The RIAA? Amateurs. Here's how you sue 14,000+ P2P users

A single law firm in Virginia has partnered with indie filmmakers to bring more than 14,000 lawsuits against P2P file-swappers in a mere six months. Here's the complete list.

<a href='http://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/the-riaa-amateurs-heres-how-you-sue-p2p-users.ars'>Read the whole story</a>

 

[bartfat]

This is a bit sickening to see how the system can be abused so badly.

 

[Game_Ender]

So I dislike the methods they are taking, but it isn't a bad thing if people think twice about violating the copyright on movies by torrenting them.

 

[panton41]

Sounds like they might get caught up in RICO laws over this. Sure, the P2P part might be illegal, but one the other hand this sounds a lot like extortion. With them already playing fast and loose with the court system on how they're filing them to begin with I wouldn't be surprised if a judge (or the Bar) slaps them down a notch.

 

[Faramir]

Is the court letting them file one suit for each movie, instead of one suit per John Doe?

The latter would get expensive quickly, docketing a case isn't free.

 

[MadeInUSA]

I think this is horse crap. It's pretty likely that someone caught in this net was actually downloading the film in question. However there are simply too many ways and chances for someone to be incorrectly targeted. It's unfair to the target as they have no reasonable opportunity to defend themselves and prove their innocence or reason for downloading. It's also completely impossible to prove how much each user cost the producer.

The vast majority cases of piracy are not lost sales. They're people who would have never seen the movie (or bought the song, software, etc) or would have found some other way to see it without paying. Many are also deciding if the movie is worth seeing or are exercising fair use rights by getting a copy of what they already paid for since they lack the means or skill to break the copy protection on their bought copy.

The number of lost sales to piracy is probably easily below five percent of the total download numbers. A person found guilty should not be responsible for more than the damages on the number of provable distributed copies. Those who pirate for profit could be forced to pay treble damages on the provable number.

Unfortunately this would simply require effort and fair use of the legal system. I hope that a reasonably intelligent and uncorrupted judge will see how ridiculous the "Copyright Group"'s actions are and force them to refile their cases separately and pay the filing fees for each...just as any of us would have to do.

 

[hpsgrad]

So I dislike the methods they are taking, but it isn't a bad thing if people think twice about violating the copyright on movies by torrenting them.

Do we have any evidence that the positive aspects (you choose your measurable positive aspect) of this sort of action are even in the same league as the negative ones (hell, you choose the negative one too)?

 

[saturnblackhole]

So I dislike the methods they are taking, but it isn't a bad thing if people think twice about violating the copyright on movies by torrenting them.

this wouldn't deter anyone because only a small percent of piraters were sued. 15,000 people out of 1million copyright infringer (extremely low estimate) would mean thats theres only a 1.5% chance of getting caught which is a fair risk to take to get something for free.

 

[ChrisAsmadi]

Why haven't one of the people who've recieved one of these reported it to the police as blackmail or extortion? Because that's basically what it is.

 

[UltimateLemon]

Is the court letting them file one suit for each movie, instead of one suit per John Doe?

The latter would get expensive quickly, docketing a case isn't free.

Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver is submitting them as one suit for each movie. Thus they are paying $250 for something in the order of 4,500 John Does.

Considering they are asking for $1,500, they stand to make $6,750,000 if they ALL settle just for FarCry. Pretty good business don't you think? Sure it makes total mockery out of the copyright law and its administration but who cares as long as Uwe "Terror" Bolls and his lawyer hounds makes money for what was essentially a massive flop?

 

[Nate Anderson]

Is the court letting them file one suit for each movie, instead of one suit per John Doe?

The latter would get expensive quickly, docketing a case isn't free.

One suit per movie is how they're trying to do it at the moment.

 

[UltimateLemon]

So I dislike the methods they are taking, but it isn't a bad thing if people think twice about violating the copyright on movies by torrenting them.

this wouldn't deter anyone because only a small percent of piraters were sued. 15,000 people out of 1million copyright infringer (extremely low estimate) would mean thats theres only a 1.5% chance of getting caught which is a fair risk to take to get something for free.

Umm... care to share with us how you got the extremely low estimate of 1 million copyright infringers?

 

[BlackTaxi2d]

hey what would happen if you legally owned the movie and then downloaded it ? then the download is not actually illegal, as you have already purchased the movie. by this token, could you then purchase said movie as soon as you are served and claim that you had owned the movie ? they make ask for some proof of purchase, but maybe there would be some way around it ?

ill stick to downloading music thank you. and a lot of it is free nowadays on bandcamp, or just listening to pandora. RIP lala.com too :/

 

[hpsgrad]

Why haven't one of the people who've recieved one of these reported it to the police as blackmail or extortion? Because that's basically what it is.

