23,000 File Sharers Targeted In Latest Lawsuit 386
wiedzmin writes "Subpoenas are expected to go out to ISPs this week in what could be the biggest BitTorrent downloading case in US history. At least 23,000 file sharers are being targeted by the US Copyright Group for downloading The Expendables. The Copyright Group appears to have adopted Righthaven's strategy in blanket-suing large numbers of defendants and offering an option to quickly settle online for a moderate payment. The IP addresses of defendants have allegedly been collected by paid snoops capturing lists of all peers who were downloading or seeding Sylvester Stallone's flick last year. I am curious to see how this will tie into the BitTorrent case ruling made earlier this month indicating that an IP address does not uniquely identify the person behind it."
Questionable Legality (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the court ruling of IP address != identity. I would certainly like to see said copyright group charged with extortion.
Re:This can't be right. (Score:4, Insightful)
23,000 people downloaded The Expendables? Really?
And 23,000 were saved from having to ask the theater for their money back.
Re:Questionable Legality (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder what would happen... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Busy Work... (Score:5, Insightful)
i have no doubt in my mind that there is a "safe" list of IPs that will never receive a subpoena. i'm sure getting added is just an embarrassing phone call away.
MAFIAA at it again (Score:1, Insightful)
Another round of shakedowns by corporate America. The only sane reaction would be for them to be laughed out of the court room for even suggesting something this absurd. You can gauge how free your country is by how much action the government takes in stopping this type of behavior.
USA! We're number #1! (in extorting our citizens for corporate greed)
What really irks me.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Revenue Stream (Score:5, Insightful)
The movie grossed $103 million at the US box office
Assuming a movie ticket price of $20, this means that 5.3 million people saw the movie in theatres. These guys are suing 23222 people, or about 230 times fewer
At $150K per defendant, the potential works out to $3.48billion or roughly 33 times the US gross (and $700million more than the highest grossing movie ever - Avatar
My business pitch to the movie studios would be: "Straight to torrent then litigate - that's where the money is..."
Re:This IP/person issue...it's obvious to me. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This IP/person issue...it's obvious to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a mighty fine straw man you've got there. It'd be a shame if somebody were to say, point out that copyright is about controlling distribution not consumption.
Re:I wonder what would happen... (Score:2, Insightful)
But the 100 richest would be the ones who could hire expensive lawyers and take off work to fight the them in court just for fun.
Re:Revenue Stream (Score:2, Insightful)
You think that every person who downloads a movie distributes ten copies of it over sneakernet? Are you high?
Re:Busy Work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Busy Work... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the ISPs, I imagine the **IAs would love to see them inconvenienced even further by piracy. It means more of an incentive to put in place technological measures to stop piracy like blocking popular trackers, traffic shaping and tiny usage quotas.
Re:Not identifying the downloader is irrellevant (Score:4, Insightful)
In the law of torts, the attractive nuisance doctrine states that landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on the land if the injury is caused by a hazardous object or condition on the land that is likely to attract children who are unable to appreciate the risk posed by the object or condition. The doctrine has been applied to hold landowners liable for injuries caused by abandoned cars, piles of lumber or sand, trampolines, and swimming pools. However, it can be applied to virtually anything on the property of the landowner.
The last sentence notwithstanding, all tests against this doctrine are with regards to child trespassers.
If a child walked into a house with a loaded gun on the coffee table and popped his pal who happened to be with him, this holds merit; an adult walks in, however, grabs the gun, and goes house-to-house offing neighbours, this is completely off the table.
Re:Busy Work... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not unreasonable to expect that as bandwidth increases, caps increase too. I know that many ISPs aren't particularly reasonable, but they're going to be forced to be reasonable eventually, if they want customers. They may have a local monopoly, but if things were seriously that backward in my town that I couldn't even use the net properly, then I'd just move to a better area, or even a better country.