro bono?
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
I have a list.
See there was this little copyright troll mill called Prenda who terrorized people & there was actually proof they created the events solely to profit from them… I ended up in contact with a bunch irritated people & a whole mess of lawyers. Some of them did do pro bono work for people who couldn’t pay, some offered lower than normal fees, if the courts did their job and awarded them costs when they prevailed more of them would have done the work on contingency.
A group of meddling kids on the internet busted the largest copyright troll (and a bunch of small ones), perhaps you should stop talking until you clean the house on your side.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Counterpoint: where are all the good people staffing collection and performance right agencies? SABAM? Promusicae?
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
Just keep moving that goal post!
Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Uh, looks like you replied to the wrong post there, buddy.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
They saw what the industry was doing & because they still had souls they quit.
Re: Re: Re:
Yes. While an IP should never be used as a sole identifier/piece of evidence in an investigation, it can be used as a starting point.
Criminal copyright infringement is a felony when it is done for financial gain; in pretty much all other instances, it is a civil matter.
How does that prevent someone from, you know, making and sharing a copy of a work after they have paid for and received their copy of that work?
They can sell something even more valuable: access to both their time and their skills.
Digital content being protected or unprotected does not change its value. A digital copy of Black Panther is infinitely less valuable than, say, a physical Blu-ray copy or a physical “master copy”.
If you lose a “potential” sale of your work, no money has left your wallet/bank account and you still retain ownership of your work (and the copyright thereof). You cannot lose something that you never had in the first place. And if piracy truly robbed the government of “jobs and tax revenue”, you could point to how that happens instead of asserting the idea without evidence.
I would not call them “evil”, but “big” is a good adjective, yes. Also they offer “shelter” from piracy by offering a convenient, legal, and affordable way to watch both older movies/TV shows and compelling unique-to-Netflix content—which is exactly what people want out of Netflix, which makes Netflix a better proposition than piracy for more than enough people.
Yes, pirating that content is illegal, but what makes it any less immoral than the company not offering some legal form of that content to you in the first place?
How dare major media companies write a law that allows them to take down/revoke access to reviews, media critique, and other such Fair Use-utilizing works with nothing but a single legal notice. How dare the law make it possible for legally protected speech to be memory-holed with a single takedown notice, then force the accused infringer to file a counternotice and spend weeks waiting for the accuser to decide on possible legal action just so the content could possibly go back up.
Because they’re a bunch of entitled twats who think they can steal from other people and sit around on their asses.
…wait a sec—we are talking about billionaires, right?
And maybe your idea can go fuck itself.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
“it can be used as a starting point.”
Except in a copyright case, apparently.
Re: Re: Re:3
It can be used as a starting point in a copyright case, yes. The issue is, copyright trolls use it as the end point.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“If someone threatens the president from an IP, is that grounds to investigate?”
Equates a death threat against POTUS with someone downloading some fat booties hoes having sex.
Perhaps this is the industries problem, they think someone making a copy is the same as threatening to murder POTUS.
“Then change the law. Copyright is built into the Constitution.”
Sure give me 200 million so I can pay off enough congresscritters to pass a law so that my cartoon mouse can be protected into 3010 b/c if we don’t the entire house of mouse will collapse into a sucking black hole and murder all the puppies.
“The producer has lost a potential sale, and the government has lost jobs and tax revenue. Copyright doesn’t require free sampling.”
A potential sale for $5 should not generate a $10K windfall.
How the FUCK does a downloaded movie steal government jobs, please include charts and a bibliography on this crazy bullshit.
“Be nice and the thugs won’t attack. Be nice and the rattlesnakes won’t bite. “Produce work on our terms or we will steal it.” “
So in your twisted worldview customers demanding to be treated like customers and not felons is a horrific thing. They demand insane amounts of control over what people who paid them can do with the content they allegedly now own, and are always seeking more control based on what they imagine might happen.
” In “the 2000s” on CNN, Metallica said in an interview about “ex-Meticallica fans” who protested their suit against Napster, “We don’t want you as fans.””
FIRE BAD!!!!!!!! NAPSTER BAD!!!!!!!!!!!
