The company has not been very active on this front in the United States, but more so in Europe. In Finland for example Hustler is sending out settlement demands for hundreds of euros to alleged pirates.

A few days ago one of these letters arrived at the doorstep of Sebastian Mäki, identifying the IP-address through which he offers a Tor exit-node. According to Hustler the IP-address had allegedly transferred a copy of Hustler’s “This Ain’t Game Of Thrones XXX.”

The letter is sent by lawfirm Hedman Partners who urge Mäki to pay 600 euros ($800) in damages or face worse.

However, Mäki has no intention to pay up. Besides running a Tor exit-node and an open wireless network through the connection, he also happens to be Vice-President of a local Pirate Party branch. As such, he has a decent knowledge of how to counter these threats.

“All we can do at the moment is fight against these trolls, and they are preying on easy victims, who have no time nor energy to fight and often are afraid of the embarrassment that could follow, because apparently porn is still a taboo somewhere,” Mäki tells TorrentFreak.

So instead of paying up, the Tor exit-node operator launched a counter attack. He wrote a lengthy reply to Hustler’s lawyers accusing them of blackmail.

“According to Finnish law, wrongfully forcing someone to dispose of their financial interests is known as blackmail. Threatening to make known one’s porn watching habits unless someone coughs up money sounds to me like activities for which you can get a sentence.”

Mäki explains that an IP-address is not necessarily a person and that Hustler’s copyright trolling is likely to affect innocent Internet users. Because of this, he has decided to report these dubious practices to the police.

“I am also concerned that other innocent citizens might not have as much time, energy, or wealth to fight back. Because your actions have the potential to cause so much damage to innocent bystanders, I find it morally questionable and made a police report.”

Whether the police will follow up on the complaint remains to be seen, but Hustler will have to take its hustling elsewhere for now. They clearly targeted the wrong person here, in more ways than one.

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

This year the people behind the Oscar-winning movie Dallas Buyers Club joined the game. Thus far the filmmakers have filed 66 lawsuits across the United States, targeting more than a thousand alleged downloaders.

In common with all other mass-BitTorrent lawsuits the end game is not a full trial, but the revelation of the alleged downloaders’ identities so they can be encouraged to settle. To accomplish this the movie studio asks courts to grant subpoenas ordering associated ISPs to give up their customers’ details.

Several courts have complied and recently the first settlement letters arrived in the mailboxes of account holders whose Internet connections were used to share the film.

Interestingly, not all alleged downloaders are treated the same. A settlement letter sent to a Texan Internet subscriber offers a complete settlement for $3,500, while an Ohioan in the same position was asked to pay $5,000.

The second offer was also presented in a more intimidating form, with a threat to raise the amount to $7,000 if the recipient doesn’t pay in time.

While $5,000 may sound high for sharing a single movie, the letter says that this is a reasonable request and that various courts have issued much higher damages awards in the past.

“Considering the large expense it incurs to enforce its rights, and further that some cases have awarded as much as $22,500 per infringed work, Dallas Buyers Club, LLC feels that asking for Five Thousand Dollars ($5000.00) to settle is very reasonable,” the letter reads.

One of the most often heard comments is that the person who pays for Internet access is not necessarily the infringer in these cases. The movie studio realizes this, but adds that this person is indeed responsible, an argument various courts have refuted in the past.

“Dallas Buyers Club, LLC has absolutely no interest or desire in making an innocent person pay; but it does have clear evidence to establish that your internet account was used to copy and distribute the file. Therefore, if it was not you, then it was someone that (sic) you gave the right to use your account,” the letter reads.

Dallas Buyers Club, LLC does offer letter recipients a chance to move out of the firing line if they reveal in a sworn affidavit who the real pirate is, but it’s unlikely that many subscribers will take up this offer.

Finally, the filmmakers address the “copyright troll” label handed to them by some news outlets. The company states that this label doesn’t apply, as they haven’t bought the copyrights just to sue alleged downloaders.

