2,919 Movie Pirates Walk Free as BitTorrent Trolling Scheme Falls Apart

Over the past several years we’ve covered dozens of ‘troll’ lawsuits against hundreds of thousands of alleged copyright infringers.

While many cases have been dismissed in the past, the one we’re reporting on today is quite special.

It started back in March when a lawsuit filed by the Swiss company Contra Piracy targeted individuals said to have downloaded and shared the 50 Cent movie All Things Fall Apart.

Contra Piracy, a claimed non-profit group, said they had monitored 2,919 individuals infringing the movie on more than 280,000 occasions. In order to stop these infringements they said they would need the identities of file-sharers from ISPs.

The Swiss firm didn’t hide the fact that they were nothing to do with the making of the film and they also admitted not being involved with traditional movie distribution channels. Instead, they licensed “BitTorrent distribution” and “enforcement” rights from Los Angeles-based Hannibal Pictures.

Confronted with the case, Chief Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte wondered whether Contra Piracy actually had the rights to pursue this case in court. In one of her orders she noted that a “bare right to sue” for copyright infringement isn’t enough to allow the case to proceed.

Responding to this comment Contract Piracy handed over the rights agreements it had with Hannibal Pictures. The company argued that since they licensed the “BitTorrent distribution” rights, they should be allowed to sue.

However, Judge Laporte disagreed and in an order last week she dismissed the case with prejudice, concluding that Contra Piracy lacks jurisdiction. According to the Judge, Contra Piracy’s only intention is to obtain quick settlements, which means they lack the legal rights to pursue a copyright-related action.

In her order Laporte mentions that when Contra Piracy was asked what options they had to commercially exploit the BitTorrent distribution rights, the company admitted that they had very few, and that they were not actively involved in any.

“Plaintiff’s employee acknowledged that there are little [to no options] and did not claim that Plaintiff engaged in any such commercial use,” she notes.

In addition, the Judge said that the agreement between Contra Piracy and Hannibal Pictures only talks about divvying up the revenue from out-of-court settlements. No legal venues were discussed, and Contra Piracy further admitted that copyright enforcement was central to its business model.

“Plaintiff acknowledges that it is in the business of providing counter-piracy services to copyright owners by accepting assignments of copyrights and suing to enforce these copyrights,” Judge Laporte writes in her order.

Finally, the agreement also makes it clear that Contra Piracy does not intend to take any cases to trial, but that they just want to obtain the personal details of the alleged BitTorrent pirates so they can demand quick cash settlements.

“The agreements are noticeably devoid of any provision for the disposition of any revenues that could be obtained from verdicts or court orders of fees or costs upon success in court, suggesting a business model of using the information obtained from early discovery into the identities of individual defendants to negotiate quick settlements under the threat of embarrassing and expensive litigation without actually litigating claims on their merits,” the Judge explains.

The above leads to the conclusion that Contra Piracy only has a “bare right to sue,” which is not enough to pursue people for alleged copyright infringement. “The case is dismissed with prejudice,” Laporte concludes.

And so All Things Fall Apart for Contra Piracy.

To our knowledge this is the first file-sharing related case that has come to a Righthaven-type conclusion, showing that it’s worthwhile delving deeper into the licence agreements that are at the basis of these mass-BitTorrent lawsuits.

Source: 2,919 Movie Pirates Walk Free as BitTorrent Trolling Scheme Falls Apart

TorrentFreak

MPAA Demands Source Code of isoHunt’s “Failing” Piracy Filter

http://torrentfreak.com/images/isohunt-logo.jpg

Almost three years ago the U.S. District Court of California ordered BitTorrent search engine isoHunt to start filtering its search results.

The injunction was the result of isoHunt’s protracted court battle with the MPAA that began back in 2006. The Court ordered the owner of isoHunt to censor the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S.

isoHunt implemented the filter for U.S. visitors which allowed it to remain online, but at the same time owner Gary Fung took his case to the Court of Appeals. Through the appeal, isoHunt hoped to reverse the permanent injunction, but this didn’t come to pass.

With the appeal concluded the movie studios are now asking for a summary judgment, hoping that the court awards them compensation for the many pirated movies that were downloaded via the isoHunt site. In addition, the MPAA has filed a motion for contempt claiming that the current keyword filter on the isoHunt Lite site is not doing its job.

“The Isohunt Lite filtering problems are too serious and consistent to be mere matters of innocent ‘mistake’ or unavoidable filtering ‘leakage’ as Defendants have variously claimed,” the MPAA tells the court, suggesting that isoHunt is making these mistakes intentionally to keep up its profits.

“The record to date supports the inference that Defendants have deliberately engineered the filter to ensure that it is ineffective in preventing access to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. As the Court found, because Defendants profit from infringement, they have a powerful economic incentive to continue providing users with access to Plaintiffs’ popular movies and television programs.”

Backed up by screenshots, the MPAA cites several examples of popular movies whose titles are on the ban list, but are still available thought the site.

“One work on Plaintiffs’ title list is the popular film ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ for which Plaintiffs provided Defendants the movie title, release date and media type. Yet, the movie is available to any Isohunt Lite user who looks for it. Typing the term ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ into Isohunt Lite’s search box returns innumerable dot torrent files for the movie.”

MPAA’s screenshot of isoHunt

The movie studios argue that nearly all movies are still accessible through the site, which would mean that isoHunt is not in compliance with the injunction. While isoHunt has claimed that these are mere mistakes, the MPAA believes that it supports their motion for contempt.

“These are not isolated instances. Virtually every movie Plaintiffs looked for using Isohunt Lite returned innumerable dot torrent files for Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. Defendants’ so-called filter does not even appear to block access to dot torrent files that match a movie’s exact title,” MPAA writes.

“Facially, such a filter is wholly ineffective and cannot be the basis of compliance with an injunction that enjoins Defendants from ‘hosting, indexing, linking to, or otherwise providing access to any Dot-torrent or similar files that correspond, point or lead to any of the Copyrighted Works.’”

The MPAA asks the court to order isoHunt to hand over all filter-related source code and databases, so the movie studios can show that the filtering failures are not “innocent mistakes” or “mere unavoidable leakage.”

TorrentFreak asked isoHunt owner Gary Fung for a comment on the allegations put forward by the MPAA, but he chose not to respond at this time.

It is clear that the MPAA is not letting the isoHunt case rest just yet. In addition to the motion for contempt there is also a motion for summary judgment pending. The movie studios are currently in the process of calculating the damages they have suffered as a result of isoHunt’s operations, which is expected to be in the millions.

The MPAA previously won a $110 million judgment against the TorrentSpy site, and it’s expected the damages claimed against isoHunt will be in the same range, or perhaps even higher.

Source: MPAA Demands Source Code of isoHunt’s “Failing” Piracy Filter

Vía TorrentFreak http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/BWwqR-7wZnQ/

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