XPays told the Court that they had “spent a substantial amount of time, money and effort to produce, market and distribute” the tape, and that their profits from Paris Hilton’s horizontal endeavors are now on the wane due to infringements on file-sharing networks.

Fast forward to this month and XPays attorney Michael Fattorosi has just won an expedited discovery from U.S. District Court Judge S. James Otero.

“Plaintiff may engage in immediate discovery in this matter, including the issuing of subpoenas to cable operators and Internet Service Providers to produce any and all documents and/or information sufficient to identify the DOE defendants,” wrote Otero.

The ISPs involved in the case were given 7 days to notify subscribers that XPays were seeking to identify them. In turn, those subscribers were given 21 days from notification date in order to contest the subpoena.

However, according to documents sent by XPays to TorrentFreak last evening, the company is prepared to play a little file-sharing Russian roulette with people who are concerned they could be named in the lawsuit.

“XPays is pleased by the ruling of the Court that we can subpoena the names and addresses of those persons that illegally obtained our content. However, we are also very mindful of people’s privacy and would like to offer amnesty to anyone that would like to voluntarily come forward to resolve their case anonymously and with confidentiality. XPays is not pursuing this lawsuit with the hopes of embarrassing anyone or causing them any amount of shame. We merely want to protect our content,” the email reads.

“At this time anyone who has downloaded a free copy of the HotelHeiress.com Paris Hilton Sex Video aka One Night in Paris, can resolve this matter for $500. XPays believes this to be a very fair offer and one that is a substantial discount from any that will be offered in the future,” the email concludes.

It is worth pointing out that while XPays refers to people “illegally obtaining” content, and in the second paragraph people who have “downloaded a free copy”, the lawsuit they have filed is not related to these issues – it concerns the uploading or distribution of the ‘movie’ in question. Many more people will have downloaded the movie than uploaded it, so this ‘error’ by XPays conveniently helps to draw in more takers.

In addition to implying this is a downloading rather than an uploading amnesty, XPays has also put no geographic limitation on those who they are asking to participate in their scheme. This is interesting because XPays told the court that all of the 843 Does are residents of California. Perhaps, then, those outside California might be less inclined to settle. That brings the number of potential amnesty-seekers down a great deal.

That said, when compared to the cost of defending a lawsuit, $500 is a very small amount indeed and it is a very safe bet that XPays knows that. In fact, you can bet cold hard cash on their strategy being based on this risk-based calculation.

But like all those running these schemes, XPays is hoping that their nerve is stronger than those they target in this game of lawsuit roulette, that people won’t spin the barrel in the fear that the ‘click’ becomes a ‘bang’.

However, XPays are asking for $500 in order for people to opt out of game they may not even be involved in and they currently only have 843 bullets in their barrel aimed loosely at thousands of file-sharers. Furthermore, if the ISPs had 7 days to let the Does know they are being targeted, the 843 should be finding out who they are round about now. At this point, $500 might sound like a safe-ish option to them but why should it sound attractive to anyone else? More lawsuits to come? Only XPays knows that.

So, do you feel lucky?

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

Through these mass lawsuits the copyright holders are trying to obtain the personal details of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared their material online. Once this information is handed over, they then offer the defendant the oppotunity to settle the case for a few hundred dollars, thereby avoiding a full trial.

In the United States the judicial system is currently being overloaded with new cases, and it has reached a point where it’s virtually impossible to track every new case introduced. However, one case filed recently stands out from the rest, as it concerns one of BitTorrent’s most downloaded videos ever.

The Paris Hilton Sex Tape, officially released in 2003 and currently owned by XPAYS Inc., is now the subject of a new round of lawsuits. The motion picture, as it’s referred to in court documents, is still being shared among thousands of users every week and 843 alleged downloaders have now been sued at the District Court of Central California.

XPAYS claims that they “spent a substantial amount of time, money and effort to produce, market and distribute” the film, and that their profits are now dwindling due to mass copyright infringement. In addition, they claim that the illegal distribution is a threat to minors, since the illegal copies can be downloaded without age verification.

Aside from the noble deed of protecting minors, most of the complaint deals with the losses and irreparable harm BitTorrent users have caused the company. This is in line with most other complaints we’ve seen so far. A special section and several attached ‘exhibits’ further show that XPAYS is the legitimate copyright holder of the sex tape.

In the hope of stopping ‘copyright trolls’ such as XPAYS, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus brief last week in which it asks an Illinois judge to quash subpoenas issued in pay-up-or-else lawsuits involving alleged illegal file-sharing of pornography.

