Win a couple of judgements? No, buy a couple of judges is the more likely strategy. Here, for the benefit of the naiive, this is how to do it:

1. Get a lawyer that is good at buying off judges. They are found mostly a large law firms (how do you think they got large?).
2. File a lawsuit in a district where judges are for sale.
3. Pay to have a corrupt judge hear the case. The case assignment system is very corrupt, so this step is easy.
4. If the above does not work, remember the skeleton in the closets of most judges. After all, they did a lot of stupid things when they were lawyes defending drug dealers and corrupt clients. The closet skeletons are very useful when the judge knows the plaintiff lawyer knows.

These sites, which I’d never heard of till now, do NOT infringe copyright. They are not involved in distribution. They do not host the files even. Even if they did, it doesn’t prove anyone has downloaded them.

Since these movies offered are in a vastly different format to the originals, perhaps they are derivative works not subject to copyright.

I think you might be on to something.

by this logic, google is on the hook for 98% of everything hosted on megaupload, rapidshare et al.

is there some special law that says it’s only illegal when you ‘organize’ your links to pirated movies on third-party sites, or maybe when you advertise your site with a pirate-sounding name?

maybe the mpaa plan is to win a couple of judgments against small guys that don’t have money to appeal, to fool somebody into thinking some kind of DMCA-trumping no-link precedent has been established.

They can sue the entire world it is not make us go and buy RIAA/MPAA crap anymore period!

They are wasting their time and money.

That’s all.

Since when is linking illegal? And what is an illegal copy?

This court decision means that all linkers in California (in another American court district the rule may be different) a have to research each linked site to insure that all images, video and sound files are “authorized”, (each day, just in case the linked site is changed).

There is no way that anyone with a web site can check linked sites to make sure the site is legal in accordance with the law and jurisprudence and customs of the linked site’s country. It would be too much of a burden and another court district, one without a movie industry, may agree and the copyright law confusion will further grow in America.

An advise, throw the bum judges out.