“No. We are not what many refer to as ‘copyright trolls’,” the letter explains, adding that their right to protect their copyrights are ignored and belittled by some Internet critics.

“Many internet blogs commenting on this and related cases ignore the rights of copyright owners to sue for infringement, and inappropriately belittle efforts of copyright owners to seek injunctions and damages,” they write.

These efforts to distance themselves from the troll label and critics seems a bit misplaced. Based on a very narrow definition of copyright troll they may have a point. But as DTD points out, by addressing the issue in their letter they only direct people to look into the phenomenon, which in settlement terms may result in the opposite of what they want to achieve.

Nevertheless, a large percentage of the people who receive a settlement letter are expected to pay up. With over a thousand defendants thus far the potential income from these lawsuits runs into the millions of dollars.

And as the dollars continue to roll in, it will be rinse and repeat for as long as the copyright protection efforts are profitable.

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

The verdict was a big win for the porn studio and its controversial law firm Prenda, since many other judges had previously rejected joining so many defendants in one lawsuit. The ruling would allow copyright holders to sue large groups of alleged pirates who may have never interacted, or even lived near the district they were being sued in.

The ISPs were not happy with Howell’s ruling and Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cox filed an appeal. The providers hoped to reverse the earlier ruling and stop copyright trolls from targeting hundreds of defendants in a single lawsuit.

The ISPs were joined in their efforts by several citizen rights groups including EFF, American Civil Liberties Union and Public Knowledge, who all argued that the mass-lawsuits should be struck down.

Yesterday, nearly two years after the original ruling, Court of Appeals Judge David Tatel finally came to a decision. The verdict is a clear win for the providers and concludes that AF Holdings and Prenda’s mass-lawsuits are an abuse of the judicial process.

“Sometimes individuals seek to manipulate judicial procedures to serve their own improper ends. This case calls upon us to evaluate—and put a stop to—one litigant’s attempt to do just that,” the Judge begins.

One of the issues at stake was that of personal jurisdiction. According to Judge Tatel the evidence made it clear that the porn company had no real intention of pursuing cases again all these defendants, not least because many do not live in the District of Columbia.

“We think it quite obvious that AF Holdings could not possibly have had a good faith belief that it could successfully sue the overwhelming majority of the 1,058 John Doe defendants in this district,” Judge Tatel writes.

“In seeking such information, AF Holdings clearly abused the discovery process,” he adds.

The same reasoning also applies to the issue of venue, with the Judge noting that it’s improper to lump together hundreds of IP-addresses from people scattered all over the country.

Finally, Judge Tatel looked at the joinder issue. While he doesn’t define any clear rules, the verdict makes it clear that adding hundreds of BitTorrent users in one suit because they downloaded the same file is not sufficient. Especially when there’s no indication that they ever exchanged files with each other.

“AF Holdings has provided no reason to think that the Doe defendants it named in this lawsuit were ever participating in the same swarm at the same time. Instead, it has simply set forth snapshots of a precise moment in which each of these 1,058 Does allegedly shared the copyrighted work—snapshots that span a period of nearly five months.”

To illustrate the issue, Judge Tatel uses a blackjack analogy that was brought up by one of the citizens’ rights group counsels.

“To paraphrase an analogy offered by amicus counsel at oral argument, two BitTorrent users who download the same file months apart are like two individuals who play at the same blackjack table at different times. They may have won the same amount of money, employed the same strategy, and perhaps even played with the same dealer, but they have still engaged in entirely separate transactions.”

All in all the ruling makes it clear that the copyright troll tactic of suing hundreds of individuals without showing that they are connected and living in the district they are being sued in, is a no go. While it doesn’t sent any strict rules on when a case is appropriate, and when not, it can be seen as a “crushing blow” for copyright trolls.

Most importantly is that the Internet providers, and the various groups that joined the case, have prevented worse. If the previous ruling would have held up copyright trolling would have been made much easier and more lucrative than it is today.

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

A few months after the first cases were started the tables were turned. One of the alleged pirates sued the lawyers for fraud, abuse and extortion, due to their role in the “copyright troll” scheme.

Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver were named in a class-action lawsuit together with movie studio Achte/Neunte and the German tracking company GuardaLey, who together went after thousands of people who allegedly downloaded and shared the movie ‘Far Cry’ using BitTorrent.

Through the lawsuit, spearheaded by Dmitriy Shirokov, the troll victims were seeking relief based on 25 counts including extortion, fraudulent omissions, mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse, racketeering, fraud upon the court, fraud on the Copyright Office, copyright misuse and unjust enrichment.

Among other things, the “copyright trolls” were accused of building their case on shoddy evidence and a false copyright registration.

Last year the Massachusetts District Court denied the class action, which meant the case continued with Shirokov as the only plaintiff. This severely limited the scope of the verdict. However, after more than three years Shirokov did win his case.

During the proceedings, where the law firm remained as the only defendant, it became clear that Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver could not present critical pieces of evidence. The company claimed that the requested documents were lost in a computer crash.

As a result, the law firm had no other option than to concede defeat, which it did through an offer of judgement. In a recent ruling Judge George O’Toole ordered Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver to pay $39,909.95, which includes attorney fees.

TorrentFreak spoke with Jason Sweet, whose firm Booth Sweet represented Shirokov. Sweet notes that the outcome is a “bittersweet victory,” as the class action status was denied earlier. Also, the awarded fees are a far cry from those requested.

Nevertheless, Shrirokov and his legal team are happy with the outcome. Their main goal was to make it harder for copyright trolls to operate in Massachusetts, and they believe that was achieved.

“The case did accomplish what we wanted it to. That is, to deter others from starting similar cases in Massachusetts. It served its purpose,” Sweet tells TF. While the case does not mark the end of copyright trolling schemes in the United States, it won’t make them any easier either.

As for Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver, they will now have to pay their dues. The law firm has left the copyright trolling trade already, and the recent verdict makes it unlikely that they will ever return.

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

The rightsholders bringing these cases generally rely on an IP address as evidence. They then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, forcing Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder.

The problem, however, is that the person listed as the account holder is often not the person who downloaded the infringing material. Although not many judges address this crucial issue early on, there are exceptions, such as the one raised by Florida District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro.

Judge Ungaro was presented with a case brought by Malibu Media, who accused IP-address “174.61.81.171″ of sharing one of their films using BitTorrent without their permission. The Judge, however, was reluctant to issue a subpoena, and asked the company to explain how they could identify the actual infringer.

Responding to this order to show cause, Malibu Media gave an overview of their data gathering techniques. Among other things they explained that geo-location software was used to pinpoint the right location, and how they made sure that it was a residential address, and not a public hotspot.

Judge Ungaro welcomed the additional details, but saw nothing that actually proves that the account holder is the person who downloaded the file.

“Plaintiff has shown that the geolocation software can provide a location for an infringing IP address; however, Plaintiff has not shown how this geolocation software can establish the identity of the Defendant,” Ungaro wrote in an order last week.

“There is nothing that links the IP address location to the identity of the person actually downloading and viewing Plaintiff’s videos, and establishing whether that person lives in this district,” she adds.

Even if Malibu Media can accurately show that the copyright infringer used the Internet connection of the account holder connected to IP-address 174.61.81.171, they still can’t prove who shared the file.

“Even if this IP address is located within a residence, the geolocation software cannot identify who has access to that residence’s computer and who would actually be using it to infringe Plaintiff’s copyright,” Judge Ungaro explains.

As a result, the court decided to dismiss the case for improper venue. The ruling is crucial as it’s another unique order confirming that an IP address alone is not enough to launch a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Copyright Troll watcher SJD points out that the same Judge has also issued orders to show cause in two other Malibu Media cases, which are also likely to be closed.

While not all judges may come to the same conclusion, the order definitely limits the options for copyright holders in the Southern District of Florida. Together with several similar rulings on the insufficiency of IP-address evidence, accused downloaders have yet more ammunition to fight back.

