U.S. Copyright Group targets 23,000 downloaders of ‘The Expendables’

Source: Raw Story
By Eric W. Dolan

More than 23,000 U.S. Internet users could soon be notified by their internet service providers (ISPs) that their personal information is being turned over to the U.S. Copyright Group in the largest file sharing lawsuit in U.S. history.

Wired reported that a federal judge has agreed to allow the copyright enforcement agency to subpoena ISPs to obtain the identity behind the 23,000 Internet protocol (IP) addresses that allegedly downloaded the 2010 film The Expendables using the file sharing software BitTorrent.

BitTorrent is a popular peer-to-peer (P2P) communications protocol for file sharing that excels at transferring large amounts of data. It is used for both legal and illegal file transfers.

The IP addresses of alleged copyright infringes can be easily obtained by companies that snoop on active torrents and record the IP of peers who are downloading and uploading files. Hoping to evade copyright enforcement agencies, file sharers have created software such as PeerBlock to block IP's associated with the companies. But the software, which relies on large lists of IP address maintained by volunteers, does not guarantee safety from copyright lawsuits.

More at http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/10/u-s-copyright-group-targets-23000-downloaders-of-the-expendables/

crappy movies?

don't have really good statistics that the product will actually sell much so to chase down people getting it for free who most likely wouldn't have paid a dime for it otherwise is a good money making move.

You'll note that most 'pirating' went on for decades overseas and virtually nothing happened to those people except for the occasional big bust to make headlines and put on a show for US companies.

A credit card company spends more than $1000 suing a debtor who owes $1000. The point is to scare others into paying up. The threat of a lawsuit probably saves them more money in the long run than just letting the downloaders off.

Downloading itself is not illegal, it's redistributing that is illegal. I can download a million files and feign ignorance of the copyright status of those files, no court on the planet will be able to prove that I knew it was "wrong." The distributor however cannot, because if they did not produce it or license it then they don't have permission to distribute it, and they cannot claim that they didn't know because copyright is a right that is endowed to all citizens.

So, instead of people being socialists, sharing files with one another, the lawsuits are merely making people be capitalists, going to direct download sites and paying a fee to have access.

If someone says "I'm afraid of being sued, I'm not going to download this", how exactly do you measure that?

And never falls below 20% anywhere in the world.

PB

If you use torrents you are also sharing the files, and that's the bigger no-no than just downloading.

There are lots of ways to watch/download movies without uploading - not that that can't be detected, but the studios can much more easily monitor torrents and get the IP addresses of everyone sharing.

Every person uploads chunks of the file which are useless until combined by the Bittorrent client at the end. Perhaps ISPs, hard disk manufactures, CPU assemblers, power companies, etc should be sued as well since they all go into supporting this piracy.

Every day my browser downloads tens of thousands of copyrighted things without my knowledge of the right to distribute. I have no idea if, for example, a site has a legal right to redisplay an image or a bit of text. I have no idea if a site offering a file for me to download is doing so legally or not.

I hope they start doing this for books. Half the google alerts I get on my pseudonym are about illegal file sharing.

but not for the authors? As I understand it when/if they go after people and collect fines the authors/creators of the 'stolen' property get nothing. The people who download it are much less likely to buy it so the 'fear' of getting caught to push them to buy it results in very little real life transactions.

I don't know of any publisher who collects money for stolen books. They only want to shut the sites down and educate people that authors aren't rich and we need to get paid like everyone else does.

The RIAA for example spends tens of millions of dollars only to get hundreds of thousands in settlements. It's actually not in an authors interest to go after the "pirates."

I do not download books so this is academic. I have no idea in what genre you write.

I used to be an avid reader buying when I could, using the library when I couldn't. There are people like myself that can only afford to buy one or two books a year. I am also home bound and at the mercy of our shared apartment library. We do discuss books, scientific and medical trends, history, politics and current events with each other and our families. So if we like something we recommend it.

Would you rather people like me not have an opportunity to read what you wrote?

I guess I am asking do you write only for the money?

There are much better ways to make money, so no, that isn't the only reason I write. :)

I'm 100% for libraries. I'm all for used book stores. They're a great way for readers to find me. People loaning each other books are great, too.

What I hate is the assumption that it's okay to share on a large scale, as if my work ought to be free. I work very hard on my stories, and I deserve to earn some money on them.

Believe me, authors of all kinds want you to read. Uploading a story to a file sharing site is like making thousands of copies and handing them out. That we don't want. :hi:

With libraries, the public pays for the books.

What about people like me, who pull up a stool at Borders and read a book front-to-back (not necessarily all in one sitting), without ever paying a cent either by direct purchase OR taxes?

Like the other poster, I can also only afford to buy a few books a year...

Probably, you've rendered that book unsalable.

In the grand scheme of things, what you're doing doesn't amount to a lot. Putting the book onto the internet so that large numbers of people can read it without paying for it is a different kettle of fish.

I saw what you meant by going to your site linked in your profile, indeed that is the case. The sites in question that I found will respect a takedown notice and remove the offending files.

Others make it either a huge hassle or impossible to get them to take the book down. If I tried to chase each of them, I'd never have time to write.

