Are You One of 23,000 Defendants in the US' Biggest Illegal Download Lawsuit?

Originally posted by hhott
I see a problem with this. It's called DHCP.

Like many other people, I receive a dynamic IP when I connect to my ISP, and it is (usually) different every time. My ISP has a range of IP addresses that it can use, but any particular IP address could have been assigned to any number of users over the course of days or weeks .... The IP address I have today could be someone else's tomorrow, and since I am on satellite it might not even be anyone close to me.

In some respects this is annoying and noticeable (my online banking runs me through my security challenge questions almost every time I log in), but perhaps in this case it will be an advantage for some people. I can't imagine that the ISPs have a record of who was assigned which particular IP address at any given moment.

They can call your ISP with your IP and date/time it was accessed. The ISP logs who was using what & when.

reply to post by alphabetaone


fair enough.

might you venture to guess?

maybe theres something in the fine print when you buy it? surely they've addressed this at some point before...

What about the stealing the theaters do charging a family of 4 $65.00 to go see a movie in a lot of areas.
When popcorn is $8.00 and cokes are $6 and you can't bring your own in....why are movies so high?

Maybe the industry is GREEDY.

reply to post by RelentlessLurker


I remember how, on VHS tapes, the first screen you see warns you that duplication is prohibited under Federal law. Not sure if that applies to digital formats, though. Still, though, maybe if everyone in the US starts duplicating movies, the moviemakers will all go bankrupt from lack of sales and then there won't be any movies at all! Same for music and games, too! Good job guys! lol. People will stop going to the theater to see a movie, and just wait for some dude to buy the DVD and rip it to his computer to share with the world.

Originally posted by AmazedByU
reply to post by jaydeePNW

 

I'm just waiting for some crafty lawyer to turn it around on the industry using their own words. Personally I have several hundred music cassettes, records from the 80s that no longer work. I also have a huge box of vhs movies, both kids and main stream action type movies. These media items no longer work. I PAID for the license and the right to use them and listen/enjoy them. I think the industry should keep up their end of the agreement and replace my music with cds and movies with dvds as I paid for the right to enjoy them and now I can't.

What if a million people sue for the replacement when our music and movies stop working???

If this was the case everything ever made should be replaced once it is no longer usable for free from the company that made it... lol Not going to happen.

Originally posted by hadriana
What about the stealing the theaters do charging a family of 4 $65.00 to go see a movie in a lot of areas.
When popcorn is $8.00 and cokes are $6 and you can't bring your own in....why are movies so high?

Maybe the industry is GREEDY.

Everone is greedy.

Problem is that the industry has put some sort of mental block on "worth" since the rise of internet. Its like a child holding their hands over their ears and yelling "LALALALALALALALALALA!".

Internet has devalued just about everything. Not just downloadables, but also physical things (try importing some crap from china in the early 90's... Today we have automated it).

Things arent even as good as they used to be. Anyone else remember the good old PC games? Nice cartoon boxes with 200 page manuals for a game like Civilization? Today you get a plastic case, a disc and *maybe*... just *maybe*... a 10 page manual where 5 pages is the list of EA marketing personel.

Originally posted by RelentlessLurker
reply to post by alphabetaone

 

fair enough.

might you venture to guess?

maybe theres something in the fine print when you buy it? surely they've addressed this at some point before...

I'm sure I could, sure. Although I'm not entirely clear what I'm venturing a guess on? Do you mean mean on whether or not it's labeled properly?

It may or may not be, to be perfectly honest, I have had little reason for many years to actually use a brick and mortar to do so, so whether or not on the physical product is a license that details your rights or theirs, is completely unknown to me. In the same breath though, I would have to say that also, there is no "notice" on a banks door that states "oh and by the way, it is strictly forbidden to rob us" nor on another persons car is there a "rights of usage" proclamation either. But people still do steal those things, so just because it's NOT there, I'm pretty sure I know that I shouldn't be taking what isn't mine without first getting permission to do so.

Originally posted by maestromason
I see a lot of people here have a lot of studying of what Intellectual Properties are. It is a complicated scheme built up from legal instruments.

A LOT of studying to do!

