Grandfather sued by MPAA for $600,000!!!

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: chowderhead

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
I'm sure piracy hurts the market a little bit.

But come one, let's be realistic.
Most pirates are high school and college kids with little or no money.

How does pirating a movie that they weren't going to buy in the first place hurt anyone?
a lot of piracy is people just downloading crap because they can.

nope, most of the pirates are in FOREIGN COUNTRIES like Communist China. You had the head of the MPAA Dan Glickman on one of those news shows and they asked him specifically ... why are you going after grandma or some college kid in a dorm room when you can walk down any street in China and buy bootleg copies of any movie out in the theater. His reply was mentioning how important the Chinese market will be, how they were trying, how they need to strengthen the court system and how China just joined the WTO. In other words ... nothing. They are willing to tolerate bootlegging in China but can't wait to go after grandpa or some pimple-faced college kid here. Thugs they are!

US companies, as well as the Feds, spend significantly more time and money addressing piracy overseas, in countries like China, than on piracy in the US. But here's the problem, China is a sovereign nation and its government doesn't give a damn about the massive pirating/knock-off industry that exists in that country. Other than saying "pretty please w/a cherry on top" the US really can't do anything. It's not like the US Government can go over there and enforce US laws or rewrite China's laws.

One of the reasons that the MPAA and the RIAA get so completely freaked out beyond reason when it comes to piracy is they want to nip it in the bud. If the piracy in the US gets anywhere close to as bad as it is in China those industries will crash like theirs no tomorrow. In China no one really bothers to buy the home video distribution rights for movies because they won't make anymore. Everyone buys the the bootleg. In the US DVD revenue accounts for about 60% of the total revenue generated by a film. 60%. That's a fairly significant gap in your revenue stream if it suddenly disappears. And the DVD/home viewing revenue just keeps getting bigger while the theatrical revenue keeps getting smaller.

It's no excuse for the lawsuits, but it does shed some light on to the motivation behind them.


Lethal

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: stonecold3169

Originally posted by: marvdmartian
While I disagree with the over the top tactics of the mpaa & riaa, the problem they have isn't with the downloading of the copyrighted material (well, it is, but not as much as the next point I'm going to make).

The problem they have is with the SHARING of the copyrighted material. If you're on P2P, chances are you've got it set up to share partial &/or completed downloads with everyone else on that network. THAT'S where they're getting this guy, and others that they sue. It wasn't the fact that he downloaded (or his grandchild downloaded) the movies, it's the fact that while they were being downloaded, they were also being shared, which makes that person just as legally responsible as the original person who shared it on that p2p network.

On some p2p programs, you can elect not to share partial downloads. Chances are you won't download nearly as fast, possibly not at all, if you're not sharing. On some programs too, you select which folder(s) to save completed downloads to, and which folder(s) to share, and your best bet is to make certain to not share completed downloads either, or chances are these morons are going to eventually catch you. I have a buddy that got caught (and luckily got off with a warning) sharing a movie on bittorrent, and discovered that it was the studio that was sharing the file, but only at a 98% completion. That caused my friend to get stuck just short of completing the download, and share what he had with others, for days on end, hoping that he'd get that last little bit of the file.

Dirty pool? You betcha. To me, that's as bad as hunting a baited field. But expect this sort of thing to continue, and probably even get worse, before it gets better. As long as the bean counters at the mpaa and the riaa tell the suits that they're losing that kind of change due to sharing networks, the suits are going to keep their doberman lawyers on this campaign of terrorizing old men, widows and children. :|

And that's why I only share porn these days!! :laugh:

I'm not doubting you at all, because I have heard of this happening before, but wouldn't this be dismissable in court? It's illegal to set somebody up, isn't it?

It's not any more illegal than the cops setting up a drug by to catch a dealer. Entrapment would be illegal (forcing/coercing someone into do something they wouldn't have done otherwise), but Sony isn't coercing anybody. They are just setting out the bait and seeing who bites.


Lethal

 

Hope they have a good lawyer.

 

[mdchesne]

makes me sick. I just want every MPAA and RIAA @sshat out there to realize
"hey! If you're going to be so tight-@ssed about it, we can always resort back to physically sharing music files and movies. and guess what? we still do, so embrace it! we always will share and you can't stop us by being bullies and corporate money-hogs"

and then I'd moon them while driving by their shiny limo.

😀

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: mdchesne
makes me sick. I just want every MPAA and RIAA @sshat out there to realize
"hey! If you're going to be so tight-@ssed about it, we can always resort back to physically sharing music files and movies. and guess what? we still do, so embrace it! we always will share and you can't stop us by being bullies and corporate money-hogs"

and then I'd moon them while driving by their shiny limo.

😀

I'm sure they'd love it if people only shared actual copies of DVDs or CDs as opposed to mass distributing them to hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people.


Lethal