It's not extortion unless the person demanding the money knows that they're doing so unlawfully. Since these guys have at least a plausible basis (legally-speaking) for thinking that the people they're sending letters to have infringed on copyrights, proving that they were intending to extract money from people unlawfully would require something like direct quotes from the lawyers, stating that their aims are unlawful and that they're expecting all sorts of illegal money.

Put another way, the US Copyright Group need only speak of their clients, of their honest belief that those they send letters to really did infringe, and apologize (or at least drop suits) to those who show that they haven't infringed to be immune to extortion charges.

Because it's so hard to prove extortion in a case like this, and because it's so easy for it to be legal, no AG is ever going to waste their time on it.

 

[hpsgrad]

hey what would happen if you legally owned the movie and then downloaded it ? then the download is not actually illegal, as you have already purchased the movie. by this token, could you then purchase said movie as soon as you are served and claim that you had owned the movie ? they make ask for some proof of purchase, but maybe there would be some way around it ?

ill stick to downloading music thank you. and a lot of it is free nowadays on bandcamp, or just listening to pandora. RIP lala.com too :/

Downloading a movie you bought on DVD is almost certainly copyright infringement by current US law. It might be insane for this to be true, but that's what the law says.

 

[Maestro4k]

Sounds like they might get caught up in RICO laws over this. Sure, the P2P part might be illegal, but one the other hand this sounds a lot like extortion. With them already playing fast and loose with the court system on how they're filing them to begin with I wouldn't be surprised if a judge (or the Bar) slaps them down a notch.

I agree, this sounds like nothing but extortion, complete with threats ("we'll take you to court and demand the MAXIMUM damages of $150,000").

I don't hold out much hope of the legal system doing anything without external prodding. Hopefully someone wrongfully charged will fight and bring a class-action suit against them. Or maybe they'll file so many lawsuits that congress will notice and do something. (Simply having congress start investigating might be enough to make judges and/or the bar decide to do something, basically to cover their own asses.)

Having the figures and the charts puts Time Warner Cable's balking to process all the demands for info in a new light doesn't it? Never thought I'd be cheering for TWC, but I hope the prevail against these goons.

 

[junktrunk]

I know there have been probably 6 articles here so far on this story but I can't remember if any discussed how the firm has concluded that a violation occured using the given IP address. Are they able to conclude that the full copyrighted file is present on the user's hard drive and that it came from a torrent? Just curious on how they made their conclusion from the technical point of view.

If so, I'm guessing most people settling were actually downloading it (which is the act that is illegal, regardless of whether they 'watched it' or 'would have bought it' - both irrelevant). Otherwise I would think $1500 is too high for most people to just give in to make it go away when they didn't do anything.

 

[SirOmega]

My local newspaper does this - they have a law firm that they sign their copyrighted news stories over to (the deal presumably includes reproduction rights in perpetuity for the newspaper), that law firm sues the people republishing the stories in full, and the newspaper gets a cut of the settlement or awards.

 

[AlexFromOmaha]

While this is distasteful, abusive towards your customers, and likely a dumb move for a small studio that lives and dies by reputation and facade much more than a major studio in Hollywood, I don't understand the people claiming that this is "wrong" by any legal sense. You don't think 14,000 American citizens copied one of seven movies illegally? You don't think that they knew it was illegal? Seriously, people. If you didn't do it, take it to court. If you did, well, sucks to be you.

I see it a lot like marijuana use. Yes, lots more people use it than ever get taken to court. No, it's not as big of a deal as the law makes it out to be. That doesn't make it less illegal, and no one will be amused if your defense consists of "but it's not a big deal and lots of other people do it." Normally, you'd call that "pleading guilty."

 

[Mythical1]

Sounds like highway robbery to me. Especially since all these movies combined (with the exception of The Hurt Locker) aren't going to be making 9.85 mil by themselves.

 

[junktrunk]

hey what would happen if you legally owned the movie and then downloaded it ? then the download is not actually illegal, as you have already purchased the movie. by this token, could you then purchase said movie as soon as you are served and claim that you had owned the movie ? they make ask for some proof of purchase, but maybe there would be some way around it ?

ill stick to downloading music thank you. and a lot of it is free nowadays on bandcamp, or just listening to pandora. RIP lala.com too :/

Downloading a movie you bought on DVD is almost certainly copyright infringement by current US law. It might be insane for this to be true, but that's what the law says.