Here, here! That's just what I was thinking! The concept of intellectual property means that just because you are not stealing something physical doesn't mean it's not a theft. You are stealing an idea, a work product that is not physical. It is theft, and it is a crime. Period. Try taking your argument of "it's not physical, so I didn't steal" into a courtroom when you are accused of this, and you will be laughed at as you are being ordered to pay your fine. The same kind of thing would apply for plagerizing (sp?) someone else's work in a University. It is considered theft by the law, plain and simple. As with Ashley, I have to say that the punishments being handed out for this are way out of bounds and are out of control. They are meant to punish (punitive damages) as well as recover lost income. These parts of the copyright laws are what need to be reformed. If we take the profit out of suing the occasional file sharer, the corporations will concentrate more on the people who are stealing, mass producing, and selling these materials. These are the people who the original copyright laws were meant to punish, not some grandmother whose 12 year old granddaughter downloaded a Britney Spears song. Here's a quick summary of what has happened... The laws have not kept up with the technology. The large corporations see this, and find a way to make millions through litigation. After all, it's not their fault these laws exist in an outdated form. Copyright law experts try to get the laws updated and changed with the times. The corporations lobby congress against the change, why kill a nice cash cow, after all? Your local congressman votes against the reform, picks up his paycheck, buys attack ads against his opponent, and gets re-elected, all to start the cycle over again ad infinitum. So... What's the answer? Remove the money from politics, or the little guy will continue to "assume the position". Public financing of campaigns is the only way to stop this endless cycle. Until then, we the sheeple will never be represented... Only the money interests.

Screw these people, downloading and screening before buying has saved me at least a grand a year. Maybe if people stopped putting out CD's with only one or two decent songs out of 8-10 songs, they would be making more money. Maybe if they stopped making like 4 great movies, and 200 crap movies a year, they would make more money.

I will never buy any CD or DVD unless I have downloaded it and screened it first, and know it is worth my hard earned money. Period. Same goes for programs as well.

Oh and another thing these morons need to get through their head... A lot of people have stopped watching TV and listening to radio. If they make quality work, it is free advertising to people like me. Without piracy, they don't have a chance in hell that I would even know about it.

Originally posted by miniatus

Those albums would still be pirated, I can guarantee you that .. any alternative to paying for something will be used, it would help REDUCE the amount of piracy sure.. but it will still be pirated.. netflix is a brilliant example of this .. there's no point in downloading something when I have access to it for $8.99/mo on netflix.. the library is constantly growing and there's lots of good content there.. I'm sure netflix has done a lot to reduce piracy numbers

And that's the whole point, it would be crazy to think that piracy will every go away, but anything the industry can do to keep some profit coming so that entertainment can still be produced is worth it as long at is it mutually beneficial to consumer and company. Zero piracy would be like zero crime, but just because you can't get rid of crime doesn't mean you fire the police force.

Originally posted by TKDRL
Screw these people, downloading and screening before buying has saved me at least a grand a year. Maybe if people stopped putting out CD's with only one or two decent songs out of 8-10 songs, they would be making more money. Maybe if they stopped making like 4 great movies, and 200 crap movies a year, they would make more money.

I will never buy any CD or DVD unless I have downloaded it and screened it first, and know it is worth my hard earned money. Period. Same goes for programs as well.

First of all, you can't base code of law on whether or not you think someone is going to "enjoy" it. That's an inane suggestion, you can do whatever you like, but if you break the law and get caught, don't cry about it because you have stated clearly that, all laws be damned, you are going to do what you want.

Secondly, the other part of your argument can be applied to ANY product at all...and do you think that's effective or there is any efficacy what so ever in doing that with products?

Gasoline: "hmmm im not sure exxon will ignite everytime, screw them, im not paying until ive driven on it"
Cheeseburger: "Hmmmm unless this actually TASTES like burger, I'm not paying for it until I eat it"
Shoes: "Hmmmm I'm not sure my feet will be comfortable in these shoes in 6 months, Im not paying a DIME for em until 6 months has passed"
Haircut: "No WAYYY I'm paying for this haircut until I'm sure I like it"


Seriously, unless you "screen" every single thing you purchase, then you're a hypocrite and selective on only the things youve decided you DONT want to pay for. Hard earned money doesnt stop being hard earned money after only music and video and software.

I may or may not have downloaded it, I remember viewing it from my PC but I can't remember if it was from a torrent or a different method of downloading. Or if I borrowed my friends legit dvd copy of the disk (was a while ago.)

Either way, pretty costly to go into 22,000 people's houses, grab their rigs, and do a thorough investigation of each defendant's case to determine whether they downloaded it or someone was "borrowing" their connection. I myself use WiFi, and I believe it would be impossible to determine whether I actually downloaded it or if a thieving neighbor jacked my connection and did it. This is just a sad scare tactic, nothing will come of this.

Originally posted by banandar123
reply to post by RelentlessLurker

 

I remember how, on VHS tapes, the first screen you see warns you that duplication is prohibited under Federal law. Not sure if that applies to digital formats, though. Still, though, maybe if everyone in the US starts duplicating movies, the moviemakers will all go bankrupt from lack of sales and then there won't be any movies at all! Same for music and games, too! Good job guys! lol. People will stop going to the theater to see a movie, and just wait for some dude to buy the DVD and rip it to his computer to share with the world.

Or, they could stop selling tickets for $12 apiece, and charging 300% on food and make going to the movies appealing again. I would go see every crappy move made for my demographic if it was $2.50, and they would get a lot more money from me than they do now, which is close to nothing.

