In January we reported that the studio wanted file-sharers to hand themselves in and pay $1000, an ‘amnesty’ scheme that mysteriously appeared to work. In addition, the company has started over a dozen (mass) lawsuits against thousands of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared their content without permission.

In a recent case filed on Monday, Liberty Media and their lawyer tried something new. Instead of simply joining the various defendants in one suit, the company is actually suing a BitTorrent swarm in the case tiled: “Liberty Media Holdings, LLC v. Swarm of November 16, 2010 et al.”

In the complaint they explain:

“The defendants are a group of BitTorrent users or peers whose computers are collectively interconnected for the sharing of a unique file, otherwise known as a ‘swarm’. The particular file a BitTorrent swarm is associated with has a unique hash,” Liberty Media’s lawyer writes.

“The torrent swarm in this case is not an actual entity, but is rather made up of at least 95 individuals, acting in concert with each other, to achieve the common goal of infringing upon the Plaintiff’s copyright both by illegally duplicating the Plaintiff’s Motion Picture and illegally distributing the Plaintiff’s Motion Picture.”

The lawyers then continue with a very detailed reconstruction of how the swarm came about. For every defendant they list the IP-address and the exact time when they joined the swarm. As the title of the case already suggests, all infringements took place on the same day – November 16, 2010.

Liberty Media’s lawyer then continues the complaint by describing how BitTorrent works, and how the alleged defendants worked together to distribute the files. Not only for their own pleasure, but also to the benefit of the entire swarm.

“In the BitTorrent world, there is honor among thieves. Those who merely download files, without publishing and sharing files, are derisively called ‘leechers’,” Liberty Media’s lawyer writes. “Being a leecher is not only negative due to the pejorative terminology, but leechers are also punished by the torrent swarm.”

According to the complaint the swarm and the 95 ‘does’ are, aside from copyright infringement, also believed to be guilty of a civil conspiracy. “The center of this conspiracy is the scheme to traffic in infringing content,” the complain reads, adding that the role of the torrent swarm is essential in this process.

Although it’s not explicitly stated, we assume that the emphasis on the swarm and the conspiracy are an attempt to circumvent the jurisdiction and improper joinder issues that led to the dismissal of previous suits.

By arguing that all defendants shared bits and pieces in the Southern District of California, even those who live elsewhere, the plaintiffs claim that the Court has jurisdiction. Similarly, it is argued that, since all defendants were part of the same swarm on the same day, joining them in one case should be justified.

Despite this innovative “sue a swarm” approach, the end-game of Liberty Media is the same. They want to know who the people behind the IP-addresses are, to kindly ask them for a few hundred or thousand dollars to settle the dispute. Pay up or else…

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

“Despite the fact that these people are stealing from us, we wanted to give them a chance to admit their mistakes and move on,” said Brian Dunlap, COO of Liberty Media subsidiary Corbin Fisher at the time. “Therefore, we are offering this limited period where we will resolve these cases quickly and cheaply.”

The scheme, miraculously, appeared to work and random strangers reportedly started to pay up. However, Corbin Fisher also received an email of a different kind, one that needed some deeper thinking to decrypt.

After reading all the drama that had unfolded, TorrentFreak reader Ryan decided to contact Corbin Fisher to tell them what he thought of their actions.

“I have been sharing a whole load of your files… on every torrent site like PureTna, Kickasstorrents etc. I am very sorry for doing so and would like to pay you the $1000 for amnesty…,” he began in his email.

What appeared to be another $1000 in the can for the movie company turned out to be something different, something special. Ryan explained in his email that the money would come from the pot of gold he got from the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow.

And it got even weirder after that.

“I figured I would get a few laughs from it and sent them the email – I clearly mentioned I was in Europe to make them feel more frustrated,” Ryan told TorrentFreak when explaining his actions.

“I have never downloaded their ‘product’ but had I known what scum they are I would have just to seed it. I have no problem about anyone finding out I view porn and would admit it if I downloaded their product – but they produce stuff that just does not interest me in the slightest,” Ryan added.

Unfortunately for Ryan, the prank didn’t solicit the response he had hoped for. Corbin Fisher failed to reply, at least via email, but a few weeks later they responded in an altogether unexpected fashion – by instructing their legal counsel to take action.

After a month Ryan eventually received an indirect response to his email, from Google.

“Google has received a subpoena for information related to your Google account in a case entitled Corbin Fisher: Identification of Does 1-500,” Google’s legal team wrote to Ryan last week.

Corbin Fisher had demanded that Google should hand over information, including but not limited to IP-addresses associated with the account, that could identify the person linking to the Gmail account Ryan’s email was sent from.

Apparently, Corbin Fisher decided to ignore the unicorn, leprechaun and the fact that Ryan clearly stated that he lives in Sweden. They focused instead on the ‘confession’ and decided to take action and subpoena Google for the personal details.

Ryan was surprised by the response, to say the least, and decided to call Corbin Fisher’s legal counsel to find out why he was mentioned in relation to a case he had nothing to do with. To his surprise, he was told that they had taken the confession seriously and are determined to hunt him down, all the way to Sweden if need be.

Whether these threats are as serious as the lawyer says they are remains to be seen, but the personal details were handed over by Google yesterday.

Although it may seem strange that it’s so easy to ask for someone’s personal details and IP-addresses, a copyright lawyer informed TorrentFreak that it’s not uncommon.

“Discovery (evidence gathering) allows for the acquisition of literally anything relevant to the suit as long as it is not protected by some kind of privilege,” we were told. “It is often a wake-up call to people when they learn that they likely do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in e-mails or information stored on a third-party server.”

