Thread: New Litigation Campaign Targets 20,000 BitTorrent Users

Not a welcome development. If contingency lawyers can make money doing this it will probably make the RIAA suits seem like an ineffective joke. Look at the havok they wreaked with the asbestos litigation. Anyone know the details behind Guardaley IT's technology?

By Eriq Gardner

EXCLUSIVE: In what may be a sign of things to come, more than 20,000 individual movie torrent downloaders have been sued in the past few weeks in Washington D.C. federal court for copyright infringement. A handful of cases have already settled, and those that haven't are creating some havoc for major ISPs.

The lawsuits were filed by an enterprising D.C.-based venture, the US Copyright Group, on behalf of an ad hoc coalition of independent film producers and with the encouragement of the Independent Film & Television Alliance. So far, five lawsuits have been filed against tens of thousands of alleged infringers of the films "Steam Experiment," "Far Cry," "Uncross the Stars," "Gray Man" and "Call of the Wild 3D." Here's an example of one of the lawsuits -- over Uwe Boll's "Far Cry."

Another lawsuit targeting 30,000 more torrent downloaders on five more films is forthcoming, we're told, and all this could be a test run that opens up the floodgates to massive litigation against the millions of individuals who use BitTorrent to download movies.

The genesis of this legal campaign occurred in Germany when lawyers from the US Copyright Group were introduced to a new proprietary technology by German-based Guardaley IT that allows for real-time monitoring of movie downloads on torrents. According to Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer at the firm, the program captures IP addresses based on the time stamp that a download has occurred and then checks against a spreadsheet to make sure the downloading content is the copyright protected film and not a misnamed film or trailer.



Source: Hollywood Reporter

first off, those are some bad movies xDD

secondly, those damn germans just have to be so smart :D ( no disrespect )

thirdly, what takes "them" months to develope, will be cracked by our guys in a few days.

I can't even begin to speak knowledgeably about the technology described, how it verifies what it claims to verify or if it could be deployed on a private tracker. What I will note is if you check out the website of this law firm, basically what they are doing is suing a large numbers of individual users to force settlement offers of $500-$1000 (that is what they are pitching to the movie studios, presumably with a revenue share if they sign on to take part). Even if you thought the technology used to sue you couldn't prove what it claimed to prove, defending yourself costs time and money. At some point the settlement figure they seek becomes the path of least resistance (at least in theory), even if you thought you could prevail in court.

And yeah, The Hollywood Reporter is an industry trade mag and not exactly on the forefront of the BT scene, but I would not dismiss this out of hand. The RIAA sued about 35,000 individuals per the article, and this one small law firm will have sued 50,000 without the cooperation of any major studio. The numbers could eventually be staggering. Hard to say if it ultimately is a tempest in a teapot or something bigger.

I really am interested to know how this technology works.

This, from what I can tell, is going to change the landscape of sharing if successful in the US. As Rellik stated, I would not dismiss this effort one bit.

If the technology is there, and it is ~100% accurate, well then boys and girls we have a problem. The US is such a litigious country and when you add the drive of an entrepreneurial legal team,.. watch out...

Now if there is a glitch in the accuracy of the program / process and they attempt to sue someone with a lot of time and money who fights back, then it could turn the tide against them..

Originally Posted by LoadedM8

This, from what I can tell, is going to change the landscape of sharing if successful in the US. As Rellik stated, I would not dismiss this effort one bit.

If the technology is there, and it is ~100% accurate, well then boys and girls we have a problem. The US is such a litigious country and when you add the drive of an entrepreneurial legal team,.. watch out...

Now if there is a glitch in the accuracy of the program / process and they attempt to sue someone with a lot of time and money who fights back, then it could turn the tide against them..

Indeed. I suppose that the usual suspects like the Electronic Frontier Foundation will get involved, but a court decision binding on the federal court in Washington (would have to be either the DC Circuit of the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court) will take years. By that time the results could already be game changing. Looks like keeping your IP address out of the swarm is the first thing U.S. users should look into (not my area of expertise) since this could get ugly fast.

Originally Posted by Rellik

SNIP Looks like keeping your IP address out of the swarm is the first thing U.S. users should look into (not my area of expertise) since this could get ugly fast.

Yea, and it's getting harder and harder to find a good VPN Proxy service that will not turn you over to the athorities if presented with the proper legal documentation..

I have used 2 now, and both of them changed their TOS to include, presumably for their protection, these warnings...

Seedbox, Seedbox, Seedbox.. (and even that is not fool proof)

Oh well, I'm sure this community (Bit Torrent) will find a way around this... ;-)