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

Day in and day out the company scours the Internet for people sharing their movies via BitTorrent. They then collect the associated IP-addresses, and ask courts all over the country to help them find the perpetrators.

Nearly all of these cases end up being settled for a few thousand dollars each. However, every now and then a defendant fails to respond, giving Malibu Media the opportunity to obtain a default judgment.

This happened to L. Sagala from Muskegon, Michigan, who was found guilty of willful copyright infringement by a federal court last week.

Malibu Media found that the IP-address registered to Sagala was used to share several X-Art movies and asked the court to award $40,500.00 in statutory damages. A bargain, according to Malibu Media, who claim that the real damages are even higher.

“Despite the fact of Defendant’s willful infringement, Plaintiff only seeks an award of $40,500.00 in statutory damages. This amount is reasonable when considering that Plaintiff’s actual damages far exceed this sum,” Malibu Media’s lawyers write.

“To explain, Defendant materially aided each of the other participants in the BitTorrent swarm of infringers. This swarm contained thousands of peers and continues to grow. Plaintiff’s actual damages are the lost sales of its content to those thousands of infringers. In the aggregate, these lost sales far exceed $40,500.00,” they add.

In an order filed before the weekend, District Court Judge Robert Jonkert grants Malibu Media’s damages request, as well as $1,649.40 for attorneys’ fees and costs. As Sagala failed to defend himself the verdict doesn’t come as a surprise. However, the relatively high damages award is not something we see every day.

The Order

Over the past few months Malibu Media has scored several similar default “victories” and there is no sign that they will be stopping anytime soon. Together with numerous settlements, which are worth up to thousands of dollars each, the company and its lawyers are estimated to have made millions of dollars.

Malibu Media’s legal action against alleged BitTorrent pirates initially started in 2012, when it followed in the footsteps of several other adult entertainment outfits. Since then, the company has filed a total of 1,894 lawsuits. It’s pretty safe to say that in addition to its x-rated activities, Malibu Media has also perfected the ‘art’ of copyright trolling.

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

The company has pioneered mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the United States and is estimated to have made a lot of money doing so.

Most recently it has filed lawsuits against alleged downloaders of Dallas Buyers Club. The first lawsuits were filed on behalf of Voltage, and this week they were followed by two mass-BitTorrent suits “Dallas Buyers Club, LLC” filed with an Illinois federal court.

The two lawsuits target 107 individuals who allegedly shared a pirated copy of the film from their home connections late January. While most of the language in the complaint is standard, the filmmakers appear to have waited for the Academy Awards, as the recent Oscar wins are prominently featured.

“Dallas Buyers Club recently received six Academy Award nominations including Best Motion Picture of the Year and was awarded Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Matthew McConaughey) and Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Jared Leto),” one of the complaints reads.

In addition to the two Oscars, the makers also mention the Golden Globes and several other awards the Dallas buyers Club has won recently, stressing that the film “has significant value”

TF reached out the Dallas Buyers Club’s lawyers to ask if more lawsuits are queued up but we haven’t received a response thus far.

As with all other mass-BitTorrent lawsuits the end game is not a full trial, but to reveal the identities of the alleged downloaders so they can be encouraged to settle. To accomplish this the movie studio asked the court to grant a subpoena so they can order associated ISPs to give up their customers’ details.

The cased filed in Illinois this week almost exclusively targets Comcast subscribers. For defendants who are named later on, it’s wise to contact an attorney. Alternatively, DTD points out that there is a standard template that can be used to respond to the accusation.

The current defendants all downloaded the movie before it won the Oscars. However, it’s worth noting that the number of active downloaders of Dallas Buyers Club quadrupled the day after the Academy awards, resulting in roughly 100,000 extra downloads.

Even today Dallas Buyers Club is still downloaded by tends of thousands of people, which means that the pool of potential targets for these lawsuits is far from exhausted.

