These two assholes had a very simple and effective get rich scheme: they bought copyrights for porn movies, uploaded them to bit torrent sites, and then went after anybody who downloaded them.
[QUOTE=Washington Post Article]
<snip>The attorneys, who ran a firm called Prenda Law, would use shell companies to buy up copyrights for pornographic movies, then upload those movies to file-sharing websites such as Pirate Bay, where they would monitor who downloaded them. In many cases, the attorneys would send threatening cease-and-desist letters to users who downloaded the films, accusing them of copyright infringement and offering to settle cases for about $4,000, according to court documents.
[/QUOTE]
They made about 6 million dollars in 3 years with this scheme. Seriously unethical douche bags. They have been sanctioned and are now being criminally charged.
Ars Technica has been following this for most of the time it’s been going on, a lot of it’s worth the read. This is just the most recent, a search for “Prenda” on their site will turn all of it up.
(1) The RIAA doesn’t own copyrights to music. (2) The RIAA isn’t uploading said copyrighted music to other people for the sole purpose of suing them for copyright infringement.
I’m fairly certain that the RIAA sued numerous individuals for sharing copyrighted songs on P2P services. They even offered the individuals to settle for a small amount, like $3K - $4k to avoid going to trial. That seems similar to me.
I’m not condoning anyone’s actions. Just wondering how it is different.
Again, the NIAA isn’t actually doing the uploading to P2P web sites. These two assholes were. Also, the NIAA doesn’t own the copyrights; these two assholes bought the rights, solely for the purpose.
There’s a difference between suing over someone else’s wrongdoing, and causing wrongdoing in order to sue over it.
If I trip over a rake in your yard, I sue you. But if I strew rakes all over your yard…nuh uh.
…its been explained to you why they are different. The RIAA didn’t sue for themselves, they sued on behalf of the copyright holders. The RIAA didn’t upload music to P2P sites. The RIAA don’t distribute music.
Did the RIAA sue some people? Sure. And so did Hulk Hogan. You are looking at very superficial similarities (the RIAA sued people for sharing copyrighted materials) and ignoring what Prenda actually did to get indicted. I suggest you read the article in the OP.
From reading the article, two things screwed them. That they were the ones uploading the files onto the Pirates Bay and other torrenting sites, and that they lied to the Court about who the companies about who owned the copyrights.
Wouldn’t it invalidate any copyright infringement claim if the copyright holder uploads the video to a public venue? That seems like the copyright holder is authorizing its release to the public.
For example, if I post on this board, I can’t then turn around and claim that the SDMB is infringing on the copyright of my post.
No. I post stuff on the Internet all the time, but I retain copyright to it, and could (in theory) sue anyone who used it in a manner I don’t agree with.
This is true, but it’s not because you’ve posted your text in a public forum. It’s because when you registered with the SDMB, you granted them a licence to publish your text.
In a rather amoral and nasty way, they were brilliant. Sue people who probably didn’t want others knowing about their porn habits, kept the ‘cost’ to make it go away a reasonable amount ($4,000) that most could pay without going to the law and having their porn ‘habits’ out in the open…I wonder what ended up tripping them up (and yes, it’s probably in the reports already linked here, if someone has a 20 words or less summary on how they were foiled, it would be helpful).
It reminds me a bit of what Tracy Lords did (I’m going from memory, so forgive any details I get wrong. I’m at work, and can’t really do a search for Tracy Lords).
She made several adult films, and then it was revealed that she was under the age of 18 when those films were made. As a result, they fell under child pornography laws. You couldn’t buy them or download them out of fear of being busted for breaking the law.
So then, if memory serves, she made ONE film where she was of legal age. And she held the copyright to it. If you wanted to see her, you either had to risk possession of child porn, or buy the adult one, which basically meant you had to pay her for it. If I recall correctly, this was all in the pre- to early days of the internet, so finding the stuff online for free was still in the future.