TorrentFreak Email Update

Downloaded Dallas Buyers Club? The Piracy Lawsuits Are Coming

Posted: 07 Feb 2014 02:42 AM PST

While the MPAA does indeed take action against sites and services and does more than its fair share of aggressive lobbying, the group has never gone down the controversial route of suing the general public. There are others that do, but somehow they tend to escape most of the criticism.

One such oufit is Voltage Pictures, a production company with plenty of lesser-known titles under its belt but one with a penchant for taking legal action over the ones that break into the mainstream. Voltage drew widespread criticism for suing tens of thousands of BitTorrent users who downloaded their movie The Hurt Locker so it should come as no surprise that at the start of 2014 they are back again.

Dallas Buyers Club, a movie about a man who smuggled unapproved drugs into the United States to help fellow HIV patients, was released in the U.S. in November 2013. According to Box Office Mojo it has already brought in nearly $23 million, not bad for a relatively modest $5m budget. However, it appears that Voltage has plans to boost up revenues by suing file-sharers who downloaded a leaked DVD screener copy of the movie during January.

In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of Texas and unearthed by THR, Voltage retreads familiar copyright-troll territory.

“Plaintiff brings this action to stop Defendants from copying and distributing to others over the Internet unauthorized copies of Plaintiff's copyrighted movie,” the complaint reads.

“Each time a Defendant unlawfully distributes a free copy of Plaintiff’s copyrighted movie to others over the Internet, each person who copies the movie then distributes the unlawful copy to others without any significant degradation in sound and picture quality. Thus, a Defendant’s distribution of even one unlawful copy of a motion picture can result in the nearly instantaneous worldwide distribution of that single copy to a limitless number of people.”

In common with all similar suits Voltage has no idea who its targets are, having identified them only by their IP addresses. Following a discovery process involving their ISPs, however, Voltage predicts it will unmask the defendants and take them to trial by jury. That being said, if past history is anything to go by not a single defendant will see the inside of a court room. Cash settlements are the aim here.

Aside from the unusually high profile of the movie (most U.S. based trolls target fairly obscure adult movies) there is another interesting aspect to the case.

In a break from their usual tactic of suing tens of thousands of BitTorrent users, in this case Voltage are currently going after just 31. Of course, if they can extract a few thousand dollars from each defendant they can easily turn a fat profit on the exercise, but clearly that amount would be much more with a few hundred – or few thousand – defendants.

Time will tell what strategy Voltage intends to employ, but considering Dallas Buyers Club was one of the world’s most-downloaded movies in the closing days of January, this could be just the beginning.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

Domain Registrar Liable for Torrent Site Infringement, Court Rules

Posted: 06 Feb 2014 09:04 AM PST

H33T, previously one of the Internet’s largest torrent trackers, disappeared offline in September 2013. Although the downtime was initially shrouded in mystery, it later became clear it had been targeting in a copyright infringement action.

In order to stop the distribution of a copy of Robin Thicke's album Blurred Lines, Universal Music had obtained an injunction against Key-Systems, a German-based registrar with whom H33T had registered its domain name. In order to comply with the court order, Key-Systems deleted H33T.com’s DNS entries which took the site down.

H33T eventually reappeared under a new domain, although as an indexer minus its long-standing tracker. But now, some months later, there is a new and worrying twist in the tale, one that could have serious implications for domain registrars.

A judgment just published by the Regional Court of Saarbrücken states that a domain registrar, in this case Key-Systems, can be held liable for the infringing actions of a site (in this case H33T) if it is “obvious” that it is committing offenses under copyright law.

Following complaints from Universal and its legal team, Key-Systems reportedly informed H33T about the alleged infringement of “Blurred Lines” but no action was taken to remove the content in question. This, alongside claims that H33T had disguised the owner of its domain by using a shell company in the Seychelles, meant that the registrar had no choice but to disable the domain or become liable itself.

In earlier cases the Federal Court found that DENIC, Germany’s central registry for domain names, was generally not liable for violations carried out by third parties, but in this case the Regional Court said that infringement was obviously being carried out by H33T so Key-Systems needed to act.

“With the current judgment, the Regional Court of Saarbrücken has for the first time clarified the responsibility of a registrar in respect of copyright infringements carried out via a domain registered by him,” says Dr. Florian Drücke of the Federal Music Industry Association (BVMI).

“For rights holders this offers a new protection option to take action against portals with illegal offers on the net, that hide their identities using front companies registered abroad,” he adds.

“If the registrar is informed about a clear violation of the law, it must examine the specific offer immediately and lock the domain. This is another important decision, which shows that the question of the responsibilities of all participants on the Internet must always be re-examined.”

With the Regional Court making it clear that should Key-Systems reactivate H33T’s domain they face a 250,000 euro fine, the stakes are high – and not only for this particular registrar either. With that in mind, Key-Systems lawyer Volker Greimann informs TorrentFreak that as far as they are concerned the battle is far from over.

“Let’s just say that this was not the final word in the matter. We are currently reviewing the judgment and our options for having this overturned in the next instance,” Greimann told TF.

“This judgment makes no legal sense and is full of errors. If this judgment stands, it will have dire consequences for the kind of services German registrars can provide.”

Rasch Legal, the company that initiated the action on behalf of Universal, has yet to respond to our request for comment.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.