Cox gets massively shafted - Jury awards music industry 1 billion dollars from Cox over copyright infringers

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, Thaldor said:

SPs are by the law required to store for long time is only for official (cops and so on) use and cannot be accessed by anyone even with subpoenas

This is why Cox got sued. Because these types of decsions push the blame from the offender to the ISP.  Which again is why they now go after the ISP.  If they cant sue the user, then better yet lest sue the ISP who has tons of money. Because as it stands IP address assignments are not random, ISP's own those addresses, and that public info. All the RIAA, MPAA, or other orgs have to do is find the IP of the offender and figure out what ISP owns it. Then they bring legal action. Here in the US they can bring both Criminal and Civil action. Though the Civil action is much more used in the US. Penalties in other countries will vary based on their laws and international treaties. 

[wanderingfool2]

3 hours ago, straight_stewie said:

I think it is time to start publicly protesting (in countries where it is legal to do so), for our online rights.

This decision sets a precedent that it is now the ISPs responsibility to track and censor your online activity at the direction of private entities rather than court orders and warrants, else they face government supported massive financial retaliation.

This decision has eroded our last online privacy rights in the US, and cannot be allowed to stand under any circumstances.

I am all for privacy rights, but there really needs to be a bit more recourse for copyright holders as well (I dislike the RIAA and similar companies in that they work more similar to an extortion ring, but at the same time there is a lack of proper laws protecting copyrighted work being distributed on the internet).

 

I don't actually think this sets a precedent though, as I personally think the loss has more to do with the fact that Cox intentionally limited the amount of letters they would sendout to customers.

 

The thing is, all a copyright holder can do is send pretty much letters now and days.  The courts ruled an IP address doesn't identify a person, but the privacy aspect prevents the ISP from turning over even the user's contact information.  So they can't even properly sue a person.

[JZStudios]

On 12/20/2019 at 10:47 AM, sazrocks said:

Well crap, Cox is my ISP. While they have their own fair share of bad practices (price creep, high prices, data caps), they are still among the better ISPs out there.

 

On 12/20/2019 at 11:08 AM, BuckGup said:

Scamming consumers for subpar shit internet 

My dad went in to cancel our Cox altogether a while ago, and then they just magically said that we had a big discount that was never applied.

[Thaldor]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

This is why Cox got sued. Because these types of decsions push the blame from the offender to the ISP.  Which again is why they now go after the ISP.  If they cant sue the user, then better yet lest sue the ISP who has tons of money. Because as it stands IP address assignments are not random, ISP's own those addresses, and that public info. All the RIAA, MPAA, or other orgs have to do is find the IP of the offender and figure out what ISP owns it. Then they bring legal action. Here in the US they can bring both Criminal and Civil action. Though the Civil action is much more used in the US. Penalties in other countries will vary based on their laws and international treaties. 

The reason why Finnish highest court gave out that statement was that the copyright side would more likely get enough evidence and have a case good enough to go through the more righteous way of criminal case rather than go for the terror-effect civil action way. The major difference with these (at least in Finland) is that in the criminal case there must be waterproof evidence and zero maybes about the criminal and the biggest one is that the damages must be proven. In civil case it's just stories against stories with whatever scrap paper lawyers can print out and nobody needs to prove anything completely. The civil case is usually wanted by the rights holders just because they can claim whatever damages they want without proving that any damage was actually done and also they can use their own lawyers which can print whatever to their bills (IIRC most of the cases that have ended in the court claims for damages have been something crazy like 10k€/movie and 5k€/episode and every time the court has lowered them to ~50€/episode and ~100€/movie but when this has happened the lawyer has suddenly done huge amounts of work and while the compensation for damages is nothing, the bill to pay for the winning sides lawyer fees is just fucking ridiculous sums, like easily 30-40k€). Also with these copyrighttrolls running around the criminal case would also wake some suspicion where the information has been gained in the first place, which is something Patrick Achache and co. would never want anybody to question even if the PCAP-files and IP-addresses were just bought from them (there's a lot of dirt around there, like the one person who has audited their NARS/GuardianEye/whatever shit they name their software has basicly zero knowledge about softwares or even coding (IIRC couple years ago when there was active dissection of them the auditor had something like one basic course of coding done somewhere in the early 90's meaning it's good that she knew how to draw a square in BASIC) or that their "proving license that their software and storage is intact" is only a German state given license that their timestamps are correct and there would be probably tons of other good questions if their papers were ever brought to be evidences in a criminal case).

