Some of these torrent sites are the most visited on the net but that looks more every day that their days are numbered.
Just last week a federal judge ordered the file sharing site, LimeWire.com to basically shut down.
U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood issued an injunction ordering LimeWire to disable the “the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality” of the famed file-sharing program.
If you go to LimeWire.com today, you will see a notice on the front of the site which states:
“”This is an official notice that LimeWire is under a court-ordered injunction (pdf) to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software. Downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.””
The injunction came as a result of LimeWire’s loss to the RIAA this past May where Judge Wood determined the company had committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced others to commit copyright infringement.
Today comes word that a porn producer, Axel Braun Productions, filed a complaint Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, alleging that 7,098 “John Doe” defendants illegally shared the adult film Batman XXX: A Porn Parody, which they produced.
“People don’t realize that when you pirate a movie it hurts all of the people who work very hard to get it produced — from the cast to the production assistants to the makeup artists.
These are people who live paycheck to paycheck, and with ‘Batman XXX,’ that was a film I financed myself.
“So we are going after every one of them who pirates our content.”
According to the suit (pdf) “each defendant is known to the Plaintiff only by their IP address which is assigned to that Defendant by their Internet Service Provider on the date and at the time at which the infringing activity of each Defendant was observed. The Plaintiff believes that information obtained in discovery will lead to the identification of each Defendant’s true name and permit the Plaintiff to amend this complaint to state the same.”
Braun is seeking a temporary and permanent injunction, actual and statutory damages, court costs and attorneys fees.
However, thePiratebay.org, still appears to be active despite having had several ISP shut them down over the past year and large civil and criminal judgments entered against the founders of the site.
Well, they *are* stealing when they do that…
Anon
Correct.
“Porn Pirates They’re Coming After All 7,100 Of You” writes MHB as the Eraser is running on the background. It’s too late Michael, they have your IP
It’s not stealing. It’s copyright infringement.
I thought “Batman” was trademarked too?
Yep now DC Comics will go after the Porn producer.
Parody’s enjoy protection as well, fair use and all that.
Batman is trademarked so in reality they should shut down the sales of the movies. I also believe it’s unlawful for the company to obtain the I.ps of the users
Kbx
These are separate issues. There ben a ton of parody porn movies going back several years and think they are covered by fair use.
Whether ISP should turn over their customers name and address is a privacy issue but they have done so before and always do in the case of child porn.
I think people should have learned by now that you can’t just take other people’s work and product without compensation.
The porn industry is hurting and for one I’m glad to see them fighting back
“It’s not stealing. It’s copyright infringement.”
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That’s like saying “It’s not stealing… It’s shoplifting.”
Maybe there’s a legal differential between commercial copyright infringement (where people can and do get put into jail for selling pirated goods, etc) and private copyright infringement, but the ethical underpinning is the same and is no different to whatever defines ‘stealing’.
If someone invests their money in producing media for resale, people don’t have the right to take that media for themselves, for free, just because technology allows it to happen with relative ease.
One is primarily a civil offense. The other is primarily a criminal offense. Distinctions are important.
“One is primarily a civil offense. The other is primarily a criminal offense. Distinctions are important.”
Even *if* it isn’t explicitly a criminal offense, I am sure a prosecutor can make that connection if they wanted to.
Remember that it’s the act of distribution via P2P that gets people in trouble, not copying. And certainly not “stealing”. Again, distinctions are important.
Btw, I’m not defending any of this. Jammie Thomas is the poster child for guilty. The overall problem is that the lawyers for the RIAA(/MPAA) are brutalizing our legal process to get what they want.
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/judge-third-trial-against-p2p-user-jammie-thomas-will-go-ahead.ars
(soapbox off)
“Remember that it’s the act of distribution via P2P that gets people in trouble, not copying. And certainly not “stealing”
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You are missing the point by a mile by confusing what gets you in trouble and could get you in trouble. It’s illegal even if you download one song. Will they take you to court when others are downloading 100? probably not but they still could.
Stealing a CD from the store or downloading one from limewire have the same exact effect.
Infringment to me, and I am not a lawyer, would be taking a section of a movie or a unique character from a movie and reincorporating or rehashing it into another piece of work. Stealing it would just plain taking the whole dang thing.
That’s more or less how I see it.
