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Court Kicks Out Copyright Troll Who Has “No Desire To Litigate”
Court Orders “Copyright Lobby-Linked” Group To Stop Pirating The Pirate Party
5000+ Artists Line Up For a Pirate Bay Promotion

Court Kicks Out Copyright Troll Who Has “No Desire To Litigate”

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 02:27 AM PDT

This particular case, Hard Drive Productions, Inc. -v- Does 1-90, sees the well-known porn company plaintiff follow the now well-trodden copyright troll path.

Gather IP addresses from BitTorrent networks and go to court to obtain the physical identities of those alleged to have infringed their copyrights. From there, approach account holders with an offer to settle for a couple of thousand bucks to make (in almost all cases) an imaginary lawsuit go away.

In this case Hard Drive asked the court to force ISPs to hand over the details of 90 Internet subscribers alleged to have downloaded and shared the movie “Amateur Allure – Natalia” at some point during a 63 day monitoring period.

The court noted that discovery can only be permitted with a court order and after showing “good cause”. The “good cause” standard can be met on four conditions:

(1) the plaintiff can identify the missing party with sufficient specificity such that the Court can determine that defendant is a real person or entity who could be sued in federal court;

(2) the plaintiff has identified all previous steps taken to locate the elusive defendant;

(3) the plaintiff’s suit against defendant could withstand a motion to dismiss; and

(4) the plaintiff has demonstrated that there is a reasonable likelihood of being able to identify the defendant through discovery such that service of process would be possible.

But Judge Howard R. Lloyd had problems, particularly when considering whether the requested early discovery would be "very likely" to reveal the identities of the Doe defendants.

Hard Drive had previously stated that discovery would allow it to "fully identify” each BitTorrent user suspected of violating its copyrights. However, as Judge Lloyd pointed out, while the ISP account holder may have been the infringer, he may also be merely the bill payer. Indeed, anyone with access to the IP address could be the actual infringer.

The court then went on to list all seven of the subsequent “fishing exercise” processes Hard Drive goes through in order to find out who did infringe when the account holder isn’t the person they’re looking for. It was all too much for the court.

“It is abundantly clear that plaintiff's requested discovery is not ‘very likely’ to reveal the identities of the Doe defendants. Indeed, plaintiff admitted at the hearing that neither it nor any other plaintiff it is aware of has ever served a single defendant in one of these cases where early discovery has been granted,” Judge Lloyd wrote.

And when it came to “good cause” things didn’t improve either.

The plaintiff in the case needed to show all Does to be in the State of California but Hard Drive shot itself in the foot when it admitted that its IP geo-location tool was “…only truly reliable when predicting the country in which an IP address is located.”

Confirming the above, Hard Drive admitted that in other cases where discovery was granted it later found that some of the ISP subscribers did not live in the state where the lawsuit was brought.

The court also had problems with 90 Does being connected together in one lawsuit after Hard Drive admitted that it had no evidence to show that the BitTorrent users ever shared the movie between each other.

“Plaintiff has not shown that the defendants acted in concert simply by appearing in the same swarm at completely different times,” said Judge Lloyd. “Therefore, the court cannot find that ‘a single transaction or series of closely related transactions’ connects these 90 Does and makes joinder proper.”

The court denied Hard Drive its application for discovery of the Doe’s identities and ordered all but one defendant to be severed from the lawsuit. If Hard Drive wants to pursue them it will have to file individual complaints against them.

Judge Lloyd’s summing up will be music to the ears of those who oppose so-called copyright trolls.

“The court realizes that this decision may frustrate plaintiff and other copyright holders who, quite understandably, wish to curtail online infringement of their works. Unfortunately, it would appear that the technology that enables copyright infringement has outpaced technology that prevents it,” Judge Lloyd wrote.

“The court recognizes that plaintiff is aggrieved by the apparent infringement and is sympathetic toward its argument that lawsuits like this one are the only way for it to find and stop infringers. However, the court will not assist a plaintiff who seems to have no desire to actually litigate but instead seems to be using the courts to pursue an extrajudicial business plan against possible infringers (and innocent others caught up in the ISP net).

“Plaintiff seeks to enlist the aid of the court to obtain information through the litigation discovery process so that it can pursue a non-judicial remedy that focuses on extracting ‘settlement’ payments from persons who may or may not be infringers. This the court is not willing to do,” Judge Lloyd concludes.

Source: Court Kicks Out Copyright Troll Who Has “No Desire To Litigate”

Court Orders “Copyright Lobby-Linked” Group To Stop Pirating The Pirate Party

Posted: 05 Apr 2012 12:57 PM PDT

Today, while doing research on the Pirate Party, I had cause to look at the Italian division’s website. Within just a few minutes I suspected that I’d been overdoing it lately – even with the invaluable help of Google translate, I had absolutely no idea what I was reading.

The site looked familiar enough, with plenty of instances of the Party’s famous pirate flag around and Pirate Party written across the top, but the stories on the site made little sense when viewed through the prism of the Pirate Party’s core values. It’s the Pirate Party, Jim, but not as we know it.

The ‘imposter’ Pirate Party website

ImposterPirate

I quickly came to the incorrect conclusion that Google translate was messing with me when in fact the truth was even more strange – someone had pirated the Pirate Party.

The real Pirate Party – known locally as Partito Pirata (we’ll refer to them as this from now on to avoid yet more confusion) – have their online base located at partito-pirata.it.