 

But either way while the Finnish highest court cannot give order or statement that these piracy cases must be mainly done through criminal case. They did give out statement with which ISPs can force the rights holders to go through criminal cases because if they wanted to go with civil action they would need to get the subpoena and put it into action before the ISP has destroyed their logs held for their own use about who owned and what IP-address. The law in Finland requires ISPs to hold IP-address information for (IIRC) 3 years for official use and so cops can access the information even after the ISP has destroyed the data they store for their own use (and no, the rights holder isn't any official so database kept to store information for official use is out of their hands even with court orders).

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Thaldor said:

get enough evidence

They never can though. If they cant get the info about who uses the IP address then they could never get enough evidence for criminal proceedings. Also, the rights holders dont pursue criminal cases, its the government who does. So in the US the US department of Justice would be the one charging people. The issue however is, if they cant get the ISP's info on who used that IP at that day and time, they have no case. The rights holders would never have enough to bring to the proscutor for the offender. BUT they have enough to bring a case aginst the ISP's. Either way, this is bad for all of us. Because now ISP's will have to be traffic cops. Which means they will start looking for piracy now, I mean they already monitor everything you do online anyway. 

 

One interesting thought is, what is the content holders rights if they lets say are the ISP where the offender is pirating their content? Comcast owns NBC/Universal, AT&T owns HBO/Timer Waner, etc. 

[bcredeur97]

I have Cox. It's pretty much my only choice.

I guess this means that A. they are about to raise prices and B. get really strict about piracy in the future.

 

On top of that I already hate them because they impose a 1TB data cap on all of their plans, and charge $50/mo to raise it to unlimited. also their non-promotional pricing is really high.

[Donut417]

2 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

On top of that I already hate them because they impose a 1TB data cap on all of their plans, and charge $50/mo to raise it to unlimited. also their non-promotional pricing is really high.

Comcast does the same. With the exception of the Northeast market. 

 

[The1Dickens]

10 hours ago, mr moose said:

They do have evidence, and they did go through the entire legal process.  What are you talking about "punishment without trial"?

In the US (don't know about the rest of the world), you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Until John Doe is tried and convicted of piracy, they are innocent. The RIAA would have to take John Doe to trial, prove they are pirating, then submit that case's verdict to Cox for the service disconnect to be valid (assuming it's part of the sentence). At that point, the RIAA could then take Cox to court, and prove failure to comply with legal process.

 

Even if the RIAA had gone the route of submitting evidence for subpoenas/warrants on John Doe, Cox's involvement is only during the duration of the trial for John Doe, at which point, the results of that trial would have to include a sentence of restricted internet access or some such. But for the RIAA to go straight to Cox, and demand service disconnect, to an innocent individual, is absurd. Because John Doe was not found to be guilty of piracy, the legal process was not followed. There is no contract or legal binding on behalf of John Doe for Cox to act as their legal counsel or attorney, so Cox can't make the decision on behalf of John Doe to comply or refute allegations made by the RIAA. There is precedent where someone was acquitted, but many people didn't agree with that decision, and the acquitted individual has sued, and won, others who refused to acknowledge that ruling.

 

As Donut had pointed out, though, if they are ignoring subpoenas (provide evidence or appearance) and warrants, they could then be punished for obstruction of justice.

10 hours ago, mr moose said:

I like how people forget that copy right holders can only sue when work they own is used without their permission.    Don't want to be sued then don't al;low your business to profit from piracy.

