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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 20 2017, @04:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the sudden-outbreak-of-common-sense dept.

A District Court judge in Seattle has taken a novel approach in a series of default judgments targeting alleged BitTorrent pirates. Since the defendants are accused of sharing files in the same swarm, they should also share the penalty among each other, the judge argues. According to the order, these cases are not intended to provide a windfall to filmmakers.

Many Hollywood insiders see online piracy as a major threat, but only very few are willing to target alleged file-sharers with lawsuits.

LHF Productions, one of the companies behind the blockbuster "London Has Fallen," has no problem crossing this line. Since the first pirated copies of the film appeared online last year, the company has been suing alleged downloaders in multiple courts.

[...] This week, Judge Ricardo Martinez ruled over a series of LHF cases at the Seattle District Court. The movie company requested default judgments against 28 defendants in five cases, demanding $2,500 from each defendant

[...] The filmmaker had argued that $2,500, and even more in attorney's fees and costs, is a rather modest request. However, in his order this week the Judge sees things differently

[...] Instead, the Judge places the damages amount at the statutory minimum, which is $750.

Even more interesting, and the first time we've seen this happening, is that the penalty will be split among the swarm members in each case. The filmmakers alleged that the defendants were part of the same swarm, so they are all liable for the same infringement, Judge Martinez argues.

[...] This means that in one of the cases, where there are eight defaulted defendants, each has to pay just over $93 in damages.

As for the lowered damages amount itself, the Judge clarifies that these type of cases are not intended to result in large profits. Especially not, when the rightsholders have made little effort to prove actual damage or to track down the original sharer.

Source:

torrentfreak.com

Additional coverage on
fightcopyrighttrolls.com


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @06:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @06:39AM (#469187)

    Statutory liability for copyright infringement was already novel. Prior, it was limited to provable damages, estimated by the proceeds garnered by offender. But if we share, there are no illicit gains. When I share a movie with one of my millions of friends on the the internets, I would gladly share my profits with the copyright owner. But, sadly, we encounter a "divide by zero" error!
          This is what happens when some jackass invents something like the telephone, and steals all the profits from Wells-Fargo! Or comes up with a moveable type printing press and puts all those scribes out of business! And who is thinking of the buggy whip makers! Huh! When was the last time you thought of them, and their starving children, and dogs with no food! You savages! You disgust me! No, this decision is not novel, it is merely a return to what was the common law before the RIAA and the MaFIAA got into the business of extortion.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday February 20 2017, @11:04AM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday February 20 2017, @11:04AM (#469233) Journal

    Statutory liability for copyright infringement was already novel. Prior, it was limited to provable damages, estimated by the proceeds garnered by offender.

    Can you be more precise about when this was "novel" or what you mean by "prior"??

    Statutory damages in U.S. copyright law basically date back to the original 1790 Copyright Act, which allowed the assessment of a "per page" penalty for infringement of $0.50/page, later raised to $1/page. (This itself was based on a similar provision from the Statute of Anne in English law from 1710.) The idea was that if you found a guy with a printing press and he actually had typesetting plates of pages of a copyrighted work, he could be hit with a "per page" penalty without accounting for detailed profits/damages. The reason for this is that it's often difficult to track exact profits for "bootleg" businesses, which have a long history of not keeping good records. So, even if you couldn't prove the guy printed 1000 copies of your book and sold 800 for $0.50/each or whatever, you could still be granted damages "per page" of proved infringement.

    The modern "statutory damages" in U.S. law was codified in 1909, which created a $250 per work minimum, later raised to the current $750/work minimum in 1976. The problem with the way the original "per page" penalty was that it was also tied up with criminal penalties, rather than civil suits -- and that meant judges were somewhat hesitant to award the "per page" penalty except under unusual circumstances. So, the 1909 Act introduced a statutory minimum per work infringed -- but for similar reasons to the older penalty. It was often difficult to prove exact profits from copyright infringement, so in the absence of detailed evidence, plaintiffs were still eligible for the $250/work minimum.

    You are right about one thing, though -- which is that the INTENT of the 1909 Act clearly seemed to be about creating an alternative set of statutory damages that would roughly compensate for the ESTIMATED profits and damages caused by an offender. (Like the modern statutory damages, the 1909 provisions created a range, with a minimum of $250.) Many appellate rulings over the years in the early to mid 20th century tended to decrease statutory awards that seemed excessive compared to likely actual damages and profits. Nevertheless, there was an implicit punitive notion in the minimum of $250 too, which was intended to deter infringement. But increases above that minimum historically seem to be based on likely actual damages, not for punitive reasons.

    The problem with all of this, of course, is that no one in 1909 or even 1976 could have imagined our modern situation. For those writing copyright laws back then, any mass reproduction of copies of a work would generally ONLY be done if it were profitable. Sure, a few decades ago you could make a copy of a VCR tape or a cassette or photocopy a book for personal use, but you were unlikely to make thousands of copies and distribute them unless you were selling them -- for the simple fact that it cost time (in labor) and money to make so many copies. And mass reproduction generally required specialized equipment (again, which cost money), so ordinary folks weren't likely to engage in it unless they were making profit.

    That all changed with digital copies and filesharing, which makes the act of copying trivial. And by the way, you don't need to make up stuff in the history of copyright law to paint the big businesses in a bad light -- they've already done that for you. For example, after the statutory damages element came into effect, the movie studios sought (and ultimately were granted) a cap on damages if they "accidentally" included a copyright work in a movie. In many such cases, the caps and special exemptions created were below the statutory minimum... so yeah, they have a long history of being jerks and hypocrites in this regard.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @09:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @09:07PM (#469439)

      Ah, Athanasius! There you go again, bringing in actual facts, law, and history to a Soylentil discussion! Thank you very much. I, the prior AC, stand corrected, and yield to your superior exposition.

      And by the way, you don't need to make up stuff in the history of copyright law to paint the big businesses in a bad light -- they've already done that for you.

      Agreed.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @12:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @12:57PM (#469247)

    Technically, when you share with your friends on the internets you are actually losing money. A portion of your paid Internet plan/bandwidth, utility power, computer/network resources, and rent are being used to share the file. If you were running a business you would be taking a deduction for that stuff as an expense. In a sense, you're incurring cost to share/promote the movie to others.