The ‘imposters’, who appear to promote environmentalism, both animal and social rights but nothing remotely ‘pirate’, have set up camp at PirateParty.it. They have been passing themselves off using the Partito Pirata brand for some time.

“We were born in 2006, together with the Swedish movement,” said former Ministry of Finance employee and Partito Pirata founder Athos Gualazzi, clarifying Partito Pirata’s roots. “Those others just want to use our reputation as leverage.”

The real Pirate Party website

RealPirateParty

In an interview late last year, Marco Marsili, the 43-year old professor of communications and journalist behind PirateParty.it, turned things around somewhat.

“We are people with experience in politics, they are just a cultural association,” Marsili said of Partito Pirata.

“They live attached to the keyboard and if the current is pulled they die. In all these years nobody has ever heard of them and now they take advantage of the visibility obtained by us,” he concluded.

But now, following a complaint made by Partito Pirata, perhaps more than a little ironically the Court of Milan’s specialist intellectual property section has moved to defend the name, identity and ‘brand’ of the genuine Partito Pirata.

According to a source familiar with the case, the judge’s reasoning in ruling in favor of Partito Pirata was that the Pirate movement is defined worldwide as being critical of copyright and seeking its reform. The ‘fake’ Pirate Party do not so they are not even conforming to the identity they’re trying to ‘kidnap’.

In his ruling the judge ordered the ‘fake’ Pirate Party and Marco Marsili to cease using the name Partito Pirata, Pirateparty or Pirate Party, on- or offline. The use of the name in a domain name is also banned. The group is further forbidden to use the official Partito Pirata logo and has 15 days to comply or face fines of 500 euros per infraction and 200 euros per day for non-compliance.

But the strange story doesn’t end there. According to Partito Pirata founder Athos Gualazzi, the attack on his Party’s identity has sinister toots.

“From the very beginning there has been an attempt to distract from our political experience by people we believe to be paid by the SIAE and the majors,” said Gualazzi. SIAE are the Italian Authors and Publishers Association, an organization responsible for the protection of copyright in Italy.

As well as being the individual behind the ‘fake’ Pirate Party, interestingly Marco Marsili is also the president of the Confederation of Italian Music, a trade group representing record producers, publishers, authors and artists. According to his personal site, Marsili claims to have “signed major contacts” with, among others, SIAE.

Although some will find this attempt at ‘pirating’ the Pirate Party quite delicious, ‘pirated’ is almost certainly the wrong word here. This appears to have been an attempt at identity theft in order to mislead. Quite how deep the rabbit hole goes after that is a question for another day….

Source: Court Orders “Copyright Lobby-Linked” Group To Stop Pirating The Pirate Party

5000+ Artists Line Up For a Pirate Bay Promotion

Posted: 05 Apr 2012 08:10 AM PDT

promo bay For many independent artists obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy, but it's a problem that The Pirate Bay is trying to solve.

Earlier this year the site rolled out a new promotion platform for filmmakers, musicians, writers and all other artists alike. To help them reach an audience of tens of millions of people, The Pirate Bay started offering the artists a prime advertising spot on the site's homepage, replacing the iconic logo.

While The Pirate Bay team expected a decent response, they were positively surprised by the avalanche of submissions that have come in since. The Pirate Bay team informed TorrentFreak that thus far they have received more than 5000 applications. Nearly 90% come from musicians and 95% of them are male.

Artists who choose to participate have to offer something free in return and many artists from all over the world have done so. The list includes best-selling author Paulo Coelho who’s a big Pirate Bay supporter.

George Barnett, one of the artist who’s been featured worldwide

barnett

“Thus far we’ve done 14 regular campaigns in 3 countries each and 8 worldwide promotions,” Pirate Bay’s Winston told TorrentFreak, who added that the initial plan has changed a bit due to the massive success.

“When we started the project the plan was to do a few worldwide promotions a year, but the submissions have been too good. So now we’re gonna do the worldwide promos every weekend and some regulars every now and then.”

For the artists the promotion campaigns are paying off as well. George Barnett added 4,000 new Facebook fans during the campaign and his video was viewed 85,000 times in total. And Tomás Vergara, the maker of short film The Chase, got 250,000 views of his video in just three days.

“When I had a reply saying that they liked it and I'd have a worldwide display on The Pirate Bay homepage, I pulled off my hair. I think its been a while since I've opened my eyes that wide,” Vergara said looking back at receiving the good news.

“Now The Chase is having massive exposure. I'm so damn happy. This is the kind of things you were not expecting in life, I guess,” he added.

While The Pirate Bay team is looking for quality content, they also want to cover a wide range of genres. In a few years The Pirate Bay hopes that a few of the artists they helped to promote will turn into independent stars.

“The future will show what the impact of the Pirate Bay promotions is. I’m absolutely certain that at least 2 or 3 of them have become superstars by then,” The Pirate Bay’s Winston told us.

However, making stars is not the most important.

For the Pirate Bay the main goal is to give something back to the creators of this world. Give them an honest push instead of exploiting artists’ copyrights for commercial gains, as they say the major record labels do.

“We’re one of the worlds top 60 sites in the Internet. This brings us a responsibility to use the site to do something good. When I think about it, it’s insane that all the other top 100 sites only blast ads and self-centered stuff on their front pages. ”

“We do this for fun and for the love of culture, so we’re everything the major labels are not.”

Artists who are interested in getting featured are welcome to apply, but due to the success getting signed with a major record label might be easier.

Source: 5000+ Artists Line Up For a Pirate Bay Promotion

The Pirate's Press

Friday, 6 April 2012