By this logic, we should be able to sue governments for criminals that use the roadways to commit crimes. Or car manufacturers for criminals using their automobiles. I mean, I guess it's not far off from folks trying to punish firearm manufacturers for people using firearms to commit crimes. But I'd really rather not go down that hole of punishing every brand and business involved in any way to crimes committed, myself.

[mr moose]

9 hours ago, Thaldor said:

If you talking about the Guardaley/Maverick Eye shitshow, it has almost nothing to do with the movie industry. Apparently they then had quite a different impact in Australia than they had in Finland; Finnish ISPs used to held their IP-address information and some traffic data for 3 years before Patrick Achache came and public opinion was, let's say it nicely, not good for them and now ISPs hold their IP-address data for max. 3 months and some of them go actively against the subpoenas that Achaches lawyer friends still have time and care to write (Finnish highest court gave out statement that the information ISPs are by the law required to store for long time is only for official (cops and so on) use and cannot be accessed by anyone even with subpoenas, also that EU gave the verdict on some copyright case in Sweden where they clearly draw the line that privacy goes before copyright and so the trolls need to have very good and pressing evidences to get the IP-addresses owners information).

It was maverick eye that supplied the data, but the case was bought to court by voltage Pictures in Australia.  several of Aussie ISP's (who had the most seeders) were taken to court, but throughout the proceeding the court decided the plaintiff was overstretching on their demands (particular with the amount in the speculative invoice) and sided with the ISP's in not permitting them access to the customer information attached to each ISP.  

 

I don't know how any of the other cases were fought, but in Australia the grounds for the case was solid, the laws are solid and they only failed because their proposed remedy was considered over kill. 

 

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

 Either way, this is bad for all of us. Because now ISP's will have to be traffic cops. Which means they will start looking for piracy now, I mean they already monitor everything you do online anyway. 

 

 

Ultimately you can blame a poor system that allows pirate sites to keep jumping URL's and domain names making them impossible to stop, ISP's are all that's left between piracy and justice.  

 

 

 

[mr moose]

18 minutes ago, The1Dickens said:

In the US (don't know about the rest of the world), you are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Until John Doe is tried and convicted of piracy, they are innocent. The RIAA would have to take John Doe to trial, prove they are pirating, then submit that case's verdict to Cox for the service disconnect to be valid (assuming it's part of the sentence). At that point, the RIAA could then take Cox to court, and prove failure to comply with legal process.

 

Even if the RIAA had gone the route of submitting evidence for subpoenas/warrants on John Doe, Cox's involvement is only during the duration of the trial for John Doe, at which point, the results of that trial would have to include a sentence of restricted internet access or some such. But for the RIAA to go straight to Cox, and demand service disconnect, to an innocent individual, is absurd. Because John Doe was not found to be guilty of piracy, the legal process was not followed. There is no contract or legal binding on behalf of John Doe for Cox to act as their legal counsel or attorney, so Cox can't make the decision on behalf of John Doe to comply or refute allegations made by the RIAA. There is precedent where someone was acquitted, but many people didn't agree with that decision, and the acquitted individual has sued, and won, others who refused to acknowledge that ruling.

 

As Donut had pointed out, though, if they are ignoring subpoenas (provide evidence or appearance) and warrants, they could then be punished for obstruction of justice.

By this logic, we should be able to sue governments for criminals that use the roadways to commit crimes. Or car manufacturers for criminals using their automobiles. I mean, I guess it's not far off from folks trying to punish firearm manufacturers for people using firearms to commit crimes. But I'd really rather not go down that hole of punishing every brand and business involved in any way to crimes committed, myself.

 

My point is they do have the evidence, they used the laws fairly and went through the proper process.    What they lacked is the data that links that evidence to an end user and if the ISP refuses to hand that data over under subpoena then they are in contempt of court and aiding and abetting piracy. Of course they lost.

 

Now they have won that one don't be surprised if the cox appeal causes the judge to say they don't have to pay the fine if they hand over the user data.  Then watch them sue every individual on a case they have already won. 

 

[The1Dickens]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

My point is they do have the evidence, they used the laws fairly and went through the proper process.    What they lacked is the data that links that evidence to an end user and if the ISP refuses to hand that data over under subpoena then they are in contempt of court and aiding and abetting piracy. Of course they lost.

