NiteShdw in the news

[str82u]

On the verge of the DD boxed set boom, yeah, I think we are there, the studios are scrambling to pack up content and sell it. I saw the "Greatest American Hero" at wal-mart. I liked it as a kid, but $45, not that much, especially since I'd have to sell it to get rid of it. The last super bowl, on DVD.

I keep having to agree with people, but the point they are making isn't about mooney, it's a display of power to justify existance. If they don't go after someone for something, they're out of a job, the internet just gave law inforcement a new job description.

[Potato]

I didn't get that feeling at all. My question is will they be able to prove that things that were downloaded by people were not:

 

a. already owned by those people in another form

b. bought later by those people

c. not available where those people reside

 

If they can't prove that, it will be hard to get a financial award for lost profits.

Legally, it's not directly about lost profits, but ownership, i.e., copyright, the purpose of which is to protect the owner's rights, including the ability to profit from the sale of the product or to dispose of it as he/she wishes.

 

Also, it's not the downloader who is copying and distributing it; it's the uploader. Hence, they could go after the uploader for breaking copyright law. I think that's the basis for going after trackers: the argument would be that they are faciliating (acting as 'middle men') the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted materials.

 

An analagous situation would be for a pawn broker to accept stolen goods and then resell them. It's not a perfect analogy, of course, because the tracker operator never actually has his/her hands on the property, but it could be argued that he/she is, in effect, knowingly acting to broker an illegal transaction. The tracker operators who are fighting the upcoming cases, however, would, no doubt, argue that this analogy does not apply at all to their situation.

 

Except that the MPAA does not own anything. They don't even have distribution rights; their members have those distribution rights but don't necessarily own the copyright. US Copyright law protects the owner. George Lucas could sue you for copyright infringement if you were making a profit from his Intelectual Property. Warner Bros can sue you if you're distributing something like Doctor Who that they have distribution rights to. The MPAA can sue you for saying that they are all boneheads (ie slander), Otherwise they are on shaky legal ground imho.

 

Now, I got that out my system, my point was that if they are sueing for unspecified lost profits, punitive damages and court costs they need to prove that they lost profits because of torrenting and didn't gain any. You see what I'm saying. If they gained revenue then they should pay the tracker operator a fee for finding them more consumers. It'll be a tough sell, plus some of the sites they are sueing are, as has been pointed out, search engine operators not tracker operators. In which case we need to lump in Google, Lycos, Metacrawler and dozens of others. They are going about this in a very broad and haphazard manner for an orginization that doesn't actually own any of the Copyrights for the content in question.

[elderbear]

I didn't get that feeling at all. My question is will they be able to prove that things that were downloaded by people were not:

 

a. already owned by those people in another form

b. bought later by those people

c. not available where those people reside

 

If they can't prove that, it will be hard to get a financial award for lost profits.

 

Even if your arguments are right, it's not hard at all for them to get a financial award. They have a whole stable full of lawyers which they must pay regadless of winnings or losings. It costs the MPAA nothing to attack Nite.

 

OTOH, Nite is not a lawyer and is not made of money. It would be financially prohibitive for him to fight this battle, regardless of what they can prove or not.

 

"Justice" goes to the rich, regardless of the righteousness of their cause.