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

Most of these defendants have been grouped together in large cases, which makes it cheap for the copyright holder to obtain the personal details of the alleged infringers. Instead of paying filing fees for each defendant, they pay a single fee by suing dozens, hundreds or thousands at once.

These so-called mass-BitTorrent lawsuits are possible because copyright holders argue that the file-sharers acted in concert. They all downloaded the same torrent file and joined the same swarm, they reason.

In a set of recent rulings involving the independent movies Killer Joe, Sibling and The Company You Keep, Federal Judge Stephanie Rose disagrees, as she actually took the time to understand how BitTorrent works.

In order to join multiple defendants in one lawsuit a copyright holder has to make it clear that they were involved in the same series of transactions. In other words, it has to be likely that the alleged pirates traded files with each other.

In the cases in question, there were weeks or even months between the time the first and last defendant was spotted sharing the film. This makes it very unlikely that all defendants did in fact share files with each other.

“In the Killer Joe cases, the January defendants would have to be connected to the Internet and still actively distributing data through the BitTorrent client approximately three months later to be involved in the same transaction as the April defendants, which is implausible at best,” the Judge writes.

Even more so, even if the defendants were found to share the file on the same day, that would still provide no evidence that they shared bits and pieces with each other.

“Even in all five cases where Doe defendants allegedly have ‘hit dates’ on the same day and close in time, there is no showing that the earlier defendants were still connected to the Internet and actively distributing data through the BitTorrent client at the same time as the later defendants,” she adds.

The copyright holders argued that alleged pirates can be joined in one lawsuit because they shared a torrent file with an identical SHA-1 hash. However, the Judge disagrees and notes that the hash provides no evidence that the defendants actually interacted with each other.

“Although each plaintiff has alleged that the defendants in each case were in the same swarm based on the same hash value, participation in a specific swarm is too imprecise a factor absent additional information relating to the alleged copyright infringement to support joinder,” Judge Rose writes.

“Any ‘pieces’ of the work copied or uploaded by any individual Doe may have gone to any other Doe, but may instead have gone to any of the potentially thousands of others who participated in a given swarm and are not in this case,” she adds.

Based on the above, Judge Rose concludes that all five mass-BitTorrent lawsuits should be limited to one defendant. The cases of all others are therefore dismissed.

Since copyright holders can’t easily prove that all defendants shared bits and pieces with each other, it is unlikely that the movie studios will succeed at filing cheap mass-lawsuits before this judge.

The ruling is definitely good news for the thousands of defendants who will be put in a similar position in the future. While there are no guarantees that other judges will reach the same conclusion, it provides defendants with additional ammunition to fight these cases.

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

A common problem with these cases is that copyright holders only have an IP address as evidence, which generally can’t identify a movie pirate.

Judges who handled similar cases in the past have made observations along the same lines and now Washington District Judge Robert Lasnik has added his opinion, ruling that IP address-only evidence fails to meet the pleading standards required to pursue for copyright infringement.

The case in question involves the makers of the movie Elf-Man, who sued hundreds of people for being involved in pirating their film using BitTorrent. The studio alleges that the IP address assigned to each defendant was monitored sharing a pirated version of the film.

More specifically, the complaint alleges that the defendants either (a) downloaded the pirated film themselves, or (b) permitted, facilitated, or promoted the use of their Internet connections by others to download the film.

While the above may be accurate in some cases, it’s not good enough for a copyright infringement claim. Ruling on a motion to dismiss filed on behalf of one of the defendants, Judge Lasnik notes that part (b) is not a valid claim.

“[The movie studio] has actually alleged no more than that the named defendants purchased Internet access and failed to ensure that others did not use that access to download copyrighted material,” Lasnik states.

In other words, the complaint itself states that the account holder may not be the person who downloaded the movie, which isn’t enough to pursue the case.

“Simply identifying the account holder associated with an IP address tells us very little about who actually downloaded ‘Elf-Man’ using that IP address,” Judge Lasnik writes.

“While it is possible that the subscriber is the one who participated in the BitTorrent swarm, it is also possible that a family member, guest, or freeloader engaged in the infringing conduct,” he adds.