I had typed up a response, but at the end of the day, all that matters is that the RIAA won this public performance. If Cox's appeal does involve forfeiture of customer data to avoid fines, that will be a sad day... All this is just a dog-and-pony show.

[mr moose]

Just now, The1Dickens said:

I had typed up a response, but at the end of the day, all that matters is that the RIAA won this public performance. If Cox's appeal does involve forfeiture of customer data to avoid fines, that will be a sad day... All this is just a dog-and-pony show.

A dog and pony show that requires each entrant to follow procedure and provide evidence.

[Thaldor]

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

They never can though. If they cant get the info about who uses the IP address then they could never get enough evidence for criminal proceedings. Also, the rights holders dont pursue criminal cases, its the government who does. So in the US the US department of Justice would be the one charging people. The issue however is, if they cant get the ISP's info on who used that IP at that day and time, they have no case. The rights holders would never have enough to bring to the proscutor for the offender. BUT they have enough to bring a case aginst the ISP's. Either way, this is bad for all of us. Because now ISP's will have to be traffic cops. Which means they will start looking for piracy now, I mean they already monitor everything you do online anyway.

That's kind of the way you handle criminals. Like the first thing you do when someone has broken into your house is to call the cops, not your lawyer and start playing the cop by yourself. Of course it matters what the burglar did in your house and if they just drank your gallon of milk and left the cops probably don't start manhunt for them because it would be a waste of resources, just like chasing after singular pirates is most of the time useless in the bigger picture and quite often leads to false accusations and dead-ends. This is why running after singular pirates is called copyrighttrolling, because they don't have any kind of evidence, they just know who owned the IP-address and rather than calling cops to investigate the case and find some actual evidences that point out who is the pirate, the CR-owners just send letters for the IP-address owner to pay for the damages or hang in loose noose whether or not they are sued and in 90% of cases the IP-address owner isn't the pirate (if you look at the court cases the numbers will be different but that's mostly because no one in their right mind would take into the court improbable case that they only have the IP-address (usually the court cases have stuff like private investigators doing what they do and social engineering and other shit that makes things more probable)).

 

Mostly that ISP problem is, once again, evidence how bad US legislation is. Like probably in the whole EU even the internet connection owner isn't responsible about what others do with that connection which is why the real copyright organizations are  a lot more careful what they do because AFAIK it's 50/50 whether they win the case or end up in PR nightmare (like Finnish police did when going full search warrants and other methods against "extremely dangerous pirate" and ended up getting the pirate caught and the case was settled outside of the courtroom but what it became was the whole justice system verdicting the cops for using illegal force methods in a too small case (copyright infringement at most, for police to go all out it would need to be copyright crime at least) and for few weeks headlines ripping with "Police uses illegal force methods to search 9-years old girls Winnie the Pooh -laptop"). Like most of the EU the system may seem like it's rigged in favor of pirates but the thing is that most of the pirates don't even have possibility to make huge damages and running after them is in every way wasting resources that could be used to chase after the bigger fishes. And the Finnish system was rigged in favor of pirates just because one lawfirm collected ~200k contacts of suspected "pirates" (IP-address owners) in less than 2 years and send them all "pay or else..." letters and sued only a handful of those and even when they cherry picked the cases to take to the court, they lost 2 of them (meaning that even when you pick the most probable cases, you end up suing innocent people, which means that most of those 200k people who got the letter and didn't get sued are far more likely to be innocent, and some of them paid (at least 600€) without knowing that it's not their responsibility to pay or, like in one of those court cases, the letter wasn't even meant for them (ended up that the accused didn't even own the IP-address at the moment of infringement)).

