TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Senior Judge Slams File-Sharing Law Firm, Orders Costs Payout
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- The Pirate Bay Plugs Hybrid File-Sharing Platform
- Monopoly Lawyers Shouldn’t Write Monopoly Laws
| Senior Judge Slams File-Sharing Law Firm, Orders Costs Payout Posted: 18 Apr 2011 04:32 AM PDT Following a ruling by a senior judge in the Patents County Court today, law firm ACS:Law and owner Andrew Crossley can indeed be pursued for so-called “wasted costs” relating to more than two dozen abandoned cases. The decision follows the law firm’s campaign of threats against individuals accused of sharing movies, many of them pornographic, on BitTorrent networks. Recipients of ACS:Law letters were told to pay cash settlements of around £500 or face being taken to court by Media C.A.T, a client of ACS:Law. While many resisted, thousands paid up. ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley, Media C.A.T and other clients together collected around £1.5m in the scheme. Always accused of not wanting to bring any cases to court, in the end ACS:Law was effectively forced to deal with 27 cases they had filed earlier with the Patents County Court in London. Few observers were surprised when they tried to abandon them all at the 11th hour. However, the defendants and their lawyers had run up significant bills dealing with Crossley’s accusations. They called for ACS:Law and Media C.A.T to pay “wasted costs”, something that Judge Birss has been considering since the cases were dismissed last month and has ruled on today. “I am quite satisfied to the standard necessary for this stage of a wasted costs application that Mr Crossley is responsible for the Basic Agreements [the licence agreements between Media CAT and original copyright holders] and has thereby acted in breach of the Solicitors Rule 2.04," said Judge Birss, as reported by Ralli Solicitors, a law firm in court today representing some of the defendants. "In my judgment the combination of Mr Crossley's revenue sharing arrangements and his service of the Notices of Discontinuance serves to illustrate the dangers of such a revenue sharing arrangement and has, prima facie, brought the legal profession into disrepute. It may be better placed under the revenue sharing heading in this judgment but it is, prima facie, improper conduct in any event," Birss added. The language being used by Birss will undoubtedly damage Crossley’s prospects of continuing his career in the legal profession. Having your conduct described by a senior judge as both “chaotic and lamentable” and “amateurish and slipshod" is damning. Both ACS:Law and Media C.A.T, who were previously accused by Judge Birss of doing everything they could “to avoid judicial scrutiny”, pulled their departing stunt at the end of January 2011, by quietly closing down both of their businesses. Source: Senior Judge Slams File-Sharing Law Firm, Orders Costs Payout | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 18 Apr 2011 02:22 AM PDT
Blood Out and Sniper: Reloaded both appeared on BitTorrent two weeks ahead of their official release date. The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
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| The Pirate Bay Plugs Hybrid File-Sharing Platform Posted: 17 Apr 2011 01:12 PM PDT
Tube+ is a newly launched service that combines all the above, and more. In what can be described as a file-sharing hybrid, the site offers the latest movies and TV-shows streamed directly to user’s browser. In addition, Tube+ also offers links to the files on BitTorrent, cyberlockers and eMule. As far as we know this kind of hybrid approach has never been tried before. Although the site is still quite buggy and doesn’t always suggest the correct links, the fact that it’s being promoted by The Pirate Bay means that it will quickly gather a significant audience.  As users may have noticed, Tube+ is being promoted on The Pirate Bay next to their torrent and magnet links. There appears to be some geographical restrictions, meaning that the Tube+ link is not shown globally, but it is available to the majority. The Tube+ site itself is not a project of The Pirate Bay people but nonetheless, the prominent ‘plug’ will pique the interest of many curious users. In just a few days the Tube+ Facebook page has quickly swollen to over 10,000 users, who all appear to ‘like’ the site.  Aside from linking to a variety of file-sharing and streaming sources, Tube+ also lists the IMDb ratings for movies and films. In addition, users can search for content based on genre or the year that it was released. According to the reviews on Facebook, these features are liked by many. With backing from The Pirate Bay, Tube+ is destined to become a big player, that is, if the promotion lasts long enough. The downside from a user perspective is that one has to navigate though a minefield of ads. Aside from a few authorized releases, the site also appears to list unauthorized content. The latter means that Tube+ will not receive a very warm welcome in Hollywood circles. It is of course needless to say that Tube+, though its ‘partnership’ with The Pirate Bay, already has big target on its back. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the people who run the site either as they recently changed their domain from .com to .me in anticipation of a possible domain seizure. For now at least, the hybrid file-sharing platform is still open to the public. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monopoly Lawyers Shouldn’t Write Monopoly Laws Posted: 17 Apr 2011 06:07 AM PDT
