Illegal File-Sharer Ordered to Pay $1.5 Million

[sykozis]

Zak, might want to check some facts. Your article isn't exactly accurate.

[citation][nom]abbadon_34[/nom]that f*cked up, sound like entrapment, he bought it through bit torrent which by default shares it with others. and how did they server him (summon to court) by email to his isp? he letter to bittorrent? i doubt it was the legal way of face to face "you're served"[/citation]
He acquired the "movies" through a subscription to one of Flava Works' websites. He illegally copied the movies from their website and illegally shared them through BitTorrent.

[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]He should have just shown up to defend himself, there's no excuse for laziness. I doubt whatever movies he pirated even cost 150k to make so the defense would be easy.[/citation]
It may not have been exactly a matter of ignorance or laziness. The case was in Illinois. The man lives in Hampton, Va....

 

[xpeh]

[citation][nom]thehook[/nom]What do we learn from this matter? - Never buy any movies! ^^[/citation]

Specifically, never buy your porn.

 

[sykozis]

There's too many free porn sites to justify paying for it....

 

[Pinhedd]

[citation][nom]Camikazi[/nom]Wait, they say it was shared 3,449 times and he was fined $1.5 million that comes out to $435 per share... that seems a bit excessive to me.[/citation]

The 1.5 million comes from statutory damages, $150,000 per infringed registered copyright. This case was tried in a federal court which means that the works were registered and thus subject to statutory damages. Were the work not a registered copyright the case would have been heard in a state court instead and subject only to regular damages.

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]tramit[/nom]He technically could. That would screw up his life pretty good too, since credit is actually pretty important in this day and age. If he needed a loan down the line, good luck with not being denied left and right. Cars, houses, credit cards...[/citation]
Credit is easy to get back especially if he owns a house, I recently went through bankruptcy (I was stupid when younger) but since I own and am making payments on a house it is now 6 months since bankruptcy has been finalized and my credit is up to normal spot and rising. Credit is rather simple to raise and having no credit but cash available tends to make it easier to get things, bad credit will hurt you, no credit (with ready cash) or good credit tends to help. As for credit cards I have yet to find a company that won't give out cards to anyone who asks and many who don't, you might not get a $100,000 limit on your card but you can get cards easily.

 

[tului]

[citation][nom]kinggremlin[/nom]Read people. It's fundamental. Despite THG not being able to speak English, the judge in this case can. $1.5 million is what Flava Works asked for. Since the guy never showed up to court, he had no defense, and the court's ruling automatically defaulted to what the plaintiff asked for.[/citation]

I still think someone should torture then murder someone who would ask for that much in damages anyway.

 

[Antimatter79]

Maybe the defendant was too embarrassed to show up to court b/c of the content of the materials he had purchased and distributed.

 

[jkflipflop98]

And here I thought the justice system would actually serve out justice. This is just a fleecing. They schedule a court date 800 miles from where the guy lives then slam him for over 10x the amount it cost to make the movie in the first place? Wtf?

 

[atavax]

I don't get how the evidence is applicable in court. They broke into someone's private desktop and secretly recorded information. It should be no more applicable then someone breaking into your place of residence and secretly installing hidden cameras...

 

[zodiacfml]

Holy fack!!! Am I the only who went to search for this company on Google since I thought this must be a huge company with good porn vids but damn!! I have never been violated like this when I saw their site.

 

[kinggraves]

[citation][nom]Camikazi[/nom]Credit is easy to get back especially if he owns a house, I recently went through bankruptcy (I was stupid when younger) but since I own and am making payments on a house it is now 6 months since bankruptcy has been finalized and my credit is up to normal spot and rising. Credit is rather simple to raise and having no credit but cash available tends to make it easier to get things, bad credit will hurt you, no credit (with ready cash) or good credit tends to help. As for credit cards I have yet to find a company that won't give out cards to anyone who asks and many who don't, you might not get a $100,000 limit on your card but you can get cards easily.[/citation]

The obliviousness of people with money. Credit is not "easy to repair". If it was then people would be declaring bankruptcy left and right and credit would be worthless to begin with. Let's take your example. If he doesn't have a mortgage then he can't use that to leverage credit. He won't be able to get a mortgage with favorable terms since he has bad credit. If he doesn't have cash on hand, he cannot get to rebuilding credit to buy things with credit. It's a slippery slope to go down and very hard to climb up if you don't have the means to fix it.

[citation][nom]jkflipflop98[/nom]And here I thought the justice system would actually serve out justice. This is just a fleecing. They schedule a court date 800 miles from where the guy lives then slam him for over 10x the amount it cost to make the movie in the first place? Wtf?[/citation]

Again, in this justice system it's easy to fix. All he has to do is go get a lawyer to fight it. The lawyer will appeal based solely on the fact the venue was too far away. This can be fixed.

I have a feeling he won't, he's just trying to bury his head in the sand. Flava works knows their product, porn companies know people are afraid to fight them. Gay thug porn? Do you think he wants to admit to that, that he wants his family and friends knowing? Maybe he's in the closet, in denial. They go for these cases KNOWING that the client won't show up.

 

[shafe88]

[citation][nom]teodoreh[/nom]So If I shoplift a box of sugar costing $1 and get caught, then the super market can sue me for 500.000$??[/citation]Only if you share it.

 

[mstngs351]

[citation][nom]Christopher1[/nom]1.5 million dollars. Much more than people get when their family members are murdered, if they get anything at all.Sheer insanity here and weaselman: someone in his home could have uploaded the digitally marked files without his permission. Enough said. If I had been on this jury, I wouldn't have given this company one red cent.[/citation]

Christopher, please be sure to read an article before commenting on it. Lawsuits almost always start out with a very high number as they expect it to get knocked down. Problem was the guy didn't bother to show up for court to defend himself or it could have been completely different.

Also comparing a murder which isn't about people hurting companies profits to something like this is your basic apples to oranges scenario.

 

[Guest]

Well, his mistakes really came down to actually signing up to Flava's website, then purchasing digital copies from them, which contained trace code. Some websites have been doing similar things with their photos and/or videos for years.

If you're going to share your content, you shouldn't be buying anything directly from content providers, and said copies should be physical disks purchased from third-party vendors. Being unaware of various forms of drm contained in some digital content, was his biggest mistake.

http://dietrolldie.com/2012/11/01/1-5-million-default-judgment-against-kywan-fisher-flava-works-inc-112-cv-01888-ndil/

Why buy directly from the provider anyway? The same stuff can be found for free with a little digging, and third-party vendors are almost always cheaper.

 

[feldagriff]

The most frighting part of all of this is how many people are defending this ridiculous judgement. No matter how unbalanced a verdict is there are always people who come to the defense of these jokes of injustice, with the argument of "he broke the law, people who break the law are criminals, they deserve whatever they get". Well, if that were true there would be no need for courts, you could just enter the data for what the person did in a computer and it spits out a verdict. The irony is that we don't do that because we think we need people with common sense to determine what is excessive and unfair, but it is just crazy how often the people in the judicial system seem to be at the opposite end of common sense and fairness. How any reasonable person can think this was a fair verdict completely eludes me.

 

[lloyd adams]

like Monica said I'm dazzled that someone can earn $4911 in a few weeks on the internet. did you see this webpage http://ace60.cℴm check it out.

 

[wmalinowski]

[citation][nom]feldagriff[/nom] How any reasonable person can think this was a fair verdict completely eludes me.[/citation]

Actually, it quite a fair verdict when don't show up to court in the first place.

 

[xero141]

[citation][nom]zulutech[/nom]I'm going to share "Flava Works'" videos up here in Canada then send them an email just to rub it in their faces that it's legal up here. And no porn jokes. Those assholes.[/citation]


yeah i was gonna do that too til google told me what kind of porn it was. well, to each, his own. good luck. =D

 

[lamorpa]

Gotta' love the "I should be able to rip stuff off if I want to and not get the legally established penalties" crowd. What a bunch of immature whiners. I offer you a trick to not getting these penalties: Don't rip off copyrighted media; Pay for them.

 

[mstngs351]

[citation][nom]overclockingrocks[/nom]DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! Knowing we legally can DL stuff like this and pass it around for personal use legally is one of the many reasons I love our wonderful country and it's wonderful laws. The true north strong and FREE![/citation]

pfft, it's no surprise that Canada doesn't have laws in place to protect what is primarily U.S. content. No real incentive. You can bet it would be a different story if you had a dominant entertainment industry to protect.

 

[mstngs351]

I decided to check out the Flava works website. I feel like I got trolled.