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| Anti-Piracy Lawyers Accuse Blind Man of Downloading Porn Posted: 09 Aug 2011 02:09 PM PDT
In total, cases have been filed against more than 200,000 alleged infringers, many of which are accused of downloading and sharing adult films. A significant number of the defendants are likely to be guilty, but there’s also a lot of collateral damage. Firstly it’s unclear how accurate the evidence gathering techniques of the copyright holders are, and even when they have the correct IP-address it doesn’t necessarily follow that the account holder on file is actually the infringer. Doe 2,057 in the case of Imperial Enterprises v. Does claims to be one of these wrongfully accused persons. This May he received a letter from Comcast informing him that Imperial Enterprises had filed a lawsuit against him for illegally downloading and sharing one of their adult titles — Tokyo Cougar Creampies. To some people this title may seem inviting, but it’s not the type of content Doe 2,057 is interested in. Not least because he’s legally blind. “To be honest, it’s a little ridiculous. My movie-watching ability is nonexistent. My kids watch movies, but they are 4 and 6, so they don’t watch porn either. Well, hopefully they don’t,” the Doe told the Village Voice Media. Although it’s not impossible for blind people to be interested in porn – after all there are plenty of auditory stimuli and interesting dialogues – it’s not really the target group for this type of content. So if this blind man is innocent, who downloaded and shared the movie? According to Doe 2,057 one of his neighbors must have used his open WiFi connection to grab the file. “I didn’t have time to set up the wireless network in my old apartment,” he explained. “I was working 18-hour days, so I just told my wife to go to Best Buy and pick up a router. She installed it, hit next, next, finish, and — boom — that was it. We lived in a very upscale building; there was no riffraff. We just assumed we didn’t have anything to worry about.” But now he does have something to worry about, and that’s the few thousand dollars Imperial Enterprises is demanding from him in settlement. Although it’s absolutely not certain that a judge will hold him liable the alleged offense, like many other defendants he believes that settling is the best option available. Hiring an attorney will cost just as much as the settlement fee, but without any guarantee that he’ll be off the hook. “The sad part about this entire porn thing is it will cost more to go to a judge,” Doe says. “At the end of the day, I’ll probably settle and pay the fee to make this go away.” And he’s not alone. TorrentFreak has spoken to several people who swore their innocence but paid up just to get rid of the threat. The copyright holders and lawyers are very aware of the position these defendants are in, but they gladly take their money. With most neutral observers, however, the whole scheme should raise an eyebrow to say the least. Can we really call that justice? Source: Anti-Piracy Lawyers Accuse Blind Man of Downloading Porn  |
| Government To Block Sharing Sites, But Music Biz Must Cut Prices Posted: 09 Aug 2011 07:13 AM PDT
Where new laws prove politically dangerous, the big entertainment companies are seeking voluntary agreements with ISPs to achieve the same end result. In the regions mentioned above these developments have been expected for some time, but in recent months this phenomenon has been spreading to countries not historically associated with an aggressive anti-piracy stance. Following Malaysia and India, now comes Indonesia. Two years ago Indonesia was placed on a priority watch list for failing to protect US intellectual property rights. At the end of last month the government warned that it was preparing a response to music piracy online. Yesterday, Minister of Communications and Information Tifatul Sembiring confirmed what that response would be. “The plan is to block famous sites, like 4shared for example,” the minister announced. 4shared is a popular file-hosting cyberlocker service. According to its operators Indonesia is its 3rd most-popular region after United States and Brazil. Malaysia, where it has thus far managed to stay unblocked, takes 4th spot. 4shared also remains uncensored in Google’s auto-complete feature. In a 27th July announcement the Ministry of Communications and Information said the music industry would compile a list of sites “offering illegal content that need to be blocked”. So far the majority are local services. Indonesia began blocking pornographic content on the Internet last year and it now appears those same systems will be used to censor file-hosting services such as 4shared. Local operators who breach copyright law face sanctions under the 2002 Law on Copyrights and the 2008 Law on Information and Electronic Transactions. Punishments range from a $115 fine to a jail sentence of up to 9 years. Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country with close to 240 million citizens and the government has been touting some equally large music piracy stats – 240 million songs downloaded per day. Although that sounds like one song per citizen per day, only 45 million Indonesians have Internet access, which means in this scenario they each have to download 5 to 6 tracks each per day. As always, the stats are recoding industry supplied and impossible to confirm but they say the above is costing them $1.4 billion per year. While it is taking action against sites, the government has also indicated that it wants the music industry to do more to encourage people to buy legitimate products. Among the suggestions are labels cutting the price they charge for music and making it easier for customers to pay for content, such as via their mobile phone bills. Another interesting suggestion is for the labels, ISPs and file-hosting sites to team up and sell music to customers. Let’s hope they don’t try that after they’ve blocked the sites at the ISP level. Source: Government To Block Sharing Sites, But Music Biz Must Cut Prices  |
March last year the law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver imported the mass litigation "pay up or else" anti-piracy scheme to the United States, and in the month that followed they targeted nearly 100,000 people. 
In the United States, United Kingdom and parts of Europe, there is an increasing momentum from the copyright lobby in favor of legislation which allows for the blocking of file-sharing sites at the ISP level.| 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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