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Original URL: http://phys.org/news/2015-08-illegal-movie-downloaders-unprofitable.html
It has been a bad week for companies wanting to build businesses around make money from illegal movie downloaders. Last Friday saw an Australian judge refuse Voltage Pictures the rigth to send downloaders of Dallas Buyers Club a letter demanding an undisclosed payment. Justice Nye Perram decided that Voltage and its lawyers, were engaging in "speculative invoicing", a practice that is a form of legal blackmail: "pay us a large enough sum so that we don't take you to court where you will possibly face an even larger but unspecified fine".
Although this has effectively shut down an avenue of chasing money from downloaders in Australia through threatening letters, the practice continues unabated elsewhere. Alleged downloaders of the movie in Singapore have received letters ending in a settlement demand of around $5,000 Singapore. The letters sent threaten extremely large potential punishment, including prison sentences.
Law firms rushing to handle this work on behalf of Voltage Pictures should look to the case of Rightscorp in the US. Rightscorp is a company whose entire business is based on chasing alleged downloaders of movies and TV shows. They also engage in the practice of speculative invoicing, but so far, have found the business to be far from profitable. In 2014, Rightscorp reported a loss of $3.4 million, and so far this year have lost nearly a $1million in the first quarter alone.
Rightscorp ask for relatively small payments of US $20 and so either they will need to find more downloaders, or ask for more money. The problem with asking for more money is that if the stakes get too high, people might call their bluff and then Rightscorp would be faced with the expensive option of taking them to court.
Rightscorp is also finding that the process of unmasking downloaders is getting harder. In the US this week, a Judge denied an appeal that would have forced ISP Birch Communications to reveal the identities of their customers accused of downloading movies. In this case, Rightscorp has been using the practice of a "DMCA subpoena" to get the identities of downloaders from ISPs, even though this had been previously ruled inappropriate in a previous case involving the Recording Industry Association of America and Verizon in 2002.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday August 25 2015, @08:03AM
What's the difference? Both are: "Give us money, or we do something you really don't want us to do."
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @01:47PM
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday August 26 2015, @06:35AM
This is the scenario I am afraid of...
Some company obtains a simple list of email addresses. Using a Synapse mailer, he emails everyone a threat letter with an attached .doc file. You know, the standard fare of those who send you "confirmation letters" of some expensive financial transaction supposedly made in your name, with the details of the transaction claimed to be in the .doc file.
There will be some people amongst those mailed who have indeed done something that someone else could conceivably take them to court over. Figuring it might be cheaper to pay off the extortioner than it would be to waste several weeks in courtrooms, people would be pressured to take the cheaper route.
Of course, most of us here know about viewing page source code and seeing all the headers, then making an educated guess whether its worth the risk of opening the attached document. After all these years, Microsoft still has not figured out how to make a trustworthy document viewer. Yet business still fawns over them.
So, now one is damned with a virus if he opens the file, and left hanging with liability for litigation if he ignores the file.
All this grief dumped onto me by people I voted for.
I will vote for anyone who will take on these internet clowns and strip them of all their legal power to issue threats like this.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:13PM
Difference is, extortion is give us something or we will harm you financially, blackmail is give us something or we will let out your secrets.
You can extort an honest man with nothing to hide (or at least no one to hide it from).