Are we sure about that? I realized the other day that I lost one disc of a 2 disc set and was thinking about whether it'd be illegal to download the lost one. I know DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent the copyright protection, but if it's already circumvented and I can prove I bought a license, are we sure it's illegal to download? Mainly just curious if it has been settled in a court yet or if we're all just theorizing.

 

[briareus]

hey what would happen if you legally owned the movie and then downloaded it ? then the download is not actually illegal, as you have already purchased the movie. by this token, could you then purchase said movie as soon as you are served and claim that you had owned the movie ? they make ask for some proof of purchase, but maybe there would be some way around it ?

ill stick to downloading music thank you. and a lot of it is free nowadays on bandcamp, or just listening to pandora. RIP lala.com too :/

Downloading a movie you bought on DVD is almost certainly copyright infringement by current US law. It might be insane for this to be true, but that's what the law says.

I'd say the bigger issue is that, using bittorrent, you're also making available the movie to other people.

I hope somebody throws an entire bittorrented Library of Congress at these people. What they're doing is extortion, IMO.

 

[Xerxies]

So I dislike the methods they are taking, but it isn't a bad thing if people think twice about violating the copyright on movies by torrenting them.

ohh shut up... no one will think twice and nor it needs to! pirates will always bee there if averege joe is not downloading is buying it from chenese people! its all an excuse for talantless people to make money by explotation!

for decent movies i go to the cinema and if i really like the movie i usualy go on and buy merchandise and other stuff so does everyone else...

 

[LuxFestinus]

Darknets here we come. Darknets can't come to everyone fast enough.

 

[The Mattman]

I wonder is the best defense to this is to get the word out for the 14K+ people to all simply refuse to play ball. That's an awful lot of people to have to take to court. I'm sure that they'd pick and choose a few to use as examples, but hopefully it would leave a bad enough taste in their mouth (or pocketbook) to prevent this sort of idiocy from happening again. In the meantime, the same 14K people and much, much more need to do as mention before and bombard their representatives in Congress to do something about this.

 

[Xerxies]

hey what would happen if you legally owned the movie and then downloaded it ? then the download is not actually illegal, as you have already purchased the movie. by this token, could you then purchase said movie as soon as you are served and claim that you had owned the movie ? they make ask for some proof of purchase, but maybe there would be some way around it ?

ill stick to downloading music thank you. and a lot of it is free nowadays on bandcamp, or just listening to pandora. RIP lala.com too :/

Downloading a movie you bought on DVD is almost certainly copyright infringement by current US law. It might be insane for this to be true, but that's what the law says.

Are we sure about that? I realized the other day that I lost one disc of a 2 disc set and was thinking about whether it'd be illegal to download the lost one. I know DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent the copyright protection, but if it's already circumvented and I can prove I bought a license, are we sure it's illegal to download? Mainly just curious if it has been settled in a court yet or if we're all just theorizing.

ahhh but is quite ilegal my dear friend as studios argue you bought the COPY and not the licence to the film therefore you are not allowed to copy the movie in any shape or form... after all if u where legaly allowed how are they going to make money once it comes out on blu-ray (10 years later) on red-ray and god knows what other formats?

 

[aiken_d]

In any lawsuit mill of this size, they have to know that they have false positives in the people they accuse, and that some innocent people will settle rather than fighting it.

That probably opens up some avenues of recourse. First, the wrongly accused could almost certainly go class action, since not only are they obviously a class, but the companies in question have declared that they are.

Secondly, the lawyers filing the suits are expected to act in good faith. I don't know if it's ever been tested, the idea of "I'm pretty sure 95% of these people have committed the tort." Certainly, I'd pitch some cash into a pool to go after the lawyers and law firms themselves on the principle that they are knowingly filing claims against innocent people. Simple statistics say it has to be knowingly, right?

Finally, hopefully someone will set up a resource where those who have been threatened can band together and pool funds for defense. This is a classic divide-and-conquer maneuver, and if a thousand people each pitch in $1000, that's real money for defense. And, again, the law firms are asking that the cases be combined, so this plan works fine.

* IANAL, etc, etc.

