Alexander Hannf, a UK owner of the DVDR-Core domain name and its server has received a lawsuit by a movie studio worker for the MPAA early on a Saturday morning for suspect copyright infringement of movies. DVDR-Core hosted a BitTorrent hub, but while Hannf owned the domain name and paid for the server costs, the website was administered and managed by people he only has ever been in contact with and never had met in person.
What makes this case interesting is that Hannf actually had the site shut down in December as a result of reading up on the Dutch P2P raids and had the server's contents removed and cannot see why he is receiving a lawsuit several months later despite never being notified of any wrong doing. However, the lawsuit was actually filed last December 14th while DVDR-Core was still operating after the MPAA forced his IPS to reveal his details as the server was hosted in the US. DVD-Core linked up to 1,000 torrents, which included many popular movies at the time and had around 30,000 members at its peak.
Hannf has decided that he will definitely not settle for anything that will affect him or the sites members as he has little to lose. Hannf does not own a house and the only possessions that are worth anything are a few Guitars and an old inkjet, which he does not mind losing. He figures that BitTorrent Hubs should be just as legal as other P2P services since they only link and not host the infringing content, thus if Torrent hub owners can get sued, then why are Google, Yahoo and other search engines not getting sued for linking to copyright infringing sites? At the moment, Hannf plans on asking for legal and financial help on the Domain. RTV71 and eranros both submitted the following news via our news submit:
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You may have already guessed Hanff's supposed transgression. The movie studios suspect him of running a BitTorrent hub and helping people download copyrighted films via P2P technology. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of American) has gone after numerous BitTorrent hubs on similar charges and managed to shut many of them down. The plot here is a familiar one. There are, however, a couple of factors that make Hanff's story unique. For one, the US studios served Hanff papers at his home - in England. Secondly, Hanff, 31, owns the DVDR-Core domain name and pays for its server, but he has never actually administered the site. That's done by a group of online friends that Hanff has never met in person. Lastly, Hanff plans to fight the movie studios, making him a rarity among BitTorrent hub owners. "I am certainly not going to settle for anything that will compromise my integrity or the integrity of our members," Hanff said. "They can bankrupt me. I don't own a house, so they can't take it. I own a few guitars that they can have and an old inkjet printer. It's a waste of their time and of my time." Hanff argues that BitTorrent hubs should be covered by the same rulings that have made P2P services legal in the US. The hubs don't host actual movie files. They point people to computers where the movies are stored. It's the users and not the hub owners that are directly infringing on the movie studios' copyrights. And with personal files and open source software being moved via BitTorrent technology, there are plenty of substantial non-infringing uses for the hubs. Read the full rather lengthy article here. |
For the MPAA, this case will unlikely benefit them
regardless of how the case turns out, apart from the publicity and how the MPAA
will make examples out of pretty much anyone, just like the RIAA. In the end, this case is pretty much a pure waste of both the MPAA's and Hannf's time and even if the MPAA wins, they probably won't even get enough compensation to cover the court costs, let alone cover any possible losses that may have resulted from the operation of the hub.
RTV71 added: Hopefully this gets farther than LokiTorrent did.
Feel free to discuss and find out more about file sharing networks and relating legal issues on our Music Downloads, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues Forum.
Source: The Register - Internet & Law
