DRM News

In the sort of mass litigation previously seen only enacted against European movie downloaders, more than 20,000 alleged movie torrent downloaders have been sued for copyright infringement in Washington D.C. courts. According to the report on The Hollywood Reporter, another lawsuit against 30,000 more people is likely imminent.

The suits are being brought about by US Copyright Group, who describe themselves as :

…a company owned by intellectual property lawyers that has one singular mission and focus: to stop movie copyright infringement and make illegal downloaders pay damages for the content they have stolen. From Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, technology companies and a conglomeration intellectual property law firms work hand-in-hand with each other to end unlawful downloading and illegal file-sharing of films.

How do they come up with the lists of people they sue? Using technology from a German based company called Guardaley IT that grabs IP addresses from movie download streams. And what do they do with the information? Again, according to information found on their own web site :

Then, we obtain the infringers’ identities through ISP subpoenas, finally resulting in “cease & desist” letters with a demand for payment of damages being sent to the illegal downloaders on a massive scale. Research suggests that once a copyright infringer is forced to pay settlement damages far in excess of the actual cost of the stolen content, he will never steal copyrighted material again. Through these methods, the US Copyright Group has the ability to recover losses for our clients and stop film piracy on a massive scale.

In layman’s terms, they send threatening ‘pay up or else’ letters to alleged downloaders. The hope seems to be that some of these people, guilty or not, can simply be intimidated in to paying what the copyright group freely admits is an amount far in excess of the actual content cost in order to avoid a costly legal battle. So yet again, we seem to have an example of an industry watch group acting as judge, jury and executioner. Since IP addresses and wireless accounts can be hacked in to and used by almost anyone, how can that act as the lone piece of evidence to convict a person? Also, where are the figures to back up this claimed stopping of piracy on a massive scale? In fact, just a couple of months ago, the MPAA was sticking to claims that movie piracy had cost the US economy $20.5 BILLION and 140,000 jobs.

These same sorts of mass lawsuit tactics were used in Australia, where the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft took ISP iiNet to court over its refusal to shut down the Internet accounts of alleged downloaders. The case was dismissed in February of this year. As in that case, part of the impetus behind these US versions seems to be to test what the responses of ISPs will be to thousands of their customers being charged with copyright infringement, and whether or not they’ll ‘play ball’ with the actions the movie studios want taken.

All of this comes years after the RIAA announced that they will no longer engage in these sorts of mass litigation practices, since they don’t tend to make the corporate entities involved look good. Way to go, Hollywood. You’re treading ground that even the lost and backwards music industry found to be too littered with sinkholes and land mines to be worth anything at all.