I love that term “Porn Pirates” — sounds like a nude Broadway musical, with naked pirates dancing everywhere, God forbid.
no one is forcing them to make porn they are doing it to make money.
“no one is forcing them to make porn they are doing it to make money.”
And this makes sense…how exactly?
I am no lawyer or IP expert, but I can’t imagine a film producer could legally take a name like Batman — a “made up” name which would have no significance were it not for the Batman series — and create a spoof on it embedding the same name without receiving explicit permission from the Batman TM holder. Weird Al was always careful never to parody a copyrighted song without the artist’s prior permission; and I suspect this was for legal reasons, not just his personal ethics, because he makes so much profit on each parody he writes. and W.A. didn’t even embed the original song titles in his own — just used analogous lyrical constructions — hence even more so would the Batman porn guy need to obtain permission from the TM holder. But perhaps I’m missing something.
One is primarily a civil offense. The other is primarily a criminal offense. Distinctions are important.
——————
Yes, distinctions are very important, but just because one is classified criminal and one civil doesn’t mean they aren’t functionally the same thing.
Stealing.
“but I can’t imagine a film producer could legally take a name like Batman — a “made up” name which would have no significance were it not for the Batman series — and create a spoof on it embedding the same name without receiving explicit permission from the Batman TM holder”
Batman is a multi-billion $ franchises so they have plenty of money to hire lawyers. The fact that the porn was done and several others have porn ‘spoofed’ other franchises probably means that it’s legal.
When you see the Batman porn version with a huge disclaimer upfront, are you going to confuse them or what?
SL makes an important point. It doesn’t just come up in the file-sharing context. It comes up very often with licensing too. The word “illegal” or phrases such as “against the law” are frequently used in online discourse in an almost propaganda-like fashion, in an attempt to guide user behaviour.
When someone uses the word “illegal” they are implying that there is criminal law prohibiting a particular and hopefully well-defined behaviour. The codification of criminal law, setting forth what are the “crimes” a society recognises, is a public process. In the USA, everyone is a part of that process, at least indirectly, in their capacity as voters.
Private contracts are not public processes. If someone breaches a contract, this is not “illegal” if they are not otherwise violating a criminal law. You and I can make some silly agreement where you promise not to do something. If you come to your senses and break the promise, but otherwise violate no criminal law in the process, then I might be able to sue you for your breach. But I cannot proclaim you are “breaking the law”. That is precisely what some vendors in the IT field routinely do. They are trying to control user behaviour.
Similarly, violating someone’s IP rights is not per se “illegal”. There must be a criminal statute violated in the process (e.g. in the context of importation/exportation). I think it’s fair to say that, on the whole, most violations of IP rights do not trigger criminal liability. IP owners probably wish every violation did constitute a “crime”, but this is simply not the reality. IP law is not criminal law. If you violate someone’s IP rights, then they might be able to sue you, but unless you’ve also violated a criminal statute, what you have done is not “illegal” and it is not “against the law”. This is not to encourage anyone to violate IP rights, but it is to point out that they are delaing with a private agreement between themselves and a rights holder or their representative. That agreement could be fair or it could be extremely one-sided. It’s a private agreement.
And this means enforcement of contracts (e.g. licenses) and IP rights (e.g. copyrights, trademarks, patents) rests on the contracting parties and those with IP ownership interests.
The courts are not responsible for enforcing licenses or IP. The courts are only responsible for enforcing judgments. And to get a judgment it will cost you.
If I were giving others the right to use my IP, and it was in digital format, I would choose my licensees very carefully. You might think of this as: Know your customers, so you don’t end up suing them. All it takes is one person to make a copy and distribute it against our agreement. It only takes a single copy. The remarkable thing about file-sharing is it almost always starts with only one person. Why do they do it? Certainly there must be a reason. And therein lies perhaps the solution to the problem.
Lawsuits are slow, expensive and not always effective at bringing about the intended result (assuming that result is something more than emotional satisfaction). Sometime lawsuits are the only option. That is not a good position to be in.
Good luck to the parties bringing suit.
Digitised content distributed online is risky business. But I guess for the distributors the benefits outweigh the risks.
In fact, criminal law can invalidate a contract
“that you can’t just take other people’s work”
Doing porn is not a work. Everybody can make castings and film poor girls who want fast money in exchange of their morality. This is not difficult.
I could become a millionaire in porn if I wanted to. The problem is, I don’t want. This business stinks, even more than drugs to me.
