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23,238 Alleged ‘Expendables’ Downloaders Walk Free

Posted: 02 Aug 2011 03:53 AM PDT

What was once touted as the biggest file-sharing lawsuit in history has now been decimated following a decision from the U.S. District Court of Columbia. Judge Robert Wilkins ruled that well over 99 percent of the original 23,322 alleged infringers can not be chased down by the makers of The Expendables because they fall outside of the court’s jurisdiction.

For a short while the makers of The Expendables had the questionable honor of having embarked upon the biggest file-sharing lawsuit the world has ever witnessed.

A massive list of 23,322 U.S. Internet users were targeted by the film studio NU Image, all of which were suspected of downloading and sharing the Hollywood blockbuster using BitTorrent. The movie studio later lost this record to The Hurt Locker makers, but their case was still very significant.

Until now.

In a recent order District Court Judge Robert Wilkins ruled that NU Image can only go after those individuals who are reasonably likely to be living in the District of Columbia. This means that the movie studio can’t send any subpoenas to ISPs when the IP-addresses are located in other districts.

“Plaintiff has only shown good cause for, and will only be entitled to discovery related to, those John Does for whom there is a good faith basis to believe may reside in the District of Columbia,” Wilkins writes.

As a result, well over 99 percent of the defendants are off the hook.

The main reasoning behind the decision is that the alleged infringement has to take place in the district people are sued in, which is only the case for a small percentage of the defendants. Where and to whom the files are uploaded after that is irrelevant, the Judge argues.

The Judge advises NU Image to use one of the many IP-location databases to find out who they can go after in his court.

“Plaintiff can establish such a good faith basis for residence or personal jurisdiction by utilizing geolocation services that are generally available to the public to derive the approximate location of the IP addresses identified for each punitive defendant,” he writes.

Previously Nu Image had claimed that these IP-lookup services are far from accurate, but Judge Wilkins contests this. He states that the movie studio selectively quoted an online resource to make it look like the data is useless, which it is not.

By doing so they left out the paragraph below:

Even when not accurate, though, geolocation can place users in a bordering city, which may be good enough for the entity seeking the information. This happens because a common method for geolocating a device is referencing its IP address against similar IP addresses with already known locations.

“It therefore appears that while these geolocation services are not 100% accurate, these services can place a user no farther away than a city that borders the user's actual location,” the Judge wrote replying to NU Image’s attempt to mislead the court.

TorrentFreak took up the Judge’s suggestion and ran the 23,322 IP-addresses through a IP-location database to find out how many defendants would remain. We found that of all IP-addresses listed as defendants only 84 are likely to belong to persons in the District of Columbia.

This means that the remaining 23,238 individuals are no longer at risk in this particular lawsuit.

If other judges side with Wilkins, these pay-up-or-else schemes may become increasingly more expensive. Suing defendants in multiple districts is not how the copyright lawyers and their clients would like to work, so they will have to get more creative to get the information they need.

Until then, this ruling can be counted as a win for the alleged BitTorrent users.

Source: 23,238 Alleged ‘Expendables’ Downloaders Walk Free

Censorship Fail Reveals Big Music ISP Spying Plan

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 05:30 AM PDT

Previously confidential documents detailing Universal Music’s meetings with the former UK government over the Digital Economy Act are revealing a whole lot more than the pair intended. Blacked-out sections now uncovered show that Universal believed that ISPs could spy on their users and hand over information to rightsholders in order for them to sue.

As reported in our earlier article, documents requested from Lord Mandelson's office under the Freedom of Information Act have already proven interesting reading.

The documents detail meetings held in 2009 with Lord Mandelson, then Secretary of State (SoS) for Business, on the UK’s then-upcoming Digital Economy Act.

One report is titled ‘Note of Secretary of State’s meeting with Lucian Grainge (CEO, Universal Music Group International). In common with many documents released under FOI requests, this one (marked ‘RESTRICTED’) has blacked-out sections, hiding information deemed too sensitive for the public eye.

The censored paragraph

black out censor fail

However, due to the government’s failure to black-out the text in all versions of the document (and leaving the PDF version open to exploitation) we can now reveal the contents of a censored paragraph.

In it, Universal CEO Lucian Grainge begins by talking about a deal his company struck with Virgin Media.

“Universal have entered into an arrangement with the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Virgin to target legitimate broadband users with a £10 ‘all you can eat’ offer,” Grainge explained.

Indeed, in mid-2009 that particular deal was hailed as “ground-breaking” but the other major labels didn’t sign on to provide the necessary momentum. Quietly, even Universal had reservations.

“There is a commercial risk with this strategy, which could be like putting a Coca Cola pipe in your house which would then supply the whole street,” Grainge told the meeting.

But the deal with Virgin was two-way. To combat piracy concerns like these the ISP agreed to do something for Universal.

“In return for a fixed fee revenue share Virgin have agreed to anti-piracy measures, including pop-up warnings on screens,” Grainge confirmed.

Eventually the Universal/Virgin deal fizzled out and now more than two years later the Spotify service is on the horizon instead.

However, it is Grainge’s final comments during the meeting on anti-piracy enforcement that will raise eyebrows, particularly since the government has tried and failed to censor this statement from the Freedom of Information request.

“As ISPs can monitor the amount of power used by specific users and the sites connected to, it is possible for ISPs to pass on any details to owners of particular rights, who could then take legal action,” Grainge concludes.

The mere suggestion from the head of a major label that ISPs could spy on their customers is outrageous enough, but mentioned in the same breath as a deal with Virgin Media will cause even greater concern.

In late 2009 it was revealed that Virgin Media had partnered with technology company Detica to install a Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) system. Called CView, the product was to be installed to monitor the instances of illicit file-sharing on Virgin’s network.

“Understanding how consumer behaviour is changing will be an important requirement of Virgin Media’s upcoming music offering [with Universal Music] and, should they become law, the Government’s legislative proposals will also require measurement of the level of copyright infringement on ISPs’ networks,” Virgin Media’s executive director Jon James explained at the time.

The assurances were, however, that all of the data collected by CView on Virgin’s network (and on other ISPs – Detica were in talks with them too) would be anonymized, but groups such as Privacy International still had concerns.

The notion of ISPs becoming “copyright cops” is an increasingly worrying topic. With the voluntary warning system just agreed in the US, ISPs are slowly revealing that they are prepared to work with the music and movie industries. Where they will draw that final cooperative line remains to be seen but if we take Lucian Grainge’s comments at face value, we can see where the labels might be aiming.

Source: Censorship Fail Reveals Big Music ISP Spying Plan

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