 

@mr moose Yep, the Australian case was Patrick Achaches try to get copyrighttrolling landed on the prison island and it died from Maverick Eye being a shell company and trying to use "testimonies" of experts that weren't even persons and the one expert from Maverick Eye (also known as Texcipion, Guardaley, Excipion and probably even more names that they have used as their shell) they managed to fly to the prison island ended up being stupid AF and didn't know anything and talked himself to a dead-end. Same "evidences" that were used in Australia went through UKs juridical system (as Guardaley with ACS:Law; failed when suing someone), Finnish juridical system (as Texcipion and Excipion with Hedman Partners, Adultia, Filmia and TOT and as Maverick Eye with Njord law; mostly dead because they being too greedy), Sweden (as Maverick Eye with Njord law; killed by EU with Tele2-verdict that was part why the whole thing almost died in Finland too), Germany (as all of the above and probably more, this has been a thing in Germany for years) and US (as Guardaley and as Maverick Eye with Prenda Law and couple others; apparently halted thanks for Prenda Law which is quite infamous). So yeah, "very good and trustful" companies, I wouldn't trust them to even dig a ditch without trying to lie that they already dug the ditch and it's just invisible

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

 

@mr moose Yep, the Australian case was Patrick Achaches try to get copyrighttrolling landed on the prison island and it died from Maverick Eye being a shell company and trying to use "testimonies" of experts that weren't even persons and the one expert from Maverick Eye (also known as Texcipion, Guardaley, Excipion and probably even more names that they have used as their shell) they managed to fly to the prison island ended up being stupid AF and didn't know anything and talked himself to a dead-end. Same "evidences" that were used in Australia went through UKs juridical system (as Guardaley with ACS:Law; failed when suing someone), Finnish juridical system (as Texcipion and Excipion with Hedman Partners, Adultia, Filmia and TOT and as Maverick Eye with Njord law; mostly dead because they being too greedy), Sweden (as Maverick Eye with Njord law; killed by EU with Tele2-verdict that was part why the whole thing almost died in Finland too), Germany (as all of the above and probably more, this has been a thing in Germany for years) and US (as Guardaley and as Maverick Eye with Prenda Law and couple others; apparently halted thanks for Prenda Law which is quite infamous). So yeah, "very good and trustful" companies, I wouldn't trust them to even dig a ditch without trying to lie that they already dug the ditch and it's just invisible

 

I am having trouble following what you are saying here,  maverick eye did not bring the lawsuit in Australia, Voltage Pictures did.  The case was actually won on the maverick erye evidence , but overturned by the federal court on concerns that the speculative invoicing was to demanding.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-14/iinet-dallas-buyers-club/6697314

 

Quite literally had Voltage Pictures been seeking more reasonable satisfaction from the case,  The order to pass on user details would have been been upheld by the high court.

[Mark Kaine]

On 12/20/2019 at 4:02 PM, handymanshandle said:

Why hasn't copyright law been rewritten? Oh right, because corporations own copyright law.

... What are you implying though?   Should musicians not get paid for their work?   

 

On 12/20/2019 at 10:03 PM, TetraSky said:

And this just sets a dangerous precedent, basically saying the ISP is liable for what their customers do online...

They... kinda always have been...? 

 

They wouldn't even need to somehow punish their customers,  just restrict access to illegal content perhaps? 

 

Yes, there would be an outcry,  but outcries don't make illegal things legal. 

 

 

[Thaldor]

36 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

I am having trouble following what you are saying here,  maverick eye did not bring the lawsuit in Australia, Voltage Pictures did.  The case was actually won on the maverick erye evidence , but overturned by the federal court on concerns that the speculative invoicing was to demanding.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-14/iinet-dallas-buyers-club/6697314

 

Quite literally had Voltage Pictures been seeking more reasonable satisfaction from the case,  The order to pass on user details would have been been upheld by the high court.

Well, let's just say that by mere luck Australia was saved from years worth of copyrighttrolling with all of it's injustice, extortion and misery run by German "mafia" (Guardaley, Maverick Eye, Texcipion, Excipion, doesn't matter, they are all one and the same company and all of them are just shells either way; Names behind are usually Patrick Achache and Daniel Macek) that is well known globally to run it the same way through either companies that are owned by them (Crystalis Entertainment, Copyright Collections and few other shell companies that collect some copyrights to only use them to do copyrighttrolling) or companies that are one way or another got to think it as a good way to deal with piracy (Voltage Pictures and Scanbox at least are real companies with real copyrights joining in). Another site that maybe better goes through the whole shitshow.

[mr moose]

28 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

 (Voltage Pictures and Scanbox at least are real companies with real copyrights joining in)

 

Joining in or just doing what they are entitled to do to protect their IP?   You paint a bleak picture about extortion and maffia like behavior,  except that you are trying to insinuate those who are protecting their own legal property are the evil perpetrators while the pirates are some how being dealt injustice.   

[mr moose]

33 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Well, let's just say that by mere luck Australia was saved from years worth of copyrighttrolling with all of it's injustice,

No, Australian laws did what they always do, they found the guilty parties guilty but they also prevented excessive injustice by not lending themselves to being abused,  luck had nothing to do with it.

 

EDIT: I say "always do" I understand that some cases slip through, however I am talking about the majority here,  I do not have the patients to try and list every single case in order to show the overall efficacy of the system.   Suffice to say, to my knowledge, no individual in Australia has been falsely found guilty of CR infringement.

[Thaldor]

16 minutes ago, mr moose said:

No, Australian laws did what they always do, they found the guilty parties guilty but they also prevented excessive injustice by not lending themselves to being abused,  luck had nothing to do with it.

 

EDIT: I say "always do" I understand that some cases slip through, however I am talking about the majority here,  I do not have the patients to try and list every single case in order to show the overall efficacy of the system.   Suffice to say, to my knowledge, no individual in Australia has been falsely found guilty of CR infringement.

I say lucky because that Guardaley-scheme is such cancer for any legal system wise or not-that-wise.

18 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

Joining in or just doing what they are entitled to do to protect their IP?   You paint a bleak picture about extortion and maffia like behavior,  except that you are trying to insinuate those who are protecting their own legal property are the evil perpetrators while the pirates are some how being dealt injustice.   

And joining in. If you had read through the links you would know that the whole point of their "little" operation isn't to caught pirates but collect money from clueless and frail. They don't try to get justice, like I said from over 200k IP-address contacts collected only from Finland during 2 years they sued less than 10 from which 2 cases they won, 2 cases they lost, couple they won because the defendant didn't answer and rest were settled out of the court and the lawyer himself has stated publicly that the reason for suing was to create terror-effect ("if I don't pay this, I might get sued and need to pay a lot more" which usually means from the minimum 600€ letter price for one title if you got to be the very unlucky one to be sued and lost you ended up paying ~50-100€ for damages per title and 30-50k€ legal fees). And those letters were far from "here's your friendly lawyer asking you to either pay for these damages here or we might sue you"-letters, like best ones were probably those send to people who were "caught" torrenting porn where the letters included stuff like "If we sue you, your pornographic preferences may become public" and "loosing in court may lead to financial problems like foreclosure and not being able to get bank loans", like you tell me if that isn't borderline blackmailing. Contacting the lawyer who send the letter didn't result in a chance to negotiate, but more probably chance to be sued (out of those about 10 all of which court verdicts were made public all contacted the sender).

 

I don't have problem with Finnish TTVK ry that goes after pirates because they actually do their job correctly and go after actual pirates that they have good evidence against (same 2 year period TTVK gained around 10 persons contact infos for piracy and sued them all and settled each and every outside of the court and only one was misfire and even publicly apologized). And when evidences are mentioned, oh boy if that isn't one very big bucket full of worms when it comes to Guardaley. Like the usual application for subpoena included around 1-5k IPs and only torrents and dates were common, stuff that smelled more than burned were like how many times the IP was noticed sharing the torrent and in which timespan (they used to have anything from 1-10 000 spots and timespans were from few minutes to months and some extremes were like hundreds of spots in few hours and few spots in weeks, now they have settled to ask for IPs that were spotted couple thousand times but still the timespan is in whatever time they have managed to get those few thousand spots meaning from few minutes to months), no one in the world has ever seen the original logs rising quite many question (IIRC last time they were asked by the court to show the original log files from their tapes stored in their datacenter, the tapes disappeared during transit), also one funny thing about Finnish cases were that most of the "evidences" were delivered digitally to the court but someone had taken the time to print them out and scan before sending them even if they were clearly screenshots taken from internet sites which in the first place were in digital format and the IP-lists themselves were the best part because in the very first applications for the subpoenas they were delivered as normal .xlsx-files but once people started to ask them from the court (they were and still are public records that anyone can ask for) and started to dissect them to look for stuff the lawyer started to deliver them also as printed and scanned pdfs which meant people couldn't anymore use Excel to go through them and find questionable content (like finding out that some IP managed to get spotted by the software 100 times in 4 minutes while another merely 10 times in 2 hours, like what software can collect that inconsistent log).

 

Also the evidences brought by Maverick Eye were very much questioned in the Australia.

[mr moose]

35 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

I say lucky because that Guardaley-scheme is such cancer for any legal system wise or not-that-wise.

And joining in. If you had read through the links you would know that the whole point of their "little" operation isn't to caught pirates but collect money from clueless and frail. They don't try to get justice, like I said from over 200k IP-address contacts collected only from Finland during 2 years they sued less than 10 from which 2 cases they won, 2 cases they lost, couple they won because the defendant didn't answer and rest were settled out of the court and the lawyer himself has stated publicly that the reason for suing was to create terror-effect ("if I don't pay this, I might get sued and need to pay a lot more" which usually means from the minimum 600€ letter price for one title if you got to be the very unlucky one to be sued and lost you ended up paying ~50-100€ for damages per title and 30-50k€ legal fees). And those letters were far from "here's your friendly lawyer asking you to either pay for these damages here or we might sue you"-letters, like best ones were probably those send to people who were "caught" torrenting porn where the letters included stuff like "If we sue you, your pornographic preferences may become public" and "loosing in court may lead to financial problems like foreclosure and not being able to get bank loans", like you tell me if that isn't borderline blackmailing. Contacting the lawyer who send the letter didn't result in a chance to negotiate, but more probably chance to be sued (out of those about 10 all of which court verdicts were made public all contacted the sender).

 

I don't have problem with Finnish TTVK ry that goes after pirates because they actually do their job correctly and go after actual pirates that they have good evidence against (same 2 year period TTVK gained around 10 persons contact infos for piracy and sued them all and settled each and every outside of the court and only one was misfire and even publicly apologized). And when evidences are mentioned, oh boy if that isn't one very big bucket full of worms when it comes to Guardaley. Like the usual application for subpoena included around 1-5k IPs and only torrents and dates were common, stuff that smelled more than burned were like how many times the IP was noticed sharing the torrent and in which timespan (they used to have anything from 1-10 000 spots and timespans were from few minutes to months and some extremes were like hundreds of spots in few hours and few spots in weeks, now they have settled to ask for IPs that were spotted couple thousand times but still the timespan is in whatever time they have managed to get those few thousand spots meaning from few minutes to months), no one in the world has ever seen the original logs rising quite many question (IIRC last time they were asked by the court to show the original log files from their tapes stored in their datacenter, the tapes disappeared during transit), also one funny thing about Finnish cases were that most of the "evidences" were delivered digitally to the court but someone had taken the time to print them out and scan before sending them even if they were clearly screenshots taken from internet sites which in the first place were in digital format and the IP-lists themselves were the best part because in the very first applications for the subpoenas they were delivered as normal .xlsx-files but once people started to ask them from the court (they were and still are public records that anyone can ask for) and started to dissect them to look for stuff the lawyer started to deliver them also as printed and scanned pdfs which meant people couldn't anymore use Excel to go through them and find questionable content (like finding out that some IP managed to get spotted by the software 100 times in 4 minutes while another merely 10 times in 2 hours, like what software can collect that inconsistent log).

I am not reading a personal blog called dietrolldie.  If you want to convince me that they are suing innocent people then post better evidence.  Even if it means just posting the links to the evidence they linked to in that blog (assuming they even did that). 

