New Automated DMCA Notices Hit Movie Pirates With $300 Fines

Zarathustra[H]

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With courts having become more skeptical of piracy suits, and less likely to easily hand rightsholders the massive payouts they once did, the industry is now rethinking its approach. The latest effort appears to be a new round of automated "fines." Instead of taking all discovered pirates to court, sending an automated note via the DMCA notices, asking for a settlement in the amount of $300. The company "Rights Enforcement" behind this new effort appears to be loosely affiliated with CEG TEK, an organization behind schemes like these in the past.

It is unclear how they even know who they are looking to collect $300 from without court ordered discovery, and if, with the rising costs of piracy related lawsuits they are actually proceeding to take those who fail to settle to court, but it is clear that this new effort does come with all the same risks of falsely identifying people by their IP address as previous attempts of this kind.

"The company is operated by lawyer Carl Crowell, who is best known for his work with various notorious copyright trolls. This includes the aforementioned Voltage Pictures, which filed lawsuits for several movies such as Dallas Buyers Club and The Hurt Locker."
 
um ip not a person.

in canada their letters are worth less than toilet paper.

they just want someone to email or pay them so they can really lay in to them.

but who needs laws right.
 
yup. my step father is a high up rep for telus and he said the notices are total bs
 
yup. my step father is a high up rep for telus and he said the notices are total bs

i always laugh because before the notice and notice system ISP's would delete them for you.

hell my isp links you to a michael geist article.

says basically is bs and to throw it away.
 
yup! never got a single one on shaw, have got 2 on telus. that's why I asked him, he said file under G(arbage).
 
Oh, and it has been brought to my attention that the image used in this article may not be as universally remembered as I had thought.

It is a reference to this old anti-piracy video which has been made fun of A LOT over the years:



One of the amusing aspects of this video was that whoever made it stole the music used in the video. "Hey' it's a crime to download movies, but using music without permissions is fine" :p

And then came the memes:

 
22d.jpg

I would totally download a car. Everyone would download a car.

One day I will download a car.

one day...
 
When I saw the download a car image, my first thought was they haven't been paying attention to advances in 3D printing. If you can 3D print a house, rocket engine and grenade launcher, how far behind is a car?
 
The only remotely positive thing that could be said about this is "at least it's not thousands of dollars like before"... :rolleyes:
 
um ip not a person.

in canada their letters are worth less than toilet paper.

they just want someone to email or pay them so they can really lay in to them.

but who needs laws right.

The Canadian ISPs seem to be warning their customers not to contact or respond to these notices.

From Rogers:

We're required by new Canadian copyright law to send along this notice. However, we can't verify its contents nor its sender and we can't alter its contents in any way. As a result, we are passing along to you the full, unaltered, notice from the sender as we are required to do.

You should also know that we can't confirm the merits of any settlement payment that may be requested by the sender. As Industry Canada says, "The Notice and Notice regime does not impose any obligations on a subscriber who receives a notice and it does not require the subscriber to contact the copyright owner or the intermediary. A notice of alleged infringement is separate from any lawsuit for copyright infringement. There is no legal obligation to pay any settlement offered by a copyright owner".​
 
I think it would more profitable if they stop wasting time trying to identify who downloaded what and just send $300 fines to everyone for using the internet.
 
Are you sure it's not just the next batch of nigerian scam messages?
 
I charge $300 for each unsolicited email I have to read, so I'll just call it even. :p
 
If you're getting DMCA notices then you're doing it wrong. But as others here noted, ISPs tell you to toss them in the round file because it's nothing but a scare tactic. And a $300 fine just encourages more people to pirate.
 
Well with 3D printers it has to be considered that yes you can download a car. Or download the files for a 3D printed car.
 
I wouldn't need to pirate if they gave me access to everything for a reasonable price. Guess what's nothappening?

I wouldn't need to steal cars if i could afford them.
That argument just show a lack of property than anything else.
You don't have a natural right to have the stuff, the world don't owe you stuff just because you cant make means to pay for it. such entitlement...

If you cant afford then don't buy it just like any other product.
 
In Sweden a police car can't pull you over and charge you if your car breaks line of sight with them after the offense. I guess theoretically a different person could be driving the car by then. This IP address /= a person thing reminded me of that.

Anyway because of that loophole they get away with some crazy street racing. The caliber and style of this drag racing event blows away everything I've ever seen before.

 
I was waiting for one of the idiots holding the car back to get ran over.
 
I wouldn't need to steal cars if i could afford them.
That argument just show a lack of property than anything else.
You don't have a natural right to have the stuff, the world don't owe you stuff just because you cant make means to pay for it. such entitlement...

If you cant afford then don't buy it just like any other product.

the problem people have with that reasoning is that music and video are not tangible items, and we are used to getting them without paying for them. Turn on a radio, and you can listen to all the hit songs without "paying" for them. Use OTA television, and you can watch a lot of video shows without "paying" for them. You walk through the mall, and you have music being broadcast that you don't have to "pay" for; go into any electronics store and they will be playing a movie on their screens that you can watch without "paying."

Of course, I put "pay" in quotation marks, because these things do cost us in the form of advertising markup, but you can see how the average person would consider it. I am not saying it is right, but because of the nature of video and music, many people do not make the same equivalence.
 
With the advent of services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, etc - I'm surprised piracy is such an issue. Yes, first releases probably won't be out for a while. I get that. However, I have the three services and have such a huge backlog of stuff to watch, I wouldn't have time to pirate anything. Maybe it's just me?
 
With the advent of services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, etc - I'm surprised piracy is such an issue. Yes, first releases probably won't be out for a while. I get that. However, I have the three services and have such a huge backlog of stuff to watch, I wouldn't have time to pirate anything. Maybe it's just me?
Some people don't want to wait 6-12 months for newer movies or a new season of a TV series to show up on Netflix, Amazon, etc. And if you want to see any recent movie that was a huge hit in theaters, you'll be waiting several years before Netflix adds it.
 
So....they are sending out 300 dollar "fines" with nothing to back it up? Yea, good luck with that.
 
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