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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: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday August 25 2015, @08:33AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @09:26AM
I'll just leave this here: PrimeWire [primewire.ag]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @12:50PM
Seriously? It's been a long time since I saw these kind of sites. Lots of promises but just keep on following shit links to shit embedded players.
Now on the other hand, I can simple search for a movie on the pirate bay, open it with my favorite bittorretn client, wait 10-30 minutes and have a no nonsense mp4 on my harddrive.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Tuesday August 25 2015, @10:26AM
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday August 25 2015, @06:03PM
The sign of a true company is that they never die, they just re-incarnate: http://www.real.com/ [real.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"