You mean that band that encouraged fans to tape their shows and share those tapes so they could get popular enough to get a contract then became insane & shit on those people who helped make them? Funny how this part always gets left out, they encouraged their fans to violate their copyrights when it worked for them…
Oh and because it is funny as shit to me, Gene Simmons & the if you steal KISS’s music we will make you homeless!!! But the silence when his son was caught stealing other artists work and passing it off as his own, commercial copyright infringement even.. the worst kind.
“Maybe we can set up a government agency to determine which works are “good” enough to deserve protection.”
Given the great job the FCC & the Patent office are doing…
No fucking thanks.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Then change the law. Copyright is built into the Constitution.
Stephen and TAC had fun with the other points, so I’ll just address this one to point out yet again, that no, it’s not, beyond a very loose definition of ‘built into’.
Copyright is allowed by the Constitution, so long as it serves the public. It is neither required nor anything resembling a right, and could be stricken from US law entirely, with such a move consistent with the Constitution.
OK, who told the judge...
Yea…
Someone told the Judge, How tech works..
Dear Mark..
If its a moral problem, then let God, decide the punishment..NOT MAN.
Although I was hungry for some Star Trek references, it’s still very welcome news.
Another Option
Here in Canada, the loser pretty much automatically pays the winner’s legal bills. This stops a large number of frivolous lawsuits – it can be very expensive to file if you don’t have an ironclad case. File and drop it, and the countersuit can still come after you for legal fees.
IMHO this is right; you intend to take something to court, you should have the acts to prove you are right and the facts to prove your damages warrant the claim you make. USA copyright holders and their stooges seem to have bought the necessary legal framework to avoid both those requirements.
Re: Another Option
This leads to a scenario where the rich can oppress the poor because the rich can afford to sue and the poor have to risk bankruptcy. A percentage-of-wealth sanction is a good middle ground. In some states in the US, punitive damages against the poor are almost impossible to win because of this.
Copyright already has a loser-pays provision btw.
Re: Re: Another Option
So, the scenario we already have you mean, where how right you are matters vastly less than how much money you have to burn?
Re: Re: Re: Another Option
I know. The courts were completely fair before this internet copyright thing came along!
Re: Re: Re:2 Another Option
Ah, I see, you’re dishonest. Well, thanks for clearing that one up for me and saving me the effort for future replies.
Re: Re: Another Option
Which we almost never see because it has to be an ‘extraordinary’ case before the judge will even contemplate having the big name company pay some stay at home wife filming her kid dancing to a song done by someone who fancied himself royalty.
Re: Re: Another Option
Except that provision is short circuited time & time again.
Its as toothless as the perjury “penalty” for a bogus DMCA notice.
Once they move to dismiss, this removes any chance for a target to make a motion for costs & even if they manage to make the motion the trolls have a nice boilerplate about how they didn’t prevail because they were unable to prove they never ‘stole’ anything. Making people prove a negative… how is this fair?
Re: Another Option
Read the article. If and/or when there is a lawsuit and there is any push back the trolls run away. They are in court for the purpose of discovery so they can send out their extortion letters.
Re: Re: Another Option
So good lawyers can take the other side of these cases for free! They won’t mind putting their billable hours where their mouths are.
Re: Re: Re: Another Option
The way I understand the concept, loser pays requires there to be a loser. If there is no lawsuit filed, how can there be a loser?
If the only thing copyright trolls do in court is request discovery (the billing information associated with an IP address) then, so far as the court is concerned, there was no specific accusation. If a lawsuit gets filed (a specific accusation) and someone pushes back and the plaintiff walks away, there is no loser. Yeah it costs some money to push back. No one said it didn’t.
So the question is whether it is cheaper to pay the extortion or pay to push back enough to get the trolls to walk away. If you don’t respond and get sued, and then don’t show up in court, they can get a default judgment against you, even if you did nothing wrong. I also suspect that if you show up in court without a lawyer, the other side will just laugh and expect to win.
Better yet would be to counter sue, if there is a basis for that, but that costs money too, and since we don’t have loser pays, a big risk, and then even if you win you have to pay your side of the argument.
I don’t know what it takes to make an extortion or fraud case, but apparently the trolls are careful about not going far enough for that to happen, Prenda and a few others excepted.
Re: Another Option
It only took a few years until we got the courts to stop rubber stamping cases where they targeted several thousand IP addresses for 1 low low filing fee.
Current rate is now $400 to file.
