Film Studios Win $24 Million Against Web Site
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Hollywood&#39;s major movie studios said they won a $23.8 million judgment against a California company and its Malaysian owner for operating a Web site that charged customers to download illegally copied movies.
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The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has won a lawsuit against the operators of&#160;TorrentSpy.com, with the judge ruling in favor of the MPAA because the Web site operators tampered with evidence.In a ruling that could have implications for the privacy of Web site users, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, ruled that TorrentSpy has infringed MPAA copyrights in a default judgment against the operators of the site.Cooper, in a ruling made public Monday, agreed with the MPAA that defendants Justin Bunnell, Forrest Parker, Wes Parker and Valence Media had destroyed evidence after another judge had ordered them to keep server logs, user IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and other information. TorrentSpy billed itself as a central location to find files distributed on BitTorrent P-to-P (peer-to-peer) networks.The defendants&#39; conduct was &quot;obstreperous,&quot; Cooper wrote in her decision. &quot;They have engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in a effort to hide evidence of such destruction,&quot; she wrote.TorrentSpy had located its servers in the Netherlands and argued that Dutch law protected them from having to turn over server logs and other information. In May, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian ruled that TorrentSpy must preserve server data logs held in random access memory, or RAM.That decision was widely criticized as being an unreasonable standard because information held in RAM is temporary, but Cooper, in her new ruling, said TorrentSpy destroyed or altered several types of evidence, including user IP addresses, discussion forum postings about the trading of movies and moderator identities. &quot;A substantial number of items of evidence have been destroyed,&quot; she wrote. &quot;Defendants were on notice that this information would be of importance in this case.&quot;TorrentSpy&#39;s lawyer Ira Rothken said his client had concerns about protecting users&#39; privacy. TorrentSpy will appeal Cooper&#39;s decision, he said.&quot;It&#39;s not a ruling on the merits of the case,&quot; he said. &quot;One person&#39;s willful destruction of evidence is another person&#39;s willful attempt to comply with customer privacy policies.&quot;The ruling, if it stands, could expose private information about Web site users in many civil lawsuits, Rothken added. &quot;This doesn&#39;t apply only to TorrentSpy, but to anyone who operates a Web site,&quot; he said.A ruling on damages in case will happen at a later date.The MPAA, which filed the case against TorrentSpy in February 2006, applauded Cooper&#39;s ruling. &quot;The court&#39;s decision ... sends a potent message to future defendants that this egregious behavior will not be tolerated by the judicial system,&quot; John Malcolm, the MPAA&#39;s executive vice president and director of worldwide antipiracy operations, said in a statement. &quot;The sole purpose of TorrentSpy and sites like it is to facilitate and promote the unlawful dissemination of copyrighted content. TorrentSpy is a one-stop shop for copyright infringement.&quot;
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They are running for the hills but the end of the trail is Little Big Horn, where Custer made his last stand, and lost his life. Of course the Indians didn't do too well either. AP: "Girding for a potential threat from Apple Inc., online DVD rental service Netflix Inc. is lifting its limits on how long most subscribers can watch movies and television shows over high-speed Internet connections." Please oh Netflix strategy gods, get a copy of Marketing Warfare and read it. Netflix owns what used to be a great hill, for some it might still be one, the movies-by-mail hill. They obviously feel they need to be in the Internet movie business, and in that they have a huge head start that they aren't using. They are being too damned fair to their competitors.  Give the users the ability to grant other sites access to their movie ratings. Build Netflix into the social network of movies. You're already there, but you need to make every other social network connect up to Netflix. You need to be the hub for movie-watching on the net. You're lucky that so far that's what you are. But soon you will have to fight for that too, and then it will be too late to try to force your competitors to connect to your site. They will have data that you want. Then the nature of the negotiating will change. Right now you have the data. Use that power! Make the users everyone think of Netflix as the place on the Net for Flix.
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The Jupitermedia Corporation, an Internet research company that also sells photos and art, agreed to pay $23 million for Mediabistro.com.
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By Mary McNamara  HOLLYWOOD -- Even Oscar can't fight the Information Age. The 79th Annual Academy Awards haXFs surrendered to the Internet, with a newly renovated Oscar.com.
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Six U.S. film studios have filed civil  complaints against Chinese file-sharing firm Xunlei Networking  Technology Co Ltd, part-owned by Google Inc, for copyright  infringement and are seeking more than 7 million yuan ($1  million) in damages and costs, the Motion Picture Association  said.
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â¢ 2004-11-05 â¢ Major Hollywood studios have recently announced that they would sue people who illegally download movies from the Internet.
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Today, we look at Digital Rights Management. A key question here is: "Should you distribute your video online?" Movie industry figures who have watched what happened in the music industry with Napster and its successors are determined not to find themselves in a similar predicament. When a movie studio invests $50 million in a film, it wants to be quite sure the work is not going to be passed around Kazaa and BitTorrent like so many MP3s. By Pearson Education, Inc. 1025
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Technology News, A trade group representing seven major movie studios filed a first wave of lawsuits against individuals they say are offering pirated copies of films using peer-to-peer file-sharing programs.
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Movie studios and the Motion  Picture Association of America said on Thursday they would sue  individuals suspected of illegally distributing movies over the  Internet.
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A video with Will Ferrell has become a sensation on a Web site that has the backing of a major venture capital firm.
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Popular video download site compromises in its alliance with Hollywood, but expects online evolution.
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Hollywood film studios filed suit  against online video file swappers in federal courts across the  United States on Tuesday, making good on a promise to punish  computer users they claim are violating copyright laws.
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Mr. Skin.com, a Web site that feature Hollywood nude scenes, is getting a bump in visitors thanks to the movie âKnocked Up.â
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Movie studios and the Motion Picture Association of America said on Thursday they would sue individuals suspected of illegally distributing movies over the Internet.
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LOS ANGELES -- A source said Hollywood studios are preparing to file copyright infringement lawsuits against people they say are illegally sharing movies online.
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Movie director Spike Lee has won his  cybersquatting case against a Philippines-based operator who  misused the domain name, spikelee.com, to redirect surfers to a  pornographic Web site, arbitrators ruled Friday.