 

35 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Also the evidences brought by Maverick Eye were very much questioned in the Australia.

 

They successfully proved that he personally didn't know how to read that data, not that his company personnel couldn't and not that the data was unreliable.  In Australia that data and the files would have been made available to any digital forensics expert the defense would employ,  it seems that the court decided it wasn't found to be inaccurate for the purposes of the evidence in that hearing.

 

 

 

Bottom line is, if you have legal trolls that fuck over your system then that is a problem with your system, they haven't fucked over ours because it seems to be working to prevent them from doing so.   Even after winning the case they had to provide information on how they were going to proceed before the court allowed them to go any further.

 

If that's not justice being sensible applied then I don't what is.

 

 

[Soonercoop]

 It's a shame that the RIAA should be allowed to continue to shaft parties who aren't even actually responsible for the perpetuation of piracy to no end. If they really wanted to stop piracy, they would funnel all of that money they spend on an army of lawyers each year into lobbying to change the system. Instead they try to bury unknowing families of child offenders and now wage war on companies who couldn't possibly manage being responsible for policing the actions of all of their users. All the while the masses continue to commit piracy because nothing can stand in their way and they will never be held liable. Now we innocent users will get to pay for it all as it trickles into our bills and fees.

Spoiler

 

Edit: $100,000 per case??!!! Are you sh*tting me?

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Like the first thing you do when someone has broken into your house is to call the cops, not your lawyer and start playing the cop by yourself.

That depends on where you live. In some areas police take hours to respond. Or the police cant be trusted. 

 

5 hours ago, Thaldor said:

just like chasing after singular pirates is most of the time useless in the bigger picture and quite often leads to false accusations and dead-ends

Same thing could be said about all the people in US prisons for weed convictions. Fighting pirates is like fighting the war on drugs, its never ending it will never be won, but you see they still do that. ALSO COPY RIGHT IS PROTECTED BY THE CONSTUTION! That means the government has an obligation to protect them. 

 

5 hours ago, Thaldor said:

a lot more careful what they do because AFAIK it's 50/50 whether they win the case or end up in PR nightmare

Still its their property people are stealing. Eventally they will stop making the content accessible to countries who refuse to protect it. If the legal system wont give them recourse then they will take on the ISP's, and create DRM even worse than what we have now. We are already seeing this with Netflix blocking VPN's, to keep content region locked. Here in the US they have congress in their back pocket and know they can get about any peice of legislation passed without much issue. On top of the fact they have the highest law in the land on their side. 

[TechyBen]

On 12/20/2019 at 2:29 PM, rcmaehl said:

Sources:
 

Spoiler

 

Variety
Billboard (quote source)
The Verge

 

Summary:

A Jury has awarded the music industry including Sony, Universal, Warner, and EMI for failure to terminate repeat copyright infringers.

Media:

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

 
My Thoughts:
Big Yikes. Looks like Cox's refusal to terminate customers over copyright infringement has really come to bite them. 

At what point do you put fines on/in prison the road builder or car manufactures for "criminals" using those services?

[TechyBen]

12 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

... What are you implying though?   Should musicians not get paid for their work?   

 

They... kinda always have been...? 

 

They wouldn't even need to somehow punish their customers,  just restrict access to illegal content perhaps? 

 

Yes, there would be an outcry,  but outcries don't make illegal things legal. 

 

 

There is lots of work I don't get paid for. There are lots of people who only get paid for 1 or at the time work, and not repeat royalties. They are entirely a social decision to support or not to support. As far as I know, most musicians get very well supported.

 

I'm a cleaner. If someone walks mud on the floor, should I sue them and send them to jail? Or just drop them as a customer? As a musician, be great and amazing. Don't let cronies and knee breakers make you think you need to break windows if you're a double glazing salesperson.

[Trik'Stari]

On 12/20/2019 at 5:31 PM, Lurick said:

The RIAA made ONLY $10 billion dollars. Think of how many jets this could buy their execs with the extra bonuses