 

[hpsgrad]

While this is distasteful, abusive towards your customers, and likely a dumb move for a small studio that lives and dies by reputation and facade much more than a major studio in Hollywood, I don't understand the people claiming that this is "wrong" by any legal sense. You don't think 14,000 American citizens copied one of seven movies illegally? You don't think that they knew it was illegal? Seriously, people. If you didn't do it, take it to court, and spend years of your life as well as orders of magnitudes more money than they're asking for, so that you can end up with a piece of paper saying that you didn't infringe, and no way of getting that time or money back because the law firm won't be liable for damages, as they were acting in good faith. If you did, well, sucks to be you.

You left out some relevant information. Some people might have years to waste and tens of thousands of dollars to fund a legal campaign; most don't.

 

[Digitali]

If so, I'm guessing most people settling were actually downloading it (which is the act that is illegal, regardless of whether they 'watched it' or 'would have bought it' - both irrelevant). Otherwise I would think $1500 is too high for most people to just give in to make it go away when they didn't do anything.

I don't think the charge is 'illegal downloading', but illegal 'sharing' which means that you are violating the copyright by distributing the movie without permission. But, as far as I know, actual downloading is fine.

I do know that previously, they were going after the poor saps that didn't know not to use the same folder for upload and download, which allows everyone to see and download what you have already downloaded.

 

[hpsgrad]

Downloading a movie you bought on DVD is almost certainly copyright infringement by current US law. It might be insane for this to be true, but that's what the law says.

Are we sure about that? I realized the other day that I lost one disc of a 2 disc set and was thinking about whether it'd be illegal to download the lost one. I know DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent the copyright protection, but if it's already circumvented and I can prove I bought a license, are we sure it's illegal to download? Mainly just curious if it has been settled in a court yet or if we're all just theorizing.

ahhh but is quite ilegal my dear friend as studios argue you bought the COPY and not the licence to the film therefore you are not allowed to copy the movie in any shape or form... after all if u where legaly allowed how are they going to make money once it comes out on blu-ray (10 years later) on red-ray and god knows what other formats?

The studios are right: you bought a copy of a work on a DVD, and that doesn't entitle you to anything unless they offer you a separate license agreement which offers you more (they're not going to do this, generally-speaking). Copyright law is extremely picky about how you make a copy, how you distribute it, and how you acquire it, and owning a DVD does not entitle you to copy a file off of the internet, according to the law.

Again, we can argue sanity, significance, changes in technology, etc., but that's what the law says.

 

[TechGeek]

Gee, this sounds like a fabulous way to kill Indie films. Cause you know you aren't going to go see them in the theater. Most of those movies hardly played anywhere, and over half I have never heard of. Way to make your audience avoid you like the plague.

 

[gorehound]

Virginia-based Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver are scumbags.and as far as all these INDIE companies go I will just have to keep a list to remember the studios I will never buy anything from.

Boycott any studio who does this kind ok garbage is what I say.

 

[AlexFromOmaha]

While this is distasteful, abusive towards your customers, and likely a dumb move for a small studio that lives and dies by reputation and facade much more than a major studio in Hollywood, I don't understand the people claiming that this is "wrong" by any legal sense. You don't think 14,000 American citizens copied one of seven movies illegally? You don't think that they knew it was illegal? Seriously, people. If you didn't do it, take it to court, and spend years of your life as well as orders of magnitudes more money than they're asking for, so that you can end up with a piece of paper saying that you didn't infringe, and no way of getting that time or money back because the law firm won't be liable for damages, as they were acting in good faith. If you did, well, sucks to be you.

You left out some relevant information. Some people might have years to waste and tens of thousands of dollars to fund a legal campaign; most don't.

Hyperbole much?

 

[roebeet]

So I dislike the methods they are taking, but it isn't a bad thing if people think twice about violating the copyright on movies by torrenting them.

You had better hope that your ISP's IP information is accurate, then. Just because they sue you doesn't mean you actually did what they claim you did.

 

[johnsonfromwisconsin]

hey what would happen if you legally owned the movie and then downloaded it ? then the download is not actually illegal, as you have already purchased the movie. by this token, could you then purchase said movie as soon as you are served and claim that you had owned the movie ? they make ask for some proof of purchase, but maybe there would be some way around it ?

ill stick to downloading music thank you. and a lot of it is free nowadays on bandcamp, or just listening to pandora. RIP lala.com too :/

Downloading a movie you bought on DVD is almost certainly copyright infringement by current US law. It might be insane for this to be true, but that's what the law says.

Are we sure about that? I realized the other day that I lost one disc of a 2 disc set and was thinking about whether it'd be illegal to download the lost one. I know DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent the copyright protection, but if it's already circumvented and I can prove I bought a license, are we sure it's illegal to download? Mainly just curious if it has been settled in a court yet or if we're all just theorizing.

