Australian court slaps down Hollywood's speculative invoices

Re: I think a pig just flew by

"And coming from Australia, of all places..."

The same Australia which ruled DVD region coding as an illegal restraint of trade.

" wasn't this the firm that was seeding torrents with their film? "

I think you're confusing this mob with Prenda Law.

If there's any evidence that the litigants were the seeders there would be a universe of hurt descending on their collective heads.

dietrolldie and fightcopyrighttrolls have both been tracking things and provide pretty good analyses of the playing field - they're so good that the litigants have sought to have them barred from the evidence pool as they show how vexatious the trolls really are.

Re: Its worth less than A$9 a copy on a commercial basis

In Canada you can get it for $8.88 CND at Amazon.ca and it's only $15 list.

I don't see then getting any big piles of cash out of this.

Re: HA!

"and has also ordered that any future preliminary discovery cases of this kind be brought before him"

Based on the experience of similar orders in the USA, these trolls are quite likely to ignore the judge and try shopping around anyway.

Re: Loophole

It's a bond - provided they do as they've been told, it would eventually be returned to them and, as such, is not a cost.

Re: if you got one of these letters, how do you defend the claim?

The first point, and most important, is that an IP address is not a personal identifier.

At most (and assuming the IP address was correctly recorded and time-stamped and correlated with your ISP's DHCP server) it tells them that someone using "your" connection (assuming you are the bill payer, most likely to get the letter) was attached to the bit torrent swarm.

Most countries do not make the bill payer responsible for other using the connection unless they have actual knowledge of misuse. A bit like you can't be prosecuted for your car being stolen and used in a bank robbery, but you can if you offered it knowing it would be used in such a crime.

These days most folk share there wifi password with anyone visiting their home, neighbours that have faults and need to get on-line, etc, as they have no reason to suspect criminal intent. In addition numerous routers have piss-poor security anyway and I believe Windows 10 is also going to make wifi sharing more common among acquaintances as well.

So basically unless you confess to it they have little case, the only real risk is they try and get a seizure of your PC to get it forensically analysed to prove the alleged copyright material was on a PC directly controlled by you. Possible, but a major cost to them and most of these trolling firms want a cheap settlement hence the threatening letters.

Given the time scale between the threat letter and any possible action, it would be unfortunate for the prosecution if your machine was replaced due to age, or had a virus and was securely wiped and re-installed before it came to seizure and court proceedings, as they could have a lot of expenses to pay to you...

Re: if you got one of these letters, how do you defend the claim?

AC said "I may as well attempt to prove I didn't read a particular story on El-reg as far as I can see."

Based on my experience perusing El Reg, the usual method of showing one did not read the article is by posting a comment.

Re: if you got one of these letters, how do you defend the claim?

" I dont think I could prove that I had not downloaded..."

I don't think you understand how the law works...

Re: if you got one of these letters, how do you defend the claim?

Presuming you don't know how to secure your modem do you mean?

I would have thought your ISP would take all the weight off your hands by explaining their cheapo security to the Dumb Buyers Club. Why not drop them a line?

"If so how would the DBC/MPAAs of the world know if I had owned the copy before I downloaded it?"

They are after torrent users, who more or less by definition, are also uploading the content while downloading it, ie acting as "distributors". That's how torrents are supposed to work. AIUI, it's possible to join a torrent and "leech", ie only download, but some clients will refuse or severely limit the connection speed if you don't share back the sections you've downloaded.

I don't know what Australian law says about this specifically, but in most places - owning the movie on DVD or Blu-Ray does not automatically give you the right to download it from an unauthorised source.

It's like trying to argue that it's OK for you to buy cocaine from a street dealer because you're a pharmacist. I mean, you can try, but I wouldn't give much for your chances.

Re: Question

One bond - and the content + targets of the letters must be approved by the court

If they play naughty, they'll lose the bond - and effectively be barred from any further legal action in Australia (plus find themselves treated with hostility in the courts of most other countries)

One of the principles of copyright legislation in most countries is to ban infringement actions from being a viable income stream in themselves. Once evidence emerges that companies are doing that, judges invariably get pretty steamed up.

What has been coming out over US cases is clear evidence of "3rd party litigation funding" - this is explicitly illegal in a lot of jurisdictions. In particular it appears a german company seems to be coordinating a lot of the activity.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140603/18021127448/international-men-mystery-how-discredited-german-anti-piracy-company-may-secretly-be-behind-malibu-medias-copyright-trollery.shtml

Additionally there's the question of whether these outfits actually have standing to sue. In most jurisdictions the litigating party has to be the copyright holder, not simply assigned to take action by them and this has led to a bunch of dismissals (when challenged, the trolls tend to fold their tents and disappear into the night)

It's worth reading the fightcopyrighttrolls and dietrolldie websites - these have been acting as clearing houses keeping all the decisions and discovery in one place.