They would sometimes have 5000 IP’s… and would skip on paying fees to the ISPs for the lookups… the cases would sit on the docket for years (well outside of what the rules demanded) as they shook people down.
In they managed a meager 5% settlement rate at $7K…
$3,500,000
And always dismissed, without prejudice, if anyone made motions to make counterclaims (which they were unable to because they hadn’t been named yet) so they could come back and scare them threatening to file if you don;t pay…
Its a real shitshow.
Re: Another Option
If the parasites couldn’t cut and run the second they faced any real opposition, and instead faced the very real possibility that their target could force them to pay the legal fees I imagine the number of individuals making use of the courts as tools of copyright-extortion would plummet significantly.
It’s not nearly as fun, and certainly not as profitable, if your target can effectively fight back after all and you face the chance of your attempted shakedown blowing up in your face.
What happens when it’s a not-yet-released film that winds up on BitTorrent? Does Hollywood just have to throw up its hands? Or will Hollywood see this danger and lobby for some type of statutory solution even more draconian than the DMCA?
Or do we have a new scheme that offers deterrent-protection to the big “evil” companies because BitTorrent won’t allow the goose to be killed (by secretly wiping those downloads out and assisting in prosecution), while allowing open season against the smaller outfits?
Today’s music already stinks because of piracy. Songwriters can’t just go on tour. Surely this site wouldn’t mind if someone stripped its content of all the advertising and put a convenient “digest” on BitTorrent. Information, after all, wants to be free.
Re: Re:
Do you have some data which shows that films that are leaked before release make less money than those which aren’t?
I would think that if that were the case, X-Men Origins: Wolverine would have been a complete box office bomb, instead of just a critical one.
BitTorrent is a protocol, not a service. Asking BitTorrent to wipe out downloads and assist in prosecution is like asking Tim Berners-Lee to be held responsible to do the same for any content on any website using HTTP (which is just about all of them), or asking Samuel Morse to be held responsible to block any radio signals containing seditious messages sent using Morse code.
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If it’s a protocol then ISPs can block its use or face liability. A torrent “protocol” for downloading child porn wouldn’t be allowed.
None of this would be necessary if with proper enforcement of copyright. There is no justification for infringement. If someone doesn’t like Metallica for suing Napster, don’t listen to their music. They already said they don’t care if they lose you as a fan.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You…don’t know what LLCs or protocols are.
Re: Re: Re:2
I doubt he knows what “is” is.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Let’s add the DMCA to the vast list of legal subjects you don’t know the first thing about.
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Again, by that logic, you’d be trying to hold Samuel Morse responsible if conspirators trying to overthrow the government were using Morse Code to communicate.
File transfer protocols are, almost always, content agnostic. When I worked at a college, we used BitTorrent to distribute new image files to all of the desktop computers on the network. The Torrent client didn’t care that it was a disk image being transferred, or whether the license for Windows was legitimate (it was): its job was to get the data from point A to points B through ZZZ in the most efficient manner possible.
If you wanted to ban any file transfer protocol that could carry child pornography, you’d have to ban every file transfer protocol, because there’s no reliable way to stop it without stopping absolutely everything else. And, without any way to transfer data, the Internet would be dead.
Those are literally your only two options: an Internet where distasteful and illegal file transfers take place, or no Internet at all. There is no third path. Which do you choose?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"If it’s a protocol then ISPs can block its use or face liability. A torrent "protocol" for downloading child porn wouldn’t be allowed."
You realize that what you said equates to "Any language capable of transmitting naughty words should not be allowed over the phone"
The "bittorrent protocol" is nothing more than a set of instructions to split and transmit discrete datasets with an instruction on how to reassemble the transmitted bits at the end recipient.
This protocol is heavily used in such things as software updates, game updates, patching of the windows OS and, of course, transmission of database content of all kinds.
I could be massively diplomatic here and make the assertion that your suggestion – that the solution to your imaginary problem of people copying things is to dismantle the internet – is NOT HELPFUL.
Or I could be less diplomatic and state that as usual, the pro-copyright crowd has no arguments which aren’t rooted in ignorance and incompetence, thus not worth hearing.
Re: Re: Re:
Statutory damages do not require proof of economic loss, which is presumed by law.
If you have a problem with statutory damages, that’s another issue. If you have a problem with the quality of the work or the personality of the creator not being a factor in protection, that’s another.