The big question is, what will Corbin Fisher do with the information received from Google?

If Corbin Fisher’s intent was to scare the sender of the email, then this tactic has failed. Ryan has little to hide, has never downloaded any of Corbin Fisher’s content, and doubts that his unicorn and leprechaun will be summoned to court. The only thing that he got out of it is that lawyers have no sense of humor, and that future pranks should not be sent via a third party’s email address.

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

Essentially the defendant in the case would not be paying anything like $250,000 and this amount had been touted around publicly in order to scare others into not sharing Liberty Media content. We concluded that since this was a single person lawsuit, and not those containing the hundreds and thousands of Does to which we have become accustomed, the motives behind this action were unlikely to be turn-piracy-into-profit.

We are reporting today that in the latter respect, we were far too generous.

Through the adult entertainment industry’s XBIZ Newswire, Liberty Media, via their subsidiary Corbin Fisher, have announced their latest anti-piracy scheme which demonstrates clearly why they were so concerned with their $250,000 settlement headline.

So, BitTorrent users, have you downloaded any Liberty Media movies? If so the company says it is time to hand yourselves in. From 8th February for 14 days, the kind folk at Liberty are offering an amnesty.

“Despite the fact that these people are stealing from us, we wanted to give them a chance to admit their mistakes and move on,” said Brian Dunlap, Corbin Fisher’s COO. “Therefore, we are offering this limited period where we will resolve these cases quickly and cheaply.”

That’s right folks. When handing yourselves in, you shouldn’t go empty handed but have a crisp stack of dollars in your fist totalling a cool $1000. In return the company says you won’t get sued and will get a year’s membership to their websites as a bonus.

For those that choose not to settle, Liberty is warning that it will soon launch lawsuits against BitTorrent users.

“A list of thousands of torrent users has already been provided to Corbin Fisher by an independent research group, and all of these users will be targeted in the first wave of lawsuits to be filed in February,” the company added. “Anyone who has shared Corbin Fisher content via a torrent site is encouraged to contact the company immediately.”

“The company won millions of dollars in court judgments in the past year, including a recent $250,000 judgment against a single torrent user,” Liberty warns.

And there you have it. That’s what the earlier boasting about the $250K settlement was for – propaganda and scare tactics to fuel their pay-up-or-else scheme.

Liberty Media’s lawyers are currently fairly busy. Earlier this month the movie studio filed suit against file-hosting site Hotfile and 1000 of its users. PayPal was also named as a defendant alongside calls for it to freeze Hotfile’s account. The court was also asked to seize Hotfile’s domain name.

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

Liberty Media, who according to court papers identified torrent user Mr Schwaller through his IP address, claimed that he had uploaded six sample movies “to thousands of other individuals.” Furthermore, they also claimed that Schwaller was not a plain BitTorrent user but actually “one of the primary sources of the stolen Corbin Fisher works circulating on the Internet.”

Claiming willful and intentional infringement, Liberty Media requested an injunction against Schwaller forbidding him from sharing any further copyright works, now or in the future. They also asked for damages, costs and attorney’s fees.

A summons was issued the very next day and then, just 72 hours later and as if by magic, it was all over. According to a consent judgment filed December 24th, Liberty Media and the defendant had quickly resolved all disputes between them.

In a 19 point background summary, it was agreed that Schwaller “illegally copied and distributed many” Liberty movies to various torrent sites and by doing so he should have known that he would cause economic harm in California – the home of Liberty Media and the place where the original complaint was filed.

It was further agreed that the acts constituted “intentional and/or willful infringement of the Plaintiffís copyrights,” causing $500,000 in actual damages. That amount was halved to $250,000 for the purposes of the settlement.

So the big question is this: Why would someone agree to such a huge settlement amount – probably the biggest there’s ever been in a file-sharing case – seemingly without any kind of legal battle?

In part the answer almost certainly lies in simple math. Last year, a jury found student Joel Tenenbaum guilty of “willful infringement” and awarded damages mounting to $675,000. That was later deemed to be an excessive amount and was reduced to $67,500, still a significant amount but altogether more manageable.

But there is also another element to the settlement worthy of note. This paragraph:

Defendant has an opportunity to reduce the amount payable to Plaintiff if Defendant ceases any further content theft (whether the Plaintiffís content or anyone elses), and if he makes regular payments toward the judgment on a schedule which will be agreed upon between the parties in a separate settlement agreement.

So, one might reasonably conclude that this is a “good behavior” clause, and one which will bring the settlement down to an altogether more manageable and realistic amount. An amount painful enough to deter further infringement and enough to cover Liberty Media’s costs.

It has long been believed that in both the United States and Europe, the mere threat of a highly public court case involving pornographic material might be the greatest boost to achieving a quick financial settlement.

But this theory has nearly always been aimed at the turn-piracy-into-profit motives of so-called “copyright trolls” and it has to be said, in this case the plaintiff shows no sign of that kind of behavior with one defendant in one lawsuit.

The actions of Liberty Media show that what the company wants is the metaphorical head on a pike, the super-painful $250,000 “biggest ever” settlement headline that will deter others from uploading their material to the Internet in future.

However, one perhaps unintended side-effect is that this settlement, even though it will ultimately turn out to be substantially smaller than the quarter of a million headline grabber, will almost certainly be touted by copyright trolls to “encourage” those they target in mass litigation to pay up. They are, in fact, very different animals.

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