“Copyright owners have a right to protect their works, but they can’t use shoddy and unfair tactics to do so,” said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. “We’re asking the court to protect the rights of each and every defendant, instead of allowing these copyright trolls to game the system.”

Despite the increasing resistance, both from judges and opponents of the lawsuits, we expect that similar cases will continue to be filed for the time being simply because they have the potential to be extremely profitable. XPAYS for one is determined to continue legal action against those sharing the Paris Hilton Sex Tape and says it will keep monitoring BitTorrent networks for further infringements.

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

Nadia told TorrentFreak: “I started this campaign because of the distorted way the media prioritizes between big and small world news. How can Paris Hilton make more front covers than the genocide in Darfur? So, I “pimped” a victim, to see if it worked. And it did!”

Her campaign indeed generated a lot of attention, but not for the right reasons. For her “Simple Living” campaign, Nadia decided to dress-up a Darfur victim with a Louis Vuitton-inspired bag, and a Paris Hilton-style accessory dog. Louis Vuitton, however, was not amused by Nadia’s creative expression, and filed a lawsuit where they are claiming over $20,000 a day, if she continues with the project.

Nadia received her first letter from the Paris based retailer on February 22th. Vuitton kindly urged her to quit raising money for the good cause, arguing that it infringes their intellectual property rights. Nadia was surprised by the letter, and decided to send a reply in which she explained that she didn’t use the exact pattern of a Louis Vuitton bag, and that the drawing simply refers to designer bags in general.

“Sometimes recognizable objects are needed to express deeper meanings, and in their new form they become more than the objects themselves , they become art,” Nadia writes in her reply. “I therefore stand by my freedom of expression – artistic and/or otherwise – and will continue my Simple Living campaign in order to raise money for the victims of Darfur.”

Louis Vuitton did not warm to her “free speech” argument, and filed a lawsuit on April 15th. Nadia told us that Louis Vuitton now demands $7,500 (5,000 Euro) for each day she continues to sell Simple Life products, $7,500 for each day their letter is published on the website and $7,500 a day for using the name “Louis Vuitton” on her website. In addition they want her to pay their lawyer costs and $15,000 to cover other expenses they have incurred in protecting their ‘intellectual property’.

Initially, the whole issue seemed to be a misunderstanding, as it looked like Nadia was trying to make money from selling the tees and posters. “In January I wrote on my website regarding the campaign, that 30% of the profits are donated to Divest for Darfur. This is not correct. It is 30% of the PRICE which is 100% of the profits,” she explained to us. However, even when the information was corrected, Vuitton didn’t back off.

Intellectual Property expert and lawyer Hans Bousie, who offered to represent Nadia without charge, told TorrentFreak that Nadia could exercise her right to freedom of expression, and her right to artistic freedom in particular. That is, if the design clearly resembles the original design, otherwise Louis Vuitton wont have a strong case to begin with.

In our opinion, Vuitton is abusing the intellectual property argument. They simply do not want to be associated with genocide and the darker sides of the world. This strategy obviously backfired. We encourage everyone to buy a poster or tee, or at least spread the word about this campaign and Vuitton’s shocking response.

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

The owner of SumoTorrent told TorrentFreak that he discovered that A search on Google for sumotorrent now triggers the following message at the bottom of the results page:

“In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.”

A search for other BitTorrent sites like Torrentspy and Torrentreactor comes up with the same message (note. the sites are still indexed but some results are removed). Strangely enough, for torrentreactor it only shows up for a search on the .com domain.

According to Google the filtered search results are caused by DMCA complaints , but the owner of SumoTorrent is a little surprised by this. He has no clue why the “content owner” didn’t contact him directly because he generally processes takedown notices within 24 hours. Unfortunately the link Google provides to the complaint in question doesn’t work, and a search on ChillingEffects.org doesn’t really help much either.

One of the few BitTorrent related DMCA complaints Google received concerned Paris Hilton’s famous . This notice was sent by Jim Salomon, the brother of Rick Salomon who used to date Paris. The complaint is hilarious, Jim even complains why it takes Google more than 4 hours to remove the .torrent in question. Funny or not, eventually Google decided to remove the .torrent file in question from their search results.

What Google has done isn’t really that revolutionary because most administrators of BitTorrent sites take down torrent files themselves upon request. However, the main reason for this is that they don’t want endless legal battles. They see it as a service to the content owners to remove the .torrent files if a decent request is made. But I kind of hoped that Google would make a stand here, wishful thinking so it seems.So what do you think? Should Google filter their results like this?

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