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There is, however, data of some of these copyright trolls putting videos out for torrenting themselves, which makes their claims that torrenting the video is "unauthorized" completely amd knowingly false. Oopsie.
Re: Re:
And if they expect a few hours work writing a song or twelve to give them a lifetimes income, they would find touring to require an excessive amount of work.
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If millions consume that “few hours of work” that is done completely on spec, the songwriters deserve every cent. There is always the option of not listening to the music if one doesn’t like the royalty structure.
Quality suffers when people don’t get paid. Today’s music is garbage because of piracy. Ask any kid.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
That depends on where you go to get your music. There is plenty of music to suite all tastes being released via the Likes of Jamendo.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Hell, OverClocked ReMix has hours upon hours of music of all kinds, and all of it free to download.
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The quality of today’s music has fuck all to do with piracy and you know it.
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Funnily enough, for something that you proudly declare to be garbage you sure throw a fit when people pay less for it.
Re: Re: Re:
You mean like a lawyer who gets $500 an hour for work that is easy for him or her to do? Or a doctor who makes thousands for a brief surgery?
Years of schooling and practice go into those “few hours,” which is why the work is so valuable.
Without proper rewards, the best talent will gravitate towards places where they get paid. Someone who might have written a bestselling novel will instead just write ad copy for some “big, evil” corporation.
There are strong anti-capitalist underpinnings to these debates that extend well beyond copyright law.
How about nominal damages as a middle ground? Infringement penalties can be as low as $200.00.
Re: Re: Re:
Even if the work is easy for the lawyer, it may not be easy for the person hiring said lawyer—which is why the lawyer can afford to charge high prices, as their time and expertise would be in great demand. And if you have to ask why a surgeon makes lots of cash, well, you are clearly out of your depth when it comes to this argument.
Or they could write the novel in their spare time. Also writing a novel is no guarantee that it will be a bestseller—or a “good” novel, for that matter.
So what?
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Lawyers could also practice law for free in their spare time while they do something more productive to earn a living. They’d still have to go to law school and do everything to make their work valuable, but they just shouldn’t be paid.
As we know, everyone hates lawyers, so no big deal.
Looks like lwamakers aren’t fooled by these misdirections so all the noise being made on sites like this isn’t really changing anything.
Whatever fixes the enforcement problem will be way stronger than the laws we have now. I can see why the pirates are so bitter.
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Practicing law is productive. It isn’t my fault that your (potentially willful and trolling) ignorance blinds you to that fact.
Copyright does not need stronger enforcement protocols than it has now unless you believe that any instance of infringement, even instances that would be protected by Fair Use principles, must be shut down and the infringers punished to the fullest extent of the law, no questions asked and no due process given. I imagine that sounds like what Disney would want from a new copyright law or three, so hey, I hope they’re paying you extra for all this bootlicking you’re doing here.
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<<Even if the work is easy for the lawyer, it may not be easy for the person hiring said lawyer—which is why the lawyer can afford to charge high prices, as their time and expertise would be in great demand. And if you have to ask why a surgeon makes lots of cash, well, you are clearly out of your depth when it comes to this argument.>>
Kind of like how it’s not easy for the audience to create entertainment that is worth watching, so those who do create popular works can charge for them?
Let’s abolish copyright and put EVERYTHING into the public domain so we have a true level playing field. Then I could mirror Techdirt and sell ads on my own, because that would be my reward for attracting a larger audience for my site.
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Yes, exactly. (What, did you think I was going to disagree?)
You’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you? Well, I don’t fuck on the first date, so you’ll have to try harder.
You can already do that. Mike has said as much multiple times in the past to other, marginally smarter people who said similar bullshit.
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You could, but unless you remove all references to Techdirt, you will more likely act as advertising for them.
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Sure? If you think people are going to visit a website mirror, of a site you openly disagree with and loathe, and a site you claim is so insignificant it can’t even affect policymaking… well, based on your own claims I don’t see how this millions-making ad revenue scheme could possibly fail!
Seriously, the attempt to “pirate the site” as a “Gotcha!” has got to be one of the most ignorant plays you can make.
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It is easily one of the funniest face-plant ‘Gotcha!’ techniques I see used on TD, made all the more entertaining because inevitably everyone but the one using it already knows how laughable it is.