I have no problem with amateur films and people who film themselves for fun. But I have a problem with professional porn.
UPDATE
Women is hit with $1.5 million dollar verdict for downloading 24 songs:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20021735-93.html?tag=nl.e703
Yup that’s $62,500 per song
A lot more than the $.99 she could have paid at iTunes
Yep, that pretty much wraps up the fair-use era also. In the future, it specifically means that damages can be levied for sharing CDs or DVDs with friends. ACTA will ensure that.
It also means that you’ll need to purchase media separately for each device you play it on, especially if the device has an IP. That 99 cent iTunes song will need to be repeatedly purchased for each computer, media device, car radio and any online backup device. Movies too.
Finally, it also means that ISPs will be less likely to resist handing over logs of your TCP/IP activity to the RIAA/MPAA. The cost of the multi-thousand dollar settlement letter will need to be weighed against the cost of a lawyer, whether guilty of infringement or not.
Yes, she was flagrantly guilty of copyright violation. The problem is that copyright issues have been turned into sausage and sliding down a slippery slope towards no consumer rights at all.
SL
I think under current terms your iTunes purchases can be placed on 5 computers and an unlimited number of devices, so you can have an iPhone, iPad, iPod all with the same library and a desktop and laptop with all the same music without any additional cost.
I do
I could become a millionaire in porn if I wanted to. The problem is, I don’t want.
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You know nothing about that business. This isn’t 2001 anymore.
A lot of larger scale, active content producers are running deeply red. Unless you have some unique genius, making money in porn isn’t what it used to be.
By the way, what is the connection between domaining, pornography and pirates?
Unless your blog is frequented more by pornographers than domainers, I’m afraid this article is useless and ridiculous.
Alex
As someone who used to practice law, my interests range to, and my post sometimes include other legal issues related to IP law.
IP law includes trademarks which directly effect domains, but also include these type of issues which may not directly domains, but do effect use of material on internet sites.
Many domainer’s also are developers and content related issues are important as well.
“I could become a millionaire in porn if I wanted to. The problem is, I don’t want. This business stinks, even more than drugs to me. ”
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Funny, but all porn in ending up on youtube like sites for porn. You’d be lucky to break even
berated by a federal judge, and in front of a crowd. probably every american lawyer’s worst nightmare.
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1960161
under the dcma (the pros will argue) you can go to _prison_ for tinkering with an xbox but it’s ok to tinker with an iphone.
I hear alot of people talking about P2P file sharing. However, one of the reality is that,
it isn’t always in just the USA. Infact many other countries may be apart of it. And that
USA or other countries don’t have any law or control over what happens in the middle of the Ocean. There are no laws out in the middle of the Ocean only close to countries and certain parts of the Coast. And the only true way to stop it is to monitor everyone on a constant basis with a never ending database. A person could name a song A28283 and pirates and other people would figure out what it is. It is one of those topics that are hard to control. There are more people in the world than that of all the goverment agencies. And varying on the actions taken place may lose supporters. There could be a ton of people who do not like pirates, but yet over 90% of the software is them and 9% is porn on those networks. And I won’t even get into the issues of diplomacy and dictatorship.
Infact a single pirate could run a network in the ocean. Don’t ask me how I do not feel like explaining everything. Infact many countries of the world are corrupted the police force. And each computer may have a different IP address and MAC address as well. They may be traced, however how easy is it for someone even close to you or not to get into your network. Suddenly Telus or other ISP providers have it under your network. Not to mention it only takes a few seconds to either destroy or hide it. And security in multiple places you may even go into a gov office one of them could be corrupted and you wouldn’t know. If they have a clean record for lets say 15 yrs. Did they really quit and now help for the better good or did they just get better. Remember even as other people learn how to stop they are learning as well and mabe even work for them. Take the Xbox it can be modded same with everything else. Remember everything can be duplicated, hacked, modded, cracked however you want to put it. Even the Phat PS3 is moddable now.
One thing that may also be interesting is that even as they are being shut down even things found on google and other search engines there are things way deeper in the web. Also called deep web searches. The pirates try to either work as a group or independant, however they all learn on how to defend themselves and research law in not just 1 country or state but many.
So I leave with this thought is the goverment really winning or pirates winning.
Or is it that we are caught in a never ending loop. What may be legal in one country is illegal in another. If you have any questions I can try to help.