As a result, the defendant’s motion to dismiss was granted because the movie studio failed to state a claim for direct copyright infringement, contributory infringement and indirect infringement. The copyright holder is allowed to file an updated complaint, but doubts that the movie studio will be able to make a valid claim.

The ruling is crucial as it confirms that an IP address is not enough evidence in these cases, and that account holders are not legally responsible per se for others who may pirate on their connection. Or at least, that an IP address alone is not enough to launch a copyright infringement lawsuit.

As noted by troll watcher SJD the order is a win for the many people involved in similar cases. “This is yet another nail (and a pretty sharp one) in the coffin of copyright trolling,” she writes.

Elf-Man’s main star Jason Acuna probably won’t mind the outcome, as he previously distanced himself from the lawsuits in question.

“I’m not backing it at all.. Has NOTHING to do w/ me!! It’s all them..,” he wrote on Twitter.

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

Most of the defendants are sued in bulk, with copyright holders joining hundreds or thousands of alleged copyright-infringing IP-addresses in a single complaint. The rightsholders then ask the court to grant a subpoena to identify the account holders behind the IPs, who are then approached with settlement requests of a few thousand dollars.

After an initial avalanche of mass piracy lawsuits in 2010 and 2011, federal courts in several districts ruled that these cases should be restricted to one defendant each. Last year several ISPs asked for a similar ruling in the District of Columbia, but without success.

Judge Beryl Howell ruled against the Internet providers and granted the adult movie company AF Holdings the right to obtain the personal details of more than 1000 Internet users suspected of downloading their works using BitTorrent.

The adult film studio and its controversial law firm Prenda celebrated the verdict as a huge win, since many other judges had previously rejected joining so many defendants in one lawsuit. Adding to the controversy, Judge Howell told the ISPs who joined the case that they were not doing enough to stop online piracy.

The ISPs were disappointed with the ruling and Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cox filed an appeal hoping to reverse it. The case has been lingering for a few months but yesterday the ISPs filed their latest brief.

The providers argue that the request for customer information is not supported by good cause, as previous cases have shown that AF Holdings has no intention of actually serving the defendants. “In 118 multi-Doe actions filed by Plaintiff’s counsel during a two-year period, none has resulted in a defendant being named and served,” they write.

In addition, the ISPs note that the adult studio is only attempting to generate as many settlements as it can, at the lowest cost without knowing whether the defendant is actually the person who downloaded the copyrighted work.

“Plaintiff’s primary purpose in seeking the personal information for hundreds or thousands of Internet subscribers per lawsuit is to extract payments without conducting any investigation into whether the subscriber — rather than another person using the subscriber’s Internet connection — is indeed responsible for accessing Plaintiff’s film without paying for it.”

The ISPs continue by citing several similar cases in which judges ruled that joining so many defendants in one case is not allowed. If the current verdict is upheld, they fear that the District of Columbia will become a “unique venue” for copyright holders to “gain the Doe defendants’ personal information and coerce payment from them”

Finally, the ISPs mention the controversial nature of the law firm Prenda, who were recently punished in court for their mob-like tactics. Among other things they note that Prenda’s principals used The Pirate Bay as a honeypot, relied on fictitious persons as clients, and submitted fake documents in support of their lawsuits.

“In the wake of these revelations, virtually all of Prenda Law’s multi-Doe cases have been dismissed or transformed into investigations into misconduct by AF Holdings’ principals and counsel. Yet, incredibly, Plaintiff derides the ISPs for objecting ‘with an air of moral superiority’ to Plaintiff’s ongoing efforts to extract personal subscriber information from them,” the brief notes.

The ISPs tell the court that this “lack of candor” should be addressed, and they ask the judge to throw out the case, or reduce the number of defendants from 1,058 to just one.

It’s good to see that Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner and Cox are attempting to protect their subscribers. Of course it’s in their own interests, but it also helps to minimize the profitability of these classic copyright troll lawsuits.

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