And then $19.99 for the DVD when it comes out? So I can sit through 5 minutes of FEDERAL WARNINGs, and an unskippable intro & menu?

Don't get me wrong, I buy dvds, USED, and don't pirate anymore, but for them to prosecute the general public like this, they should be forced to make some changes themselves. The way it is, Hollywood has a monopoly. Every theater is the same, the same people make the money... and online pirating is it's new competitor that they are trying to stomp out.

Originally posted by merka

Internet has devalued just about everything. Not just downloadables, but also physical things (try importing some crap from china in the early 90's... Today we have automated it).

It's just a shame that so much time is spent fighting it instead of finding solutions. And the cheap overseas market is a double edged sword. I can tell you that as a web designer I see so many people turning away from anyone who is not American for fear of bad quality and/or not being able to get help when it falls apart. As a consumer I filter anything I buy on ebay to only see results from America so I don't end up with knock offs of what I am really trying to buy. I have been burned too many times.

And greed is to be expected, but it is the industries job to keep it in check instead of perpetuating profit loss and blaming others for their flaws in marketing. It is funny to see how the business mentality changes as a company/industry becomes larger. Suddenly there is more money to work with, so money is thrown at problems until either the other side runs out of money to fight back, or the company loses all of their own because the problem is now too large. My two cents.

Originally posted by Perplexity
I may or may not have downloaded it, I remember viewing it from my PC but I can't remember if it was from a torrent or a different method of downloading. Or if I borrowed my friends legit dvd copy of the disk (was a while ago.)

Either way, pretty costly to go into 22,000 people's houses, grab their rigs, and do a thorough investigation of each defendant's case to determine whether they downloaded it or someone was "borrowing" their connection. I myself use WiFi, and I believe it would be impossible to determine whether I actually downloaded it or if a thieving neighbor jacked my connection and did it. This is just a sad scare tactic, nothing will come of this.

I agree it's a scare tactic, but in my case, if they were coming to my house, there would be no doubt that it at least came from somewhere IN my house and not a neighbor. I use MAC filtering on all of my WiFi routers and AP's, in addition to WPA2, so it's an actual impossibility for me to make that claim if I were breaking the law and downloading or uploading copyrighted material. (I should add, or extremely unlikely as, it's not altogether impossible to clone a MAC address then try and guess on what WiFi units it would be applicable on....yet I dont think most peoples lifetimes support it)

I wouldn't be surprised to see a mandate on using MAC filtering in the near future to eradicate things just like this.

Originally posted by Perplexity
...whether I actually downloaded it or if a thieving neighbor jacked my connection and did it...

We had some similar discussions in our country (Lithuania, Eastern Europe). Some law people said, that you are responsible for the safety of your WiFi connection. That's stupid, of course.

On case: I'm interested in how IP addresses were collected. We had a case few weeks ago, where a guy was charged for downloading Windows 7. His IP address was collected by taking screenshot of uTorrent peers tab (lol). Judge said, that uTorrent is not certified law agency tool for collecting IP addresses and case was dismissed. I guess that could be a way out of this case too.

reply to post by alphabetaone


I could definitely see that happening. In all honesty though, they would barely profit at all (if not actually lose some money) by carrying out an investigation for each individual case. If they want more people to actually pay to see their movies, perhaps they shouldn't extort so much money from the general public at the theaters.

Sorry Hollywood, but I can't sympathize for the actor,studio, or musician losing a few million whenever they are already overpaid and over rated in most cases.


reply to post by mejlus


Lol a screenshot of a torrent client... wow, they are seriously brain damaged.

reply to post by alphabetaone


Your comparisons are really dumb, you know that? The things I download and try first, are entertainment, and only have value if they are decent. Most physical things you buy come with a warrantee, if it sucks I can return it. The same is not for CD's DVD's or software. You cannot return a crap CD or DVD or software you opened and get a cash refund a lot of the time. You can get a store credit, but I am not interested in a store credit. Maybe if I had some sort of guarantee, I would buy it to try, but probably not. I have to drive 1-2 hours depending on traffic to get to a place that sells these things, not worth driving back and forth buying and returning garbage entertainment, waste too much gas that way.

Originally posted by mejlus

Originally posted by Perplexity
...whether I actually downloaded it or if a thieving neighbor jacked my connection and did it...

Some law people said, that you are responsible for the safety of your WiFi connection. That's stupid, of course.

Why is that stupid? You SHOULD be responsible for securing your own network. Since the government has no control over how you use it, they shouldn't be responsible for securing it either. You cant have it both ways... if you want it FREE and want it YOUR way, then YOU should be responsible for the security of it. If you want it tainted, and under governmental control, then sure.... let them do the securing.