Torrentfreak: “Piracy Monetization Firm Rightscorp Sued for Harassment and Abuse” plus 2 more |
- Piracy Monetization Firm Rightscorp Sued for Harassment and Abuse
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 11/24/14
- Google Refuses MPAA Request to Blacklist ‘Pirate Site’ Homepages
| Piracy Monetization Firm Rightscorp Sued for Harassment and Abuse Posted: 24 Nov 2014 03:23 AM PST
Companies such as Rightscorp ask U.S. ISPs to forward DMCA notices to subscribers,with a settlement offer tagged on to the end. On behalf of Warner Bros, BMG and others Rightscorp asks subscribers to pay $20 per pirated file or risk a potential $150,000 in court. In recent months there have been various complaints from people who were aggressively approached by Rightscorp, which has now resulted in a class-action complaint against the piracy monetization firm. The lawsuit was filed at a California federal court on behalf of Karen Reif, Isaac Nesmith and others who were approached by Rightscorp. In the complaint, Rightscorp is accused of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, violations of debt Collection laws and Abuse of Process. One of the allegations describes the repeated use of robo-calls to alleged infringers. A summary of what happened to Karen Reif shows that once Rightscorp knows who you are, they don’t give up easily. “By late September of 2014, Ms. Reif was receiving on average about one robo-call per day, and sometimes one robo-call and one live call in the same day.These calls came in from a variety of different numbers, from different area codes all over the country,” the complaint alleges. This bombardment of harassing robo-calls is a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the lawyers argue. The class-action further includes a long list of violations regarding Rightscorp’s debt collection practices, violating both the FDCPA and the Rosenthal Act. “Among other wrongful conduct: Rightscorp has engaged in telephone harassment and abuse; made various false and misleading representations; engaged in unfair collections practices; failed to provide validation and required notices relating to the debts..,” the complaint reads. In addition to the above Rightscorp allegedly made false representations that ISPs were participating in the debt collection. For example, the warning letter stated that ISPs would disconnect repeat infringers, something that rarely happened. Finally, the complaint raises the issue of Rightscorp’s controversial DMCA subpoenas which demand that smaller ISPs should hand over personal details of their subscribers. Thus far most ISPs have complied, but according to the complaint these requests are a “sham and abuse” of the legal process. “To identify potential consumers to target, Rightscorp has willfully misused this Court's subpoena power by issuing at least 142 special DMCA subpoenas, per [the DMCA], to various Internet Service Providers.” “These subpoenas, which were issued on this Court's authority, but procured outside of an adversarial proceeding and without any judicial review, are so clearly legally invalid as to be a sham and abuse of the legal process,” the complaint reads. The above is just a summary of the long list of complaints being brought against Rightscorp. With these settlement practices becoming more common, the case will definitely be one to watch. Attorney Morgan Pietz is confident that they have a strong case and told FCT that other Rightscorp victims are invited to get in touch. "We would still be very interested to talking to anyone who was being contacted by Rightscorp or who paid settlements, particularly anyone who was getting the pre-recorded robo-calls," Pietz said. For Rightscorp the lawsuit is yet another setback. Earlier this month the piracy monetization firm reported that it continues to turn a loss, which may eventually drive the company towards bankruptcy. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.    | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 11/24/14 Posted: 24 Nov 2014 12:01 AM PST
Guardians of the Galaxy is the most downloaded movie for the second week in a row. The data for our weekly download chart is estimated 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: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Google Refuses MPAA Request to Blacklist ‘Pirate Site’ Homepages Posted: 23 Nov 2014 11:43 AM PST
The music industry groups RIAA and BPI are among the most active senders. Together they have targeted more than 170 million URLs in recent years. The MPAA’s statistics are more modest. Thus far the Hollywood group has asked Google to remove only 19,288 links from search results. The most recent request is one worth highlighting though, as it shows a clear difference of opinion between Hollywood and Google. Last week the MPAA sent a DMCA request listing 81 allegedly infringing pages, mostly torrent and streaming sites. Unlike most other copyright holders, the MPAA doesn’t list the URLs where the pirated movies are linked from, but the site’s homepages instead. This is a deliberate strategy, one that previously worked against KickassTorrents. However, this time around Google was less receptive. As can be seen below most of the MPAA’s takedown requests were denied. In total, Google took “no action” for 60 of the 81 submitted URLs, including casa-cinema.net, freemoviestorrents.com and solarmovie.is.  It’s unclear why Google refused to take action, but it seems likely that the company views the MPAA’s request as too broad. While the sites’ homepages may indirectly link to pirated movies, for most this required more than one click from the homepage. We previously asked Google under what circumstances a homepage might be removed from search results. A spokesperson couldn’t go into detail but noted that “it’s more complex than simply counting how many clicks one page is from another.” “We’ve designed a variety of policies to comply with the requirements of the law, while weeding out false positives and material that’s too remote from infringing activity,” Google spokesperson told us. In this case Google appears to see most reported homepages as not infringing, at least not for the works the MPAA specified. The MPAA previously said that it would like to move towards blocking pirate sites from search engines entirely, however Google’s recent actions suggest that the company doesn’t want to go this far just yet. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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