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One other point to this, the ads can’t be “sold, they are in the public domain in this scenario so how is he/she going to make money off this?
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In addition to what others have pointed out concerning BitTorrent being a protocol, not a service, I would like to add that attempts to "control" file sharing via BitTorrent have already been attempted. The powers that be started attacking BitTorrent tracking sites and as a result we now have completely decentralized tracking via the DHT protocols.
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“Surely this site wouldn’t mind if someone stripped its content of all the advertising and put a convenient “digest” on BitTorrent.“
Hey rumpled foreskin the owner of this website has said he’s fine with that multiple times, so knock yourself out.
To be clear I ment knock yourself out and also scape this site for BT. I eagerly await your link as soon as you wake up.
Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Dec 10th, 2018 @ 12:49pm
No. No they don’t mind. Your turn again.
... damn.
That is one judge that is quite done with allowing their court to be used for a get-rich-quick extortion racket, and has no qualms with making that crystal clear. Now if only every judge would follow suit the parasites might actually have to get real jobs(or end up jobless, I’d be good with either).
Would “IP is not identity” work if someone threatened the President?
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:::crickets::::
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Oh, you’re the "crickets" guy. That explains all the dumb shit you keep saying.
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It would give the Secret Service a place to start, but they would still have to do real police work to determine the actual person, especially if this IP address was a Tim Horton’s or some other open WiFi hotspot.
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Are you Canadian by chance?
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Copyright cases (criminal or civil) should have the same “starting point.” The preponderance-of-evidence standard should prevail here. A lawsuit filed against an IP owner should not be considered bad faith. The IP owner can rely on some “good” lawyer to file a motion to dismiss, ith an affidavit that they did not pirate the work, and do not know who did.
Just like a car owner can claim s/he had no knowledge of who had the keys to their car when they caused an accident.
Prefiling discovery would be appropriate given the ruling made in this case.
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It should be if the only evidence that says “the IP owner is the pirate” is the IP address.
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That would call for prefiling discovery to ascertain the identity of th actual pirate, since the IP owner would be the equivalent of the ISP in a John Doe lqawsuit.
Cost of filing a prefiling discovery motion: $39 (unless it went up).
Wouldn’t that make “copyright trolling” easier?
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A prefiling discovery motion would only be useful to copyright trolls if their plan was to sue the actual pirate rather than to scare the IP owner (who may not be the pirate) with the threat of a lawsuit and turn that fear into a quick settlement.
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If someone threatens the president from an IP, how do they identify who made the threat? The same technique can and should be used to identify the actual pirate.
As for content filtering being so impossible, how is it that child porn is never uploaded to these torrents or to YouTube?
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Investigative work that relies on using the IP as a starting point, not as the only point.
Again: If copyright trolls were interested in identifying the actual pirate rather than looking for a quick settlement, they would investigate.
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If someone threatens the president from an IP, how do they identify who made the threat? The same technique can and should be used to identify the actual pirate.
Which would be a permission granted to you if you didn’t spend several decades that you are shit at finding the "actual pirate", even when given that information, and your heroes like Cara Duckworth hadn’t already admitted that you don’t care if you get the actual infringer so long as you have a money tree to shake.
And what a surprise, you can’t help but bring Cp into the argument. Expected to see one of you Prenda fanboys foam at the mouth, was not disappointed.
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These trolls only use discovery to dupe ISPs into handing over IP addresses of more potential victims, not to verify the identity of their current one.
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Civil and criminal cases have vastly different starting points. Though why would you let a little thing like the most basic of legal facts interrupt your piss stream of ignorant garbage?
Re: Re: Re:2 *crickets*
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Ummm, you are comparing apples to airplanes here. The original question referred to a threat to the President in which case law enforcement would be vigorously investigating the location, and you know, have boots on the ground, asking questions and chasing leads, etc. (ie: "real police work").
Are you suggesting, that we as society, should expend those resources chasing down copyright infringement (which is mostly a civil matter between private entities) or are you suggesting that those filing infringment lawsuits should? Please clarify.
News aggregators have all but put investigative journalism out of business. is that a good thing?
News organizations simply cannot afford to do the legwork that was once the hallmark of the profession. It has been replaced by individuals doing this work “in their spare time.”
This certainly does not serve the public interest.
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Sorry sir I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Your strawman fell apart when you brought it out and it’s made a reall mess everywhere.
