Well, it may be time to donate again! A lot of us thought that the LokiTorrent site had taken the money and run from a recent donation campaign, but it looks like they were indeed in court and now we can read that it wasn't enough to ward off a stiff penalty. As stated in this previous story, maybe all the $40,000 went to the MPAA who knows? But it wont be nearly enough!
According to the Earth Times, it looks like Edward Webber, who directed people to downloadable copies of copyrighted movies over at LokiTorrent, has just felt the sting of the justice system in the United States. Webber is fined $1-million in a judgment issued by a Dallas court. This is a very loud message for file sharing networks and also the BitTorrent model. Webmasters or operators, whatever you want to call them, claim that they don't have any idea or control on what is being transferred on their network, however the MPAA was able to convince the court in Dallas to the contrary. They say that if your site boasts to be one that fastest downloads and keeps a track of what is available where, then you can't pretend to be an innocent bystander.
John G. Malcolm, head of the MPAA's anti-piracy efforts said, "It will have a lot of records as to who these people are and what they provided, and that information will be of great interest to our members. The MPAA would turn over information to prosecutors in appropriate cases." The site Lokitorrent.com was serving as a tracker that allows people who want to download files to connect with those who have them and want to swap them. |
The quote above is similar to the quote in the previous
story, but what I find interesting is that the MPAA is even looking at
Television programs in it's investigation! Many readers of our
P2P forums are unaware (as I was) that this is considered an illegal activity and we were considering it not much more than time shifting. Well, it will be up to the courts to decide, but it looks like the MPAA says they don't like it. Time wiill tell in this matter, I think that what we have here is a situation where we have illegal "broadcasting" or distribution of private works. This is not the same as making a personal backup, and it's pretty bad news for many I am sure.
As we have been saying all along to our readers, especially those of us
residing in the United States, the MPAA is very aggressive and even more so than
the RIAA. We just were reading the other day how the MPAA had taken down the
LoiTorrent site and replaced it with a threatening banner, but now this has
taken on a much more serious tone. How this will affect other BitTorrent sites
is unknown, but if you are residing in the United States you may want to start
considering a legal strategy if you wish to direct the distribution of movies as
a tracker.
Source: Earth Times
