New legal scam: copyright porn extortion
p2pnet view P2P:- “Something is up in the porn world”, says the Hollywood Reporter, “and we’re not talking about you-know-what.”
But the ’something’ is associated with an obscenty — namely, the RIAA whose legal Sue ‘Em All ’settlement’ extortion scam has spread around the globe, inspiring unscrupulous lawyers everywhere.
It’s a new way for them to exploit phony copyright infringement claims.
“Blackmail tactics first popularised by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA are creating a cottage industry for unscrupulous lawyers and the people who hire them”, said p2pnet, adding:
“The RIAA is a past master at firing off subpoenas and following them up with threatening ‘pay up or else’ letters.”
In this latest travesty, “It seems one adult entertainment studio after another is filing complaints against John Doe defendants”, says the Hollywood Reporter, going on three of the more recent lawsuits were filed on behalf Hard Drive Prods, Lightspeed Media and Millenium TGA.
“Each is suing 100 nameless defendants accused of stealing copyrighted audio-visual works”, it states, continuing, “The litigation follows at least three other suits filed in the past two weeks, targeting hundreds of others, over content ranging from gay erotica to the cult classic ‘Debbie Does Dallas’.”
The lawsuits were filed in Illinois District Court by John L. Steele of the Media Copyright Group.
“Steele has set up a website advertising a “cost-effective solution for reducing P2P-based content piracy”, says the Hollywood Reporter.
But he’s not alone.
“There’s also Evan Stone in Texas, who has filed lawsuits against hundreds of alleged porn pirates on behalf of Lucas Entertainment and hundreds more on behalf of VCX LTD”, it says, noting >>>
The copyright litigation has caused some headaches for ISPs served with subpoenas requesting identification of IP addresses. Time Warner Cable has urged a judge to limit the scope of IP lookups while Midcontinent Communications has challenged jurisdiction. Still, we’re not aware of any organized movement by the politically-connected telecommunications industry to speak out about the issue or lobby for changes. At least not yet.
But at some point, “the issue of exploding copyright litigation in an already overburdened court system is likely to get some prominent attention”, the story predicts.
However, the RIAA has for years been flooding civil courts with its fake cases, and nothing has happened — except to the innocent victims.
… and identi.ca
Hollywood Reporter – Do you download copyrighted porn? Lawsuits seek to reveal names, September 3, 2010
p2pnet – ACS:Law: ‘It’s Christmas. Time to sue’,. November 27, 2009
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September 7th, 2010 at 11:10 am
Who didn’t see that one coming ?
I had a feeling thing would one get out of hands when I saw DirecTV start suying people, in the early 2000, for buying a small card reader that could be use to read their access card, even if those card reader could be use for something else.
September 8th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
“Who didn’t see that one coming ?”
The porn industry is in a pissy mood because everyone sees it coming…
September 8th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
I had a feeling thing would one get out of hands when I saw DirecTV start suying people, in the early 2000, for buying a small card reader that could be use to read their access card, even if those card reader could be use for something else.
Ya. It caused me to boycott DirectTV who by the way are worst than the RIAA.
DirectTV, talk about a corporation of parasites!