Your piracy may be safe for now

Jolly Roger.There have been a lot of doom and gloom articles about digital media piracy over the last several months. Most of the concern stems from suits that have been filed by the US Copyright Group against large groups of John Does. The suits would require ISPs to provide the personal information attached to the IP addresses listed as downloading digital media in breach of copyright.

A DC judge may have quashed things, for now anyway. Judge Rosemary Collyer made some blunt demands of the guys bringing these suits this week – prove that its worth the court’s time to handle the suits in batches as they have been filed. The actual wording looks like this: “MINUTE ORDER requiring Plaintiff to show cause in writing no later than June 21, 2010 why Doe Defendants 2 through 2000 should not be dismissed for misjoinder under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20.”

Rule 20 says that plaintiffs may only join defendants in a lawsuit if:

  • They assert any right to relief jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences; and
  • Any question of law or fact common to all plaintiffs will arise in the action.

If the plaintiff can’t show either of these conditions to be true, the suits will be “severed,” meaning they each have to be filed individually, which would be costly and time consuming, probably so much as to keep the suits from being filed.

In other words, you’re safe for now, pirates.

  

A producer’s take on file sharing

Hurt Locker.Nicholas Chartier, the producer of 2009’s Hurt Locker, has been notoriously outspoken against file sharing. The production company behind the film, Voltage Pictures, has fired up a lawsuit against some 50,000 people who downloaded the movie illegally. But Chartier doesn’t want to stop with them. He wants their kids in jail so that these filesharing types learn their lesson.

He recently responded to an email from a Boing Boing reader who said he would boycott films from Chatier and Voltage Pictures because of the suit with this:

Hi Nicholas, please feel free to leave your house open every time you go out and please tell your family to do so, please invite people in the streets to come in and take things from you, not to make money out of it by reselling it but just to use it for themselves and help themselves. If you think it’s normal they take my work for free, I’m sure you will give away all your furniture and possessions and your family will do the same. I can also send you my bank account information since apparently you work for free and your family too so since you have so much money you should give it away… I actually like to pay my employees, my family, my bank for their work and like to get paid for my work. I’m glad you’re a moron who believes stealing is right. I hope your family and your kids end up in jail one day for stealing so maybe they can be taught the difference. Until then, keep being stupid, you’re doing that very well. And please do not download, rent, or pay for my movies, I actually like smart and more important HONEST people to watch my films.

best regards,
Nicolas Chartier
Voltage Pictures, LLC

You totally aren’t throwing gasoline on the fire there Chartier. Yes, I’d imagine your fan base will grow by the hundreds of thousands after reading this. I mean, how could they not respect such a balanced and well-said argument as this. Surely, everyone thinks a murderer’s children should hit the ol’ shock chair right along with him, right? We can’t have murderous offspring running around can we? No, we most certainly can not.

What a jackass.