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Hollywood Studios Caught Pirating Movies on BitTorