Verizon Must Disconnect Pirates & Block Pirate Sites, New Lawsuit Demands

[jagdtigger]

Summary

 

Verizon getting sued for not cutting off repeat infringer, what a surprise. The claimants complain about Verizon's implementation and demand actual or statutory damages along with compelling Verizon to implement repeat-infringer policy.

 

Quotes

Quote

The premise of the lawsuit is that Verizon “can easily take action against online piracy” by disconnecting customers who repeatedly use its services to download and share movies. The company doesn’t even have to find these pirates itself because the plaintiffs have provided infringement notices carrying all of the information it needs.

The reason that Verizon hasn’t taken action, the complaint notes, is because Verizon makes between $400 and $1,000 in additional profits per ‘pirate’ account. But this isn’t permissible under law, the plaintiffs claim, because when Verizon

receives knowledge of repeat infringement yet fails to disconnect the associated accounts, it can be held liable for customers’ piracy.

Quote

Verizon publishes its policy here but according to the complaint, the implementation of the Verizon policy places an unfair burden on rightsholders.

The plaintiffs say that BitTorrent-style infringements must be reported via ‘Conduit Notice Forms’ but Verizon prohibits these from being filled out using automated processes. Verizon does operate the “Verizon Anti-Piracy Cooperation” program but the plaintiffs say the contract contains “onerous” terms.

These include an agreement not to sue Verizon for copyright infringement alongside processing fees of $75 per hour for IP address lookups.

 

My thoughts

*sigh*

Here we go again,  the still out-of-touch media industry is going in for the easy money and force others to keep their outdated business model alive free of charge. To be honest service providers (ISPs', backbone providers, datacenters, etc) should get the same level of protection as the USPS because they essentially do the same thing, get packets from A to B, and occasionally store them as needed. They dont know whats in them nor is it their business to open them and take a peek inside. Furthermore the claimants say Verizon's implementation is unfair, yeah look who's talking. Demanding expensive AF measures while not willing to chip in....

 

Sources

https://torrentfreak.com/verizon-must-disconnect-pirates-block-pirate-sites-new-lawsuit-demands-220907/

[StDragon]

It's not the ISP's job to enforce protections for holders of intellectual properties. They're not the wing of the Executive branch.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

The plaintiffs say that BitTorrent-style infringements must be reported via ‘Conduit Notice Forms’ but Verizon prohibits these from being filled out using automated processes.

Ah yes, because that works great and we totally don't have examples of such automated systems being abused on services already.

 

[Lurick]

Just now, tikker said:

Ah yes, because that works great and we totally don't have examples of such systems being abused on services already.

 

What do you mean I can't abuse a service that's flawed to begin with to kick people off a service?!?!!

[tikker]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

What do you mean I can't abuse a service that's flawed to begin with to kick people off a service?!?!!

I have to hand it to them, no people left would indeed mean no more pirates.

[Donut417]

The biggest concern here is the Cox communications was sued for like a Billion dollars due to the same issues and they lost the case. I dont think the appeal went well either. So there is precedent for an ISP loosing, even though they technically have "Safe Harbor" protections. 

 

The other issue is the from what I have read with the DMCA, technically the law only goes after distributors and even then its a hard case to prosecute. I think media companies are sick and tired of having to sue every person as that costs time and money as the government cant really enforce the law. 

 

The biggest issue is how copy right law is written. Yes, I agree a persons work should be protected, but I do believe that there needs to be limits, none of this 100 years bullshit. 

 

At the end of the day this will push more and more people to VPN's. What media companies dont understand is American laws dont apply everywhere, and there are lots of countries who dont protect copyrights or at least dont enforce those laws. They cant win any way they slice it. 

[Lightwreather]

Yea,

Good luck with that! (/s)

[wanderingfool2]

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

At the end of the day this will push more and more people to VPN's. What media companies dont understand is American laws dont apply everywhere, and there are lots of countries who dont protect copyrights or at least dont enforce those laws. They cant win any way they slice it. 

I think then you will end up with the VPN companies getting sued, and then it will be blocking payment providers to prevent VPN's out of country.

 

I'm a bit at a mix in regard to piracy/the current laws surrounding it.  While I think things like Cox went too far, I think there is a bit of an issue....where someone doesn't doesn't respond to DMCA notices, and you can't realistically sue them for the whole "IP doesn't mean a person".  I think that is what creates a major issue, because they now have to sue and the person can say "it wasn't me, I have a guest network people use".  I think ultimately if you let someone use your internet, you should bare a certain amount of responsibility (like the whole keeping an open wifi to make it difficult to get sued for copyright infringement).

 

I do not agree with suing ISP's though, unless it's something that is a clear abuser (e.g. hosting content consistently).  Overall I think the copyright system needs to change.

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I think ultimately if you let someone use your internet, you should bare a certain amount of responsibility (like the whole keeping an open wifi to make it difficult to get sued for copyright infringement).

