Jason ‘Wee Man’ Acuna of Jackass fame is not amused that hundreds of people are sued for allegedly downloaded a movie he starred in. The film, Elf-Man, premiered on DVD late last year and its makers are now trying to boost their revenues through mass-lawsuits targeted at alleged BitTorrent users. And they’re not the only independent film studio that jumped on the copyright troll bandwagon recently.
In another victory against copyright trolls in the United States, a court has effectively ruined an adult movie company’s chances of screwing any money out of potentially innocent Internet subscribers. The case, involving the identities of 110 alleged BitTorrent pirates, was kicked out by a judge after the plaintiff failed to explain how it would safeguard its IP address-based evidence from “ensnaring” innocent Internet subscribers.
A federal court in Illinois has handed down the largest ever damages award in a BitTorrent case. In a default judgment defendant Kywan Fisher from Hampton, Virginia is ordered to pay $1,500,000 to adult entertainment company Flava Works for sharing 10 of their movies on BitTorrent. The huge total was reached through penalties of $150,000 per movie, the maximum possible statutory damages under U.S. copyright law. It’s expected that the verdict will be used to motivate other BitTorrent defendants to settle their cases.
A lawyer who threatened countless individuals in copyright troll-style lawsuits has been slammed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The highly colorful Evan Stone sent subpoenas to ISPs without permission of the court in order to extract payments from alleged BitTorrent users, but will now take a huge hit to his reputation. On top of a fine and paying costs to the EFF and Public Citizen, he will have to inform all clients and judges he currently has cases with about this ruling against him.
Even more news...
Twitter and Facebook, not to mention the TorrentFreak inbox, are currently alive with complaints that The...
Freedom of speech is a highly valued commodity, but should people be allowed to say whatever...
An anti-piracy system present in all official Blu-ray players since 2012 has received a fresh update...
One of the main reasons why people turn to piracy is the lack of legal alternatives....
Last year an Internet user known as El Nomeo leaked version 3.70 of Sony’s Playstation3 SDK...
Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.
Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.
More than a year ago TorrentFreak took a look at a selection of the web’s VPN...
Continuing a long-standing New Year's tradition, today we present an up-to-date list of the world's most-visited...
Last month it became apparent that not all VPN providers live up to their marketing after...
Privacy is important on the Internet, and BitTorrent users are certainly not excluded. Already, hundreds of...
With the entertainment industries lobbying for increased powers to spy on BitTorrent users, many downloaders are...
BitTorrent can be fun, as long as you get decent speeds. Not satisfied with your current...