“Maximum Conviction” Pirates Won’t Get Maximum Conviction

J.Lucas

Active Member
“Maximum Conviction” Pirates Won’t Get Maximum Conviction
Added: Wednesday, June 5th, 2013
Category: Recent Headlines Involving File Sharing > Ridiculous Criminal Trials

Mass lawsuits, launched by numerous copyright trolls, seem to be consigned to the
dustbin of legal history soon. The idea of the so-called “commercial invoicing” is
that the copyright owners find a potential pirate from a file-sharing service,
get the broadband provider to identify them and extort money by threatening to
take them to court. In most cases (especially if it is about porn video), the victims
prefer to settle in order to avoid expensive court litigation. The scheme of copyright
trolls has worked quite well until judges started to understand that it’s simply abusing
the legal system for extortion.

For example, recently a federal judge slammed “reverse class action lawsuits” while
dismissing an LA-based movie company’s case which claimed dozens of unidentified
defendants had pirated its film off the web. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Voltage
Pictures to the US District Court in Medford. The plaintiffs were seeking up to $180,000
in damages from each of three dozen defendants alleged of pirating the 2012 film “Maximum Conviction”.

Voltage Pictures demanded $30,000 for the alleged copyright violation and an additional
$150,000 from each “John Doe” in statutory damages in case of willful conduct. However,
the US district court judge Ann Aiken refused the plaintiffs, pointing out that the movie
company had unfairly lumped the plaintiffs together in a “reverse class action suit” with
the purpose of saving over $200,000 in court costs. In addition, they demanded $7,500 for
allegedly illegally viewing a $10 video.

The movie company wanted a jury trial, accusing the unnamed defendants of using their PCs
to illegally copy and distribute its movie “Maximum Conviction”. However, at the time of
the initial filing, the defendants weren’t identified by name – the plaintiffs had only their
IP addresses. The judge claimed that the manner in which the movie company was pursuing the
Doe defendants led to $123,850 savings in filing fees only, at the expense of the fairness to
the defendants. Although the judge agreed that such technologies as BitTorrent allow for large-scale
copyright violation, it turned out that some of the defendants had unsecured IP addresses, the others
prohibited uploading, and the rest were associated with institutional accounts like businesses and schools.

By:
SaM
June 5th,2013
 

Kerouac

Member
My only comment would be to Voltage Productions not to sue these dudes for piracy, but demand they undergo psychiatric evaluation for being wacko enough to think Voltage films were worth copying.

Pirating a Voltage film makes about as much sense a stealing sand from Death Valley.
 

marky96

Active Member
My only comment would be to Voltage Productions not to sue these dudes for piracy, but demand they undergo psychiatric evaluation for being wacko enough to think Voltage films were worth copying.

Pirating a Voltage film makes about as much sense a stealing sand from Death Valley.

Exactly right! Of all the films someone could copy it's just ridiculous that they would want to copy a Voltage film like this when it never even had a cinema release in the first place!
 
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