That problem is based in the difference in perception of the courts from an entrepreneur’s perspective, and therefore, from the economy as a whole. Let’s say we had a copyright monopoly holder who observed an activity of sharing they regarded as violating their monopoly. From a legal perspective, it might be an actual monopoly violation or one that falls outside the monopoly; nobody knows that at this point. Let’s say the holder of this copyright monopoly decides that the sharing individual owes them some amount of money for the ongoing activity, say €100 per year, and sends out a demand for this money. Lawyers react to such letters as perfectly natural claims to sort out in court to establish the boundaries of the law. But when I get such a nastygram as an entrepreneur, my reasoning is different. I don’t really care about sorting out details in the law, I care about money, I care about making my ends meet. When I read that nastygram, I read that I have two options: I could either pay €100 per year, or go to court and challenge the claim (let’s assume here that it has turned out to be an obviously frivolous claim). What is the cost of the entrepreneur’s other option, going to court? Let’s assume for the moment that the costs are ridiculously low. Let’s say going to court over this claim will just cost €5,000, and that my chances of winning have been judged to be a solid 90%. That means the cost of this option is €5,000 plus €10 yearly (10% of €100). So as an entrepreneur, I have two options moving ahead. I select options not from a legal perspective, but from an economic one of returns on investment. In this example, the breakeven point if I choose the upfront investment of going to court is 55 years out. I am not going to see that investment recoup its cost in my lifetime. Therefore, as an entrepreneur, my choice is obvious — I select the lower running costs. Money is all that matters when you’re running a business. Specifically, establishing case-law does not. And so, another “license” is paid up, and copyright lawyers use it as proof to politicians that licenses are paid and the system works. It’s circular reasoning at its most insidious. The danger here lies in the difference of perspective: lawyers and politicians regard court proceedings as having zero cost, as basically being a correspondence or a negotiation. In the reality entrepreneurs live in, however, the court cost of a monopoly lawsuit can easily hit a million euros. The reality of this entrepreneur applies to every person running a business, and therefore, to the economy as a whole. (Possibly excepting legal firms specializing in monopoly arbitration.) If this were not done within the legal framework, we would arrest the copyright monopoly or patent monopoly holders for extortion and throw them in jail. It was never “I think you owe me license money for your use of this, do you wish to have a court arbitrate our conflict?”, but always “Pay me a small ongoing stream of protection money, or I will ruin your business”. So the next time the monopoly laws need revision and redrafting, the politicians go to the monopoly lawyers with demonstrated understanding of the substance matter. Politicians note that the lawyers have been correct in their predictions that license money would start to flow, and take it as proof the system works; they can’t see or know money is flowing for all the wrong reasons. And so, the monopoly lawyers get to expand and revise those laws yet again, when it was nothing but a legalized extortion racket from the start. The cycle continues. — — — Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at http://falkvinge.net focuses on information policy. Follow Rick Falkvinge on Twitter as @Falkvinge and on Facebook as /rickfalkvinge. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This week there are five newcomers. I Am Number Four is the most downloaded movie of the week.
Half a decade ago BitTorrent was the absolute king of media distribution, but this has changed in recent years. Cyberlockers such as Megaupload and Hotfile have become as popular as BitTorrent, and movie streaming services have also gained large audiences.
It’s long been a tradition with politicians and lawyers alike, that the code of law establishes a somewhat vague direction with plenty of internal leeway, with the courts then hammering out the details in case-law. However, with monopoly laws, this creates a huge problem. | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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