Yep, even if you have a valid license and media you are absolutesly violating US Copyright Law. Any act of downloading would be making a recreation of the work, which is an exclusive right given to the copyright holder alone.

 

[JabberWockey]

So I dislike the methods they are taking, but it isn't a bad thing if people think twice about violating the copyright on movies by torrenting them.

While people are going to be pissed at you for saying this - I have to agree. I pay my bills because of copyright licensing of intellectual property, and tend to lean towards the side of copyright owners in the piracy debate. I will admit though - I do not think the penalties match the crimes, and cases such as Jamie Thomas's are overkill.

 

[slumbergod]

Oh, we'll have to make sure that we never touch movies from these tiny indie-nobodies then. Not illegal downloads, NOR legally renting, NOR legally purchasing the retail DVSs, NOR - if they were actually good enough - paying to see them in a theatre.

The survival of indie film makers is precarious at best; when it becomes know that the company blindly targets consumers they might just find they go out of business. Sure hope raping people via greedy lawyers was worth it.

I don't care whether they feel justified or not. To me it reeks of corporate greed and stupidity and I won't support companies that engage in the practice.

 

[hpsgrad]

While this is distasteful, abusive towards your customers, and likely a dumb move for a small studio that lives and dies by reputation and facade much more than a major studio in Hollywood, I don't understand the people claiming that this is "wrong" by any legal sense. You don't think 14,000 American citizens copied one of seven movies illegally? You don't think that they knew it was illegal? Seriously, people. If you didn't do it, take it to court, and spend years of your life as well as orders of magnitudes more money than they're asking for, so that you can end up with a piece of paper saying that you didn't infringe, and no way of getting that time or money back because the law firm won't be liable for damages, as they were acting in good faith. If you did, well, sucks to be you.

You left out some relevant information. Some people might have years to waste and tens of thousands of dollars to fund a legal campaign; most don't.

Hyperbole much?

How about you show me some evidence that I'm wrong, and then we'll talk about hyperbole?

 

[Chimel31]

Excellent follow-up article on the 2 or 3 previous articles mentioning Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver.
It was clear early that this firm was more about extorting money than fighting for the "artists", but I had no idea until now up to what extent.
I think we should get a list of these DGW employees, track the IP addresses of their kids, and file lawsuits for the full $150K (since the children of lawyers are knowledgeable about copyright) for each illegal MP3 download.

Unfortunately, rather than DGW being slapped by a judge for abuse of the system, it is more likely that other law firms will jump on the bandwagon of the easy money, and file lawsuits on behalf of other producers too. They probably have analytical software to find out which movies have the most BitTorrent seeds and peers to be worthy of a lawsuit.

 

[Hellheart]

I think the most obvious problem (assuming they are dealing with people using torrents, although I suppose it's possible that people are DL'ing these movies with more traditional P2P programs) with this comes from the techniques employed by many trackers to protect the people torrenting copyrighted material - I remember reading that it's common practice for such trackers to add a fair-to-large number of "false-positive" IP's to the list of those currently connected. It makes filing lawsuits an absolute nightmare because the firm ends up targeting such a large percentage of innocent people, who are obviously far from likely to pay up.

Of course, the practice of suing a ton of people in a single filed case saves the firm the trouble of having to shell out money for each false-positive, but if the majority of people sued end up being people that never downloaded the movie in the first place, the case could pretty easily get thrown out.

Based on the RIAA cases there's a sound legal basis for the lawsuits, but perhaps not in the way they're currently being filed. If the vast majority of the named Doe's have indeed pirated the movie, I actually have no problem at all with this for most of these movies. And that has nothing to do with the indie nature of the movies (after all, Boll directed one) and everything to do with it having sound legal basis and the amount charged being minor compared to what the RIAA tended to charge. Of course, that's a relative change - it's still really really high given the normal cost of the material downloaded - but money-conscious people who actually did pirate it can probably afford that kind of cost without having something repossessed.

The MAJOR issue I have is if they're suing people for downloading movies that are next-to-impossible to obtain through legal means. The biggest problem with many indie movies is that there's no way to rent them, so unless you know someone who's seen them or they happen to be big enough to be stocked by Netflix you have no idea how good it will be. Depending on the prices they charge, this can be a significant investment (included S&H of course!) for a movie which may very well suck. Downloading the movies helps avoid this problem.