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Courts Want "Something More" Than an IP Address to Catch Pirates

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday December 20 2018, @10:15PM   
from the making-progress dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Following a high-profile order at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals this summer, copyright holders are facing a roadblock in their quest to demand settlements from alleged file-sharers. Referencing the August order, federal courts in districts across the US are demanding more evidence than an IP-address alone.

[...] In recent weeks, however, more and more judges have begun to ask questions.

This started after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reached a verdict in Cobbler Nevada v. Gonzales. The Court ruled that identifying the registered subscriber of an IP-address by itself is not enough to argue that this person is also the infringer.

"Because multiple devices and individuals may be able to connect via an IP address, simply identifying the IP subscriber solves only part of the puzzle. A plaintiff must allege something more to create a reasonable inference that a subscriber is also an infringer," the verdict read.

[...] What's clear though is that the Appeals Court ruling is being used by courts across the country to demand "something more" than an IP-address alone.

While this is not the end of so-called "copyright trolling" practices just yet, it does make it harder for rightsholders to convince the courts.

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/courts-want-something-more-than-an-ip-address-to-catch-pirates-181217/

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Original Submission

• Alles in ordnung! Alles in ordnung! (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 20 2018, @11:50PM (1 child)

  by Runaway1956 (2926) on Thursday December 20 2018, @11:50PM (#777017) Journal

  Baen Books is now making available -- for free -- a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library.Anyone who wishes can read these titles online -- no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration.) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed.)

            Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.

            The first is what you might call a "matter of principle."This all started as a byproduct of an online "virtual brawl" I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.

            There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks.Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!

            Alles in ordnung!

  ***

            I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows:

            1. Online piracy -- while it is definitely illegal and immoral -- is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance.We're talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates.

            2. Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender. Whatever the moral difference, which certainly exists, the practical effect of online piracy is no different from that of any existing method by which readers may obtain books for free or at reduced cost: public libraries, friends borrowing and loaning each other books, used book stores, promotional copies, etc.

            3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market -- especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people -- is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable.The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.

            In the course of this debate, I mentioned it to my publisher Jim Baen.He more or less virtually snorted and expressed the opinion that if one of his authors -- how about you, Eric? -- were willing to put up a book for free online that the resulting publicity would more than offset any losses the author might suffer.

            The minute he made the proposal, I realized he was right.After all, Dave Weber's On Basilisk Station has been available for free as a "loss leader" for Baen's for-pay experiment "Webscriptions" for months now. And -- hey, whaddaya know? -- over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper!

            And so I volunteered my first novel, Mother of Demons, to prove the case.And the next day Mother of Demons went up online, offered to the public for free.

  I didn't find the original page with my first search, but it's been duplicated all over the web. http://toykeeper.net/soapbox/baen_free_library [toykeeper.net]

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
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• Re:Alles in ordnung! (Score: 2, Interesting) by kanisae on Friday December 21 2018, @12:04AM

  by kanisae (1908) on Friday December 21 2018, @12:04AM (#777021)

  Always amusing talking with the Baen authors about this. Eric is publicly affiliated with the communist party, the other Baen authors tend to the more conservative side, however they all agree that putting stuff on the Free Library increases their back catalog sales. Capitalists and Socialists Agree It's Good Marketing! And as with any good salesperson, the first hit is free :)

  Parent