Judge Splits $750 Piracy Penalty Between BitTorrent Peers

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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TorrentFreak has a report up today about a Seattle District Court judge with a refreshing take on piracy suit damage awards. Like in most of these cases, the defendants never showed in court, so the plaintiff requested default judgments of $2,500 from each defendant, plus attorneys fees. The Judge rejected the claim instead awarding the sum of $750, to be split among all the BitTorrent peers.

I am not a fan of piracy, but I do like to see the punishment fit the crime. Why is it that whenever we read about one of these cases, it is for a film that rated 28% on Metacritic? I can't help but wonder if the lawyers only come out as an excuse of last resort when a film does poorly in the box office.


As for the lowered damages amount itself, the Judge clarifies that these type of cases are not intended to result in large profits. Especially not, when the rightsholders have made little effort to prove actual damage or to track down the original sharer.

“The Court is not persuaded. Statutory damages are not intended to serve as a windfall to plaintiffs, and enhanced statutory damages are not warranted where plaintiffs do not even try to demonstrate actual damages.”
 
Funny ruling.

Slight off-topic, but 0/0 reviews for it characterize it as
Rolling Stone said:
Islamophobic
Click to expand...
NYPost said:
Racist
Click to expand...
Would quote AVClub but it would require quoting entire article.

Hm, maybe it is a good movie after all, not to mention

blowing up Westminster Abbey while the Italian prime minister is sightseeing or trying to shoot Marine One out of the air with a rocket launcher
Click to expand...

Sounds funny.
 
The movie sucked. I regret renting it.

Crazy what these Studios try to get away with.
 
I liked Olympus has fallen well enough but London didn't even spark my interest enjoy to rent from redbox or torrent. Either way the quality of the movie doesn't change the common sense ruling.
 
Maybe if they can't extort through the courts they'll actually try to develop a system to play our media where we want it.
 
The studio's attorneys should face disciplinary action with whatever State's Bar Association if they're actually just signing their names to filings that are identical except their legal assistants did a Find and Replace to change some names. Lawyers are only supposed to bill for work they're actually doing for a client.

When reusing ten hours of shit from a previous client and putting in two hours work to throw it all together for a new client and they're only supposed to charge for the two hours. A client already paid for the previous work you don't get to double bill it. Or whatever billing something for the hundredth (or however many times) is called.

I realize they're just shaking people down for money, but they could pretend to do it according to the standards of professional conduct. The judge should have ordered the defendants to sit through and then write five paragraph essays on several other Gerard Butler movies if he wanted to teach them a lesson.
 
I am surprised they actually took it to court. usually they send the isp notifications and then extort people if they go to the website to inquire.
actually filing a claim costs a lot more money
 
Looks like the judge actually understands how torrents work, how refreshing to see someone on the bench that can think past "MS word" levels.

Splitting the judgement among all the torrent's peers sounds like a technically sound decision to make.
 
just move to switzerland, iceland or some other country with similar digital laws for p2p, problem solved, download away :X
 
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