One of my publishers has a dedicated person on staff to dealing with the issue. I doubt it's a full-time job, but it's more than an individual author can cope with.

It's not stealing. It's no different than watching it on tv, recording it, and watching it again later.

What a bullshit lawsuit.

so, you are incorrect.

I have no problems when people "steal" from torrent websites.

But that's just me.

Is it lonely up there on your high horse?

it's not a high horse, it's how I make my living. Jerk.

feel sorry for you? What, you can't make your thousands a year in pay because people download stuff for free?

Oh, wait, you still do.

as are the manufacturers, the distributors, the movie theatre chains...

I didn't ask you to feel sorry for me- you should just think about the people who are impacted by illegal downloading. Many people's jobs depend on this industry.

I've friends and acquaintances in entertainment so I understand what they're up against. They have a right to profit from their work and employ people.

...as content generation tools improve so that anyone on the street can turn their fanfic in to movies or TV shows.

:nopity:

Piracy has led to underfunding of my health care program, which meant the qualifying hours had to be raised to make it harder for people to access benefits. I have no health insurance now. Lots of people lost their benefits.





http://shootmoviesincalifornia.com/read-about-the-cost-of-piracy-here/

:nopity:

I work at Walmart, so I have no benefits.

There's worse off than you. And don't blame it on piracy.

I hope Wal Mart gets it's shit together soon. I won't shop there mainly because they treat their employees like shit.

are neither wealthy or well known. The fees are income, which adds up to qualify people for pension and health benefits in their Unions. Stealing from those people is exactly what it is. Stealing from them. From working, Union people.

Displaying a different opinion could jeopardize your employment if the wrong people knew. It's OK.

I realize this means you must be mad at me now or risk raising eyebrows. No problem.

did you mean to reply to me?

:eyes:

In the early days of downloading, many people defended it because there was so much great music that wasn't getting heard. Wasn't being played on the radio or MTV where people could hear it for free and go buy a record if they liked it.

Now almost every record you want to hear is available somewhere for free streaming online. There're no longer any excuses for downloading w/out paying.

Movies, on the other hand, were never available without interruption for free. Don't want to pay? Don't want to wait til it comes on HBO or free tv? Don't watch.

The idea that the internet would be the great leveller and allow the old boys club to be upended is a joke. It's just a new boys club. Instead of the Rockefellers, it's Bill Gates and Sergei & Larry.

I'm not going to pay $18 for a movie I'm going to watch once and put on the shelf for the rest of my life.

You can justify making me pay for it all you want, but it's not going to change how I feel about this issue.

So I got Netflix.

I imagine we often refer to taking a thing not ours without paying for it by many names in order to rationalize our actions. Seems to be part and parcel of the human condition...

They put it out there for us to listen to, to watch.

That's it.

They want to make it seem more important, but that's the closest experience to it.

I'm sure you do it but are lying about it.

it should be illogical.

How fucking clueless are you? Hope you end up fined out the ass!

Systems like BitBlinder for anonymous torrent downloading have been out for years, but were largely ignored because there was no perceived need for them. If that's changing, you can expect the BT client authors to integrate that tech into the next releases of their software.

Instead of facing prosecution the government pays you 100 cents on the dollar for your fictional investment vehicle!

As we see here breaking small laws gets you into big trouble.

Here's the deal. Bittorrent is a way for people to share files with one another, without central servers (with DHC and Magnet links you don't need a tracker). Toward the middle of the oughts (2000s) I started noticing something. For most people Bittorrent started to not be used. What replaced it? Direct download sites. These are websites that allow you to "upload files" to "share" with other people. They have heavy advertizing, and generally offer "pay for" download services. Examples might be Rapidshare, Megaupload, Fileserve, and others. The reason these sites came into being is very simple: P2P users (Bittorrent, Emule, etc) were being sued.

So while the community mostly grew on non-profit Bittorrent trackers and people sharing their own bandwidth that they paid for themselves, it moved into a for-profit direct download services. The lawsuits created a market for open for-profit piracy. This goes against the original idea of P2P to begin with, people sharing files with one another freely and openly.

What's worse: corporations are exempt from these blatant copyright violations. If an individual shares a file with someone, it is considered "copyright infringement" but if a direct download site allows hundreds of people to download a file it is merely "a violation of their terms of service." Basically, they are allowed to violate copyright while an individual is automatically presumed guilty. All they have to do is "respect a takedown request." So of course, those files shared on direct download sites are all taken down after hundreds if not thousands of people retrieve them. They make profit from people signing up for "unlimited" service and for others giving referral links, and of course from advertising. The direct download sites are effectively bootleggers of this century, and it's all perfectly legal.

:kick:

...you know, it was actually a good movie.

But frankly I think they brought it on themselves.

The Expendables? Really?

The owners of the Copyright should be forced to pay any person with the misfortune of having accidentally viewed such a tragic example of crap.

n/t

We were wondering if torrent websites were setup on purpose to catch people downloading, and they set up like "bait files" for the purpose of catching people. It also had me wondering how legitimate that "Tune-Up" software they sell on late-night TV is, if their commercials are made so dirt fucking cheaply.