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Hurt Locker copyright trolls at it again

mmntech

mmntech

Lifer
This time targeting Canadian ISPs.
Subscribers to the Canadian Internet service provider TekSavvy may soon be receiving a letter in the mail if they've ever illegally downloaded movies using the service.

TekSavvy told customers yesterday that it had received a request by Voltage Pictures LLC, the studio behind The Hurt Locker, to provide the names and contact information of certain customers. Anyone with an IP address that has allegedly engaged in copyright infringement could potentially be part of this request, TekSavvy's press release says.

"Currently, we have not received a court order, only a request for information and a motion for an order," Marc Gaudrault, CEO of TekSavvy said in the press release. "This is unknown territory for Canadians. We have retained legal counsel to help us through the process and ascertain our rights and obligations as an ISP. If you are caught up in one of these actions, you may wish to seek legal advice respecting your own rights."

The request, thought to be the largest of its kind in Canadian history and including as many as 2,000 IPs, comes on the heels of the Copyright Modernization Act coming into effect in Canada, CBC reports.

The Copyright Modernization Act, which was known as Bill C-11 prior to its passing, officially came into effect on November 30. The bill was designed to better reflect modern media and the copyright protections extended to it, much of which extends to how piracy in Canada is dealt with.

Canadian technology copyright blogger Michael Geist posted a column on the issue today, outlining the next steps that will happen in the Voltage-TekSavvy burgeoning legal drama:

A hearing will be held at Federal Court next week to determine if customer information should be disclosed. Those who are likely to be affected have likely already received an email from TekSavvy informing them that their information has been requested

If the court allows customer information disclosure, Voltage will likely send legal demand letters to subscribers offering to settle before filing a copyright infringement lawsuit. Under the new Copyright Modernization Act, non-commercial infringement now has a cap of $5000 in liability.

For those who refuse to settle, Voltage may pursue copyright infringement lawsuits against individual subscribers. While the Copyright Modernization Act no longer penalizes non-commercial infringement with those who pirate for commercial uses, it is still within Voltage's legal rights to pursue lawsuits against individuals.

TekSavvy said in a blog post that they haven't given over any information yet, and they won't until they have a court order telling them to. In an effort to help customers who may be affected by this, they have posted links to legal documents on their website.
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http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/righ...cing-legal-action-movie-studio-212754982.html

I find the fact that they think they can go trolling through users histories without a warrant to be deeply disturbing. Even if you don't pirate, that should worry you. All the more reason to get a VPN or proxy.
 
Courts in the USA have started realizing that an ip address != an individual. It'll be interesting seeing how Canada handles it. Them not being a porn company puts them in a weaker position. They can't embarrass people into paying the way porn companies can.
 
Oh right, I remember reading about this. I think this is the company that has produced nothing but crap movies, and has actually posted and seeded their own movies on torrent sites.
 
This copyright bullshit just pisses me off. It's all about money and greedy corporations. There's so much corruption going on it's just unbelievable.

It was a matter of time till we get hit with this crap here too. :/


Edit: Wait, Bill C-11 passed?!?!? What bullshit. This is basically the Canadian version of SOPA. I can't believe our government is turning into the corrupt assholes of the American government.
 
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Red Squirrel said:
This copyright bullshit just pisses me off. It's all about money and greedy corporations. There's so much corruption going on it's just unbelievable.

It was a matter of time till we get hit with this crap here too. :/


Edit: Wait, Bill C-11 passed?!?!? What bullshit. This is basically the Canadian version of SOPA. I can't believe our government is turning into the corrupt assholes of the American government.
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And I'm sure we will (have?) passed SOPA. Just rename it to something like "Save Patriotic Babies from Communist Cannibals Act." Or go the other way direction. "Mundane Bill for Boring Financial Studies."


There's too much corrupt money to be made to just let it slip away.
 
Red Squirrel said:
This copyright bullshit just pisses me off. It's all about money and greedy corporations. There's so much corruption going on it's just unbelievable.

It was a matter of time till we get hit with this crap here too. :/


Edit: Wait, Bill C-11 passed?!?!? What bullshit. This is basically the Canadian version of SOPA. I can't believe our government is turning into the corrupt assholes of the American government.
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It sure did despite all kinds of opposition. Problem is the general public doesn't educate themselves on these issues, and much of the decisions happen behind closed doors. People blame Harper but it would have gone through no matter who was in power. Just like the US where both Republicans and Democrats were supporting SOPA, and only gave up due to widespread public outrage.

If piracy is illegal, then it should be handled as a criminal matter and not a civil one. This would force copyright trolls to abide by due process. There would have to be warrants, an open trial, presumption of innocence, and legal aid for people who can't afford to hire their own defense. The trolls work knowing that most people can't afford the court costs. Even if the person is innocent, it's cheaper for them to pay off the troll than to fight it and risk losing. It's an extortion racket and highly unethical. Unfortunately is the trolls have been successful in getting governments to give them the legal blessing to do it. More worrying is that legal constitutional rights only apply to criminal cases, and not civil ones. So it's okay to presume someone as guilty and give then the burden of proof to show otherwise. These cases not only waste valuable court time, but make a mockery of our legal traditions.