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What the hell does that, true or not, have to do with the discussion at hand? You keep tossing out completely unrelated “examples” as if to demonstrate how correct your position is while failing to notice that your grasp of the topic and ephemera is so tenuous that most of what you type is way off in left field.
Seriously, go educate yourself. And use sources other than Fox.
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The news example is quite germane. The news industry has had its guts ripped out by “aggregation” (piracy) that denies them income while profiting off their work and investment. We now rely on SJW and “citizen journalists” to do this work (spare-time hobbyists), and the drop in quality is noticeable. Those who are corrupt face far less scrutiny now as a result.
Entertainment as a “spare time” hobby is an insult to those who have devoted their lives to developing their artistic talents. Replacing them with hobbyists or those who are sponsored by other things creates a similarly noticeable drop in quality.
So sorry your pattern-recognition skills appear to be lacking.
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Ah, the “but Google, but Facebook” argument. You want to blow millions of dollars on diva actors, good for you. That’s still no reason for me to fund you, especially if I didn’t see the movie.
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Did you know?
Your argents wouldn’t stink so bad if you’d stop pulling them out of your ass like that.
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Oh shit he pulled out the SJW as an insult. Looks like we got a real badass here.
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Sir you were told to leave as your strawman made a real health and safety hazard.
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What brand of glue is it you sniff?
“aggregation” actually creates more traffic for the news industry because the whole story is still only on their site.
The industry is in a tailspin because they’ve done really stupid things then doubled down on them.
Paywalls, AdBlockerBlockers, serving up every shitty piece of malware possible, infecting users machines, doing business with the bottom of the barrel ad networks because they pay a quarter cent more.
Then they shot themselves in the dick by firing everyone who wasn’t doing video for them because FB told them to pivot to video… despite the fact anyone with a brain can see how much users hate video news.
Newspapers did the same thing the music industry did, we’ve always made our money this way and so what if our costs are way down we have always made this much and we should always make this much & not adapt.
We can’t sell songs for 99 cents people will think the music is worthless!!! It doesn’t matter that there literally is no cost in selling a digital file they decided it was still worth the price of creating plastic discs.
Oh and your aggregation thing was already blown up several times in the EU, they told Google to pay them for sending them traffic… so Google stopped. Their traffic went down by a huge amount, they cried for Google to come back. They had the power all along to stop Google, they just wanted someone else to pay them for not adapting to what the market wants.
Artistic Talents…. Sharknado 47…
Part timers… yeah like those idiots who made that movie… oh yeah Blair Witch that was box office gold, and then the industry hijacked the brand and created amazingly crappy sequels that ticked all of the boxes for the big brains at the studio… but failed to appeal to viewers. Sometimes those spare time hobby people are better than “professionals”…. something something J.K. Rowling.
Time to just start locking up the thieves and rewarding those who snitch them out.
These thieves are losers who never created anything, feel entitled to steal, and harm the economy. Just start locking them up (which the law allows) until they get the meswsage. They can’t be reasoned with.
Aski Masnick to disclose where he gets his money to support his “business model.” The answer might surprise you. He wanted the attention oif deep-diving investigative journalists and now he has it. LONG article about him is in the works.
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Damn, John Smith, and here I thought you couldn’t be more unhinged.
John Steele being your shining beacon of copyright enforcement really put the piss in your cornflakes didn’t it?
Re: Bitches get stitches
Oh look it’s Jhon “I was only asking those male prostitutes for directions” Smythe.
How’s those multiple federal, state, local, mall-cop and fashion police investigations going bro? They ever find the ciber-assassain book thieves? You still the most powerful man in Hollywood or was that taking too much time from your Grammy award winning multi platinum band?
You gonna threaten to leave a bad yelp review next?
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These make-nothing economy-harming loser thieves you’re talking about have names, you know. Here are some of them:
Prenda
Righthaven
IO Group
Copyright Enforcement Group (CEG-TEK)
Global Equity Management (SA) Pty. Ltd.
Liberty Media Group
Malibu Media
Getty Images
Blackbird Technologies
Njord Law
Venice PI
CryptoPeak Solutions
Rights Enforcement
Voltage Pictures
d/b/a Sharing Sound, LLC
U+C
TQP
Zambezia Film, LTD
CP Productions, Inc.
Wetro Lan, LLC