Thats not feasible and you know that, "hey you can use my wifi but 1st ill have to install a spyware so i can make sure you dont do anything fishy".....  Not to mention cases where a script kiddie cracks your AP's password and you dont even know about it, or maybe you have something taken over on your network.

[wanderingfool2]

25 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Thats not feasible and you know that, "hey you can use my wifi but 1st ill have to install a spyware so i can make sure you dont do anything fishy".....  Not to mention cases where a script kiddie cracks your AP's password and you dont even know about it, or maybe you have something taken over on your network.

Like I said, certain amount of responsibility.

 

What is stupid is that you can pretty much indemnify yourself by having an open wifi (or one where you let lots of people connect).  The system itself currently isn't feasible when all that one has to do is say that they had friends over or let someone borrow their wifi and therefor deflect any lawsuits against them.

 

The current system is the one that has lead us to the current ridiculous state we are in where ISP's can get sued, which means if they win everyone loses (because they will just kick people off even if you are innocent)

[jagdtigger]

38 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

What is stupid is that you can pretty much indemnify yourself by having an open wifi (or one where you let lots of people connect).  The system itself currently isn't feasible when all that one has to do is say that they had friends over or let someone borrow their wifi and therefor deflect any lawsuits against them.

Thats one can of worms i think we have to keep shut at all costs. There is a very good reason why the legal system puts the burden of proof onto the one making the allegations, weakening this base principal would set a very dangerous precedent and open up the floodgates for mass abuse. Especially with big corps who can simply play "prolong the case until they run out of money".

[BuckGup]

Let's spend millions on a problem induced by our own shitty business model then put the blame on another company and demand them spend millions to band-aid a problem that we created...all while screwing over our fanbase...

 

There have been great studies and case studies on piracy throughout the ages so I still find it baffling large companies defy what they say and show no progress then repeat the process without changing anything, then blame the customer 

 

 

[williamcll]

pirate sites themselves should be made P2P as well.

[AnonymousGuy]

Quote

Verizon prohibits these from being filled out using automated processes

Oh how terrible that they have to actually make a good-faith effort to take down infringing content instead of doing the never-been-abused Youtube style of auto-banning accounts when they're randomly copyright striked.  Shit like "we've taken your video down because there's a 20 second bit of music 500 feet away in the background" is what automation gets you.

 

They're 100% going to lose this lawsuit.  Verizon's policy sounds like they're following industry / case law standard response for taking action. 

 

It feels like whoever is launching this lawsuit woke up thinking it's 2004.

[Kisai]

On 9/7/2022 at 12:36 PM, jagdtigger said:

 

 

My thoughts

*sigh*

Here we go again,  the still out-of-touch media industry is going in for the easy money and force others to keep their outdated business model alive free of charge. To be honest service providers (ISPs', backbone providers, datacenters, etc) should get the same level of protection as the USPS because they essentially do the same thing, get packets from A to B, and occasionally store them as needed. They dont know whats in them nor is it their business to open them and take a peek inside. Furthermore the claimants say Verizon's implementation is unfair, yeah look who's talking. Demanding expensive AF measures while not willing to chip in....

 

Sources

https://torrentfreak.com/verizon-must-disconnect-pirates-block-pirate-sites-new-lawsuit-demands-220907/

 

It's a two way street. There are infringers who are "notorious", and then there are people who like to archive things before they disappear, and there are people who are like "what the crap was that about?" . Copyright law was ONLY ever intended to protect against the first, the ones that pirate things with impunity, knowing that they are profiting from the piracy.

 

On 9/7/2022 at 12:57 PM, StDragon said:

It's not the ISP's job to enforce protections for holders of intellectual properties. They're not the wing of the Executive branch.

It's the ISP's job to do bandwidth management, and in the early Cable (not DSL) days, Cable companies justified bandwidth caps, and throttling to make piracy more annoying. Not to stop it. Napster and Kazaa have been dead for a very long time, all the low hanging fruit is gone. Now the heavy bandwidth users are twitch and youtube streamers. Which, wouldn't you know it, the copyright gestapo also go after. Bandwidth is far higher, and piracy is partially decentralized between users and bulletproof hosts. As long as nobody is sharing anything that is illegal to watch, let alone have in their possession, not even the indexing sites will do anything about it. The hosts don't want to be responsible for sexual assaults videos. 

 

Which comes back to the entire problem. It has not been possible to for an ISP to know what someone is pirating unless the rights owner was the one pirating their own stuff (and that has an entire other problem) and reports directly to the ISP. You can not assume that everyone who is consuming bandwidth is a pirate. Netflix and Disney+ would be harmed by doing so. All Twitch and Youtube streamers would be harmed, but "rights owners" don't care about that, and would in fact love to destroy all creators on youtube, because that gives them back control.

 

[jagdtigger]

12 minutes ago, Kisai said:

It's a two way street.

Its a one way street at this point i think. The media industry pretty much does whatever they want without the consumer having any say in the matter, then said industry comes back crying that ppl get their fix via illegal means. Well duh, if you go around pissing off paying customers by treating them as criminals dont expect anything less.....