The most damning is trolls now seeking out information from these ISPs. If the court gives it the green light, it could allow private corporations to search through your internet history and see everything you've been up to. It's giving far too much power to a group that has zero responsibility to the public.
 
Jeff7 said:
And I'm sure we will (have?) passed SOPA. Just rename it to something like "Save Patriotic Babies from Communist Cannibals Act." Or go the other way direction. "Mundane Bill for Boring Financial Studies."


There's too much corrupt money to be made to just let it slip away.
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Yeah it's a matter of time. Either way it does not really matter, the government does what it wants, it does not need a bill to tell it it can or can't do something. Look at the Megaupload case. Everyone protested Sopa and won for now so they said "fuck you" and pulled that off.

The internet is only going to go more and more to crap as time progresses, because of all these stupid copyright BS acts.
 
lol - the cynic in me says alot of this is spread by proxy / vpn services. i bet they are getting alot more customers 🙂

seriously tho - sux but in a way glad they doing it - i would never have found out how cool a vpn is.
 
I was thinking about proxies but then they'll just get the info from the host of the proxy server. Can't win unless it's a proxy that's off shore but then they'll just extradite the owner of the proxy much like they did with the megaupload owner. Piracy is treated like terrorism, pretty sickening that a victimless crime like this is treated like it's the end of the world. It all comes to show who the government works for. Money.
 
sandorski said:
meh, collect $10 from each Pirate and move on.
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Sorry if this is all "Yeah, I know that already" stuff to you.

That's the problem. They don't have realistic evidence/proof, they only have IPs and they want ISPs to give out their customers info just based on that so that they can then sue them and use scare tactics to bilk money from them. There's a lot of complete horseshit stuff going on with regards to litigation like this.

Ars has quite a few good articles about this stuff. Here's one specifically about what the OP is referencing (that has links to other articles, some about this company, some about the BS in general): http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...sks-indie-isp-to-cough-up-users-ip-addresses/
 
zinfamous said:
😕

and lol
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Look at any economic study not funded by the RIAA. Piracy is good for a market. Music pirates buy more music. Game pirates buy more games. Movie piracy helps promote lesser known movies.

"They'll get addicted, and then we'll collect." --Bill Gates
“It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.” -- Bill Gates
 
darkswordsman17 said:
Sorry if this is all "Yeah, I know that already" stuff to you.

That's the problem. They don't have realistic evidence/proof, they only have IPs and they want ISPs to give out their customers info just based on that so that they can then sue them and use scare tactics to bilk money from them. There's a lot of complete horseshit stuff going on with regards to litigation like this.

Ars has quite a few good articles about this stuff. Here's one specifically about what the OP is referencing (that has links to other articles, some about this company, some about the BS in general): http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...sks-indie-isp-to-cough-up-users-ip-addresses/
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I'm just sayin that the rewards being given are just encouraging these Corporate Trolls. Instead of excessive punishment, just make the Pirates pay the value of the Product, I picked $10 as an assumed value.
 
sandorski said:
I'm just sayin that the rewards being given are just encouraging these Corporate Trolls. Instead of excessive punishment, just make the Pirates pay the value of the Product, I picked $10 as an assumed value.
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Yeah I find it ridiculous how they come up with completely arbitrary values in the millions or even billions. It's sickening they get away with that, but I'm sure part of that money goes to the government, probably why they allow and encourage it. Sick bastards. It's stealing. Just because it's legal does not make it right. They are evil and happen to have the ability to make things legal/illegal so they just make their crime legal.

Piracy should not be treated any worse than an expired license plate sticker. Both don't really have real victims. A multi trillion dollar corporation that is still making multi trillions is NOT a victim.
 
BladeVenom said:
Look at any economic study not funded by the RIAA. Piracy is good for a market. Music pirates buy more music. Game pirates buy more games. Movie piracy helps promote lesser known movies.
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I really don't believe that.

However, one thing that I am sure is a myth is that prices would come down if there wasn't any piracy

That's just absolutely wrong and falls in the same category as people who say the price of sporting events would go down if athletes are paid less.

The makers of music, movies, etc are not going to lower prices just because there are more customers. That's insane. Its like saying the Yankees will lower ticket prices if their payroll is less. What idiot would intentionally make less money? You charge whatever amount the market will pay.

In fact, if piracy were eliminated movies, music, etc would cost more because the in effect the "supply" would be less.
 
Doppel said:
This is the tragedy of the thread. The movie just wasn't great, it's not right to go down like that. Go down for something awesome.
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It's actually worse than wasn't great. That movie was a real disappointment. Waste of a rental for me.
 
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