http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...we-boll-sues-2000-far-cry-p2p-downloaders.ars
German director Uwe Boll has made something of of specialty out of producing terrible movies based on video games. Back in 2006, Ars Gaming Editor Ben Kuchera summed up Boll's problem: "After he watched the final cut of Alone in the Dark, he actually decided to release it. This guy is pure evil, distilled in an untalented director's body."
Boll went on to make such films as Postal and Far Cry, taking advantage of German film tax credits to obtain continued financing for his work, and he wasn't above actually punching out his critics in the ring. The man is... not universally loved.
This month, Boll found a new revenue source: mass lawsuits against P2P downloaders in US federal court. The first suit from Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteiligungs GmbH targets "Does 1-2,094" over their alleged sharing of Far Cry on BitTorrent networks.
Going postal
The move is part of a new international approach to recouping some of the money believed lost to online piracy. It is spearheaded in the US by a new entity calling itself the US Copyright Group, which has filed a host of such lawsuits in recent weeks against P2P users, mostly involving smaller independent films. The Hollywood Reporter first noted the lawsuit campaign, which isn't designed so much to stop piracy as to monetize it.
Apparently, people want to see this
The original article is full of odd statements, such as this one that describes how the P2P detection technology in question works: "The program captures IP addresses based on the time stamp that a download has occurred and then checks against a spreadsheet to make sure the downloading content is the copyright protected film and not a misnamed film or trailer." Say what?
After reading through the court documents related to the Far Cry case, a much clearer picture emerges. Boll's German film company has signed on with the US Copyright Group, which coordinates the campaign. The group is owned by IP lawyers, is based in Washington, DC, and has a website with the grandiose title of SaveCinema.org. US Copyright Group charges nothing to take cases; it takes a percentage of all revenues earned on a contingency basis. "We are here to recover losses for copyright holders and to stop film piracy," it says. "We are here to SAVE CINEMA."
The lawyers in the Boll case come from DC firm Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, with partner Thomas Dunlap signing several of the key documents.
The tech comes from GuardaLey, a company registered in the UK and Wales. According to a declaration from GuardaLey's Director of Data Services, Patrick Achache, the company identifies BitTorrent users sharing Far Cry in two ways. First, it simply searches P2P networks for Far Cry, then connects to the swarms and logs the IP addresses of those sharing the filenot subtle, but it works. Second, it reviews "server logs obtained from P2P networks to determine the users who were offering the files of this copyrighted movie."
Just a secondit does what now? How did GuardaLey get access to P2P server logs? The company doesn't say; perhaps it runs its own honeypot trackers in order to obtain IP addresses.
In any event, the company ends up with IP addresses of users with bits of some file called "Far Cry." It then downloads the bits of the picture it can get and logs the file metadata. From the IP address, it figures out which ISP is responsible and e-mails them, asking the ISP to retain all logs on the IP address in question at the time in question. Next, Achache must verify the content in the file. "I or one of my assistants have watched a DVD or VHS copy of the motion picture provided by Plaintiff," he writes. The team then accesses the downloaded files and confirms "that they contain a substantial portion of the motion picture identified in the Complaint."
That's when the lawyers take over, filing federal cases against Does and seeking the court's permission to send subpoenas to the ISPs. If allowed, the ISPs would then turn over subscriber information belonging to the user who was assigned the IP address at the time in question. Defendants are apparently then given a chance to settle; if not, the case could proceed as a named lawsuit.
It's pretty much straight from the RIAA playbook, though RIAA cases rarely ventured beyond the KaZaA network. BitTorrent could be more problematic, in part because each person often serves up only small bits of the files in question.
What sets these cases apart are that the parties believe they can make money; the RIAA always said it wasn't making anything on its campaign, in part because it actually pursued people like Jammie Thomas all the way through the court system, and on multiple occasions. This is obscenely expensive at the federal level, and it's not clear if the US Copyright Group really intends to take named lawsuits all the way to trial.
Spam-igation
Fred von Lohmann of the EFF slammed this approach. "This is not the first time we've seen mass litigation (a.k.a. 'spam-igation') used as a profit-center," he wrote. "DirecTV pioneered that tactic by sending demand letters to more than 170,000 Americans accused of satellite piracy. And the major record labels followed up by targeting more than 30,000 people for legal actions between 2003-08... Copyright should help creators get adequately compensated for their efforts. Copyright should not line the pockets of copyright trolls intent on shaking down individuals for fast settlements a thousand at a time."
Fair enough, but in this case, the "trolls" appear to be the creators. It's not as though some major studio is doing this, pocketing all the cash, and not sharing it with artists; US Copyright Group's initial partners are independent operators like Boll, who also created the films in question.
US Copyright Group is pledging tens of thousands more lawsuits. While the major studios have so far stayed away from this tactic (after watching the music industry shoot itself in both feet), they are sure to be watching this experiment with interest.
