TorrentFreak Email Update |
- $7,000 Fine for Sharing “WordPress For Dummies” on BitTorrent
- Massive Copyright Infringement Suit Could Collapse Cyberlocker, Studio Warns
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
| $7,000 Fine for Sharing “WordPress For Dummies” on BitTorrent Posted: 02 Jul 2012 01:52 PM PDT
In recent months Wiley has filed more than a dozen mass BitTorrent lawsuits involving a few hundred John Doe defendants in total. The Does are all accused of sharing digital copies of titles including “Hacking for Dummies,” “Day Trading for Dummies” and “Cooking Basics for Dummies.” Talking to TorrentFreak, Wiley's attorney William Dunnegan said previously that one of the main goals of the legal campaign is to obtain the personal details of the alleged infringers and offer them the opportunity to solve the matter through a settlement. However, when a defendant is unresponsive to the settlement offer, Wiley is prepared to go a step further. Earlier this year the book publisher named several defendants in an updated complaint, and one has now been ordered to compensate Wiley for sharing a copy of “WordPress All-in-One For Dummies” on BitTorrent. Judge William Pauley entered a default judgement of $7,000 in damages against Robert Carpenter, who failed to respond to the allegations. The man from Poughkeepsie, New York, has been found guilty of a unique combination of both copyright and trademark infringement. To our knowledge, this is the first time that sharing files on BitTorrent has been viewed as counterfeiting, a description that’s usually reserved for fake goods sold as the real deal. For the copyright violations Carpenter has to pay $5,000 in damages plus another $2,000 for the counterfeiting. This is relatively mild compared to the allowed maximum statutory damages of $150,000 Wiley asked for. “Judgement shall be entered in favor of Wiley and against Carpenter for damages in the amount of $7,000, representing $5,000 in statutory damages pursuant to 17 U.S.C 504 (c) for Carpenter’s infringement of Wiley’s copyright, and $2,000 in statutory damages pursuant to 17 U.S.C 504 (c) for Carpenter’s counterfeiting of Wiley’s Trademarks,” Judge Pauley writes. Thus far Wiley has enjoyed a relatively easy ride in court. In several cases the New York federal court has allowed the book publisher to subpoena Internet providers for the personal details of account holders. This means that aside from the $7,000 in damages from Carpenter, the book publisher may have raked in more than a million dollars though private settlements. Private settlements are usually around $3,000 per person, which quickly adds up with hundreds of defendants. TorrentFreak asked Wiley for a comment on the outcome of the case but we have yet to hear back. Source: $7,000 Fine for Sharing “WordPress For Dummies” on BitTorrent
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| Massive Copyright Infringement Suit Could Collapse Cyberlocker, Studio Warns Posted: 02 Jul 2012 05:50 AM PDT
“Oron is cognizant of its role as the vehicle in which infringers act in concert with one another to copy and distribute huge amounts of infringing material,” Corbin Fisher’s lawyers wrote, adding that since Oron only registered a DMCA agent in June 2011, it could not seek ‘safe harbor’ immunity for infringements made before that date. The immediate effects of the suit were highly damaging for Oron. All company assets in the U.S. and Hong Kong were frozen and payment processors such as PayPal were ordered to stand down. Additionally, the file-hoster’s domain registrar was told to forbid any transfer of the Oron.com domain. Of course, having no cash is a serious issue for any business, so Oron went back to court to ask for funds to be released to pay for legal expenses and operating costs. The file-hoster asked for roughly $375,000, but Judge Gloria M. Navarro couldn’t see her way clear to granting the full amount. “Defendants do not provide any itemization or accounting for the Court to consider in making its determination if the amount requested is reasonable. Therefore, the Court authorizes $100,000 U.S. dollars to be released from Defendant's PayPal account,” Navarro said. But quickly Oron were back again asking for more money – $355,000 in total. The company said that it needed to pay its hosting company, Netherlands-based LeaseWeb, $75,000 by last evening plus an additional payment of $280,000 by next Monday. While Corbin Fisher’s language towards Oron has been predictably aggressive, comments and accusations leveled at LeaseWeb are bound to raise eyebrows. Challenging Oron’s need to make such large payments to LeaseWeb, Corbin Fisher’s lawyers directly accused LeaseWeb of conspiracy and/or extortion. “The evidence put forth by [Oron] shows that these expenses fall far outside of the norm for the industry. Something is amiss. Either Oron is fabricating this newfound need for hundreds of thousands of dollars or LeaseWeb is conspiring with Oron,” XBIZ reports. “Logic suggests that LeaseWeb is either colluding with Oron to assist Oron in removing hundreds of thousands of dollars from this court's jurisdiction; extorting Oron; or Oron is not being entirely forthcoming with the court,” Corbin’s lawyers said. And the criticism of LeaseWeb didn’t stop there. An investigator for the studio said that LeaseWeb is known to “…ignore DMCA notices or at the very least, minimize their impact.” But Friday brought more bad news for Oron. Judge Gloria Navarro denied the request for extra funds, despite Oron’s warnings that without them their business would not be able to continue. “If Oron’s servers are shut down for non-payment of those monthly hosting fees its users – 99.9 percent of whom have no connection to this litigation – will lose access to their data,” the company’s lawyers wrote. Liberty Media, the owners of Corbin Fisher, were quick to pile on the pressure. “This leads us to believe that Oron neither maintains nor is instituting any backup of user data. Therefore, if there are any legitimate users of Oron out there, Liberty Media Holdings advises them to back up any important files for which they are the proper owner or licensee,” the company wrote in a press release. So while the lawyers fight, what we appear to be witnessing here is another Megaupload data-loss debacle in the making, in which completely innocent individuals could lose access to their cloud-stored data due to someone else’s legal problems. But perhaps what is of most concern to Joe Public right now is that despite warning the court that without funds the site could close, Oron have zero warnings on their site or information on the issues the company faces. Of course, there’s a fine line between causing panic and keeping people informed, and indeed the company may be quietly confident that it will ride out the storm, but people should have the option to take precautionary backups, However, they won’t do that if they don’t think anything is amiss. Source: Massive Copyright Infringement Suit Could Collapse Cyberlocker, Studio Warns
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| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 02 Jul 2012 05:16 AM PDT
American Reunion is the most downloaded movie of the week. The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
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Last fall, John Wiley and Sons became the first book publisher 
Less than two weeks ago, adult studio Corbin Fisher sued the operators of file-hosting service Oron for a cool $34.8 million, claiming that they induce the sharing of copyright infringing via their service.
This week there are four newcomers in our chart. | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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