Hollywood gives up speculative invoicing attempt in Australia Copyright-holders of the film Dallas Buyers Club have given up their pursuit of Australian pirates after a local Judge blocked their efforts at speculative invoicing. The owners of the film have pursued Australian internet service provider iiNet for years, winning the right to access the details of subscribers it identified as …
At least *someone* gets that the sort of scam is a waste of everybody's (except the lawyers') time!
Fine, let the companies sue for the *real* cost of their loss (ie what they'd get from a sale or rental of their product, but not get to parlay that into a shake-down with claims of "distribution" or other such nonsense.
1. "By setting the bond at $600,000, he figured he would wipe out any profit the film's owners might make by contacting pirates." This particular behavior on the part of the judge should get him disbarred. It is the equivalent of telling them he doesn't give a damn about their right they can just f*** off.
2. "thought it right that proven pirates pay not much more than they would do to rent the movie." and "He reached that decision after rejecting arguments that torrenting a film is tantamount to distribution" At best the correct price absent proof they've deleted it from their systems is the retail price of the DVD/Blueray in Australlia. But given he went for torrents, he showed complete disregard for the actual statute and again should be disbarred. By definition when you stream torrents, you ARE distributing. That's the whole POINT of torrents. Which again means he should be disbarred.
It doesn't matter how much you hate the pigolopolists and their abuse of the law, you still have to abide by it or it ceases to be the law. This is all the more apparent in the bits he upheld are the bits that I actually find problematic from the standpoint of the law. The problem I've always seen is connecting a given user to the publicly visible IP addresses. For me to be satisfied they've correctly identified the perp, they need the IP address, a MAC address, and the time slot and it would have to have the equivalent of a perfect CSI chain of evidence custody to confirm it.
"Last December the case returned to court and Perram gave the film's owners a deadline of today, February 11th 2016, to describe a licence fee and a form of words it would send pirates, or to appeal. If the owners didn't act before today, Perram proposed to wind up the case for good."
They had the opportunity to appeal. That opportunity has expired. They didn't act.
CASE CLOSED I hope.
Expect the decision to be not overturned. It is the correct application* under Australian law**. It is not considered a criminal offence*** under Australian law and so damages payments should not be punitive. The pirate will be liable for the purchase price plus reasonable administration costs, so they don't "get away with it" as such. Those administration costs could reasonably be several 10s of dollars which makes it a rather expensive way of acquiring films but isn't going to push people into financial ruin either.
DBC didn't play ball here (in spite of the obvious benefit of recouping lost income) because they really just want to find some chickens to kill to frighten the monkeys.
*IANAL etc
**but agree if you are referring to some way that the TPP will roger our laws.
***at personal use levels. Becomes criminal if you do it for commercial gain.
I'm not sure disbarring even is applicable to judges as there have been historical judges that never even practiced law in the first place. Including at least one Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Then again, this is Australia, not the US so different judicial mechanisms involved.
"1. "By setting the bond at $600,000, he figured he would wipe out any profit the film's owners might make by contacting pirates." This particular behavior on the part of the judge should get him disbarred. It is the equivalent of telling them he doesn't give a damn about their right they can just f*** off.
No, it's the judge looking at the plaintiff and deciding that they are likely to "accidentally misinterpret" the courts directions and so end up in contempt of court. He wants to make sure they are focussed completely on his directions to them. It's the same reason bail is set at different values based on the crime alleged to have been committed and the assessment of flight risk I'm not sure just how many people they are after to cough up, but that figure of $600,000 might well be a relatively small amount "per offence" if they went ahead and demanded money with menaces.
Suspended for two years in 2012 (rather than banned for life) by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority, Andrew Crossley, of the eponymous ACS:Law -- much missed by all at El Reg -- is now, presumably, back at work. Though perhaps not in Australia. The guitar playing, Ferrari owning, Monaco resident Crossley (allegedly) did so much to bring the legal profession into the lime light that it's a shame there appears to be no trace of him nowadays, otherwise El Reg could surely have rung him up for a quote?
PS: Speculative invoicing is in for a hard time of it in the UK nowadays, as this informative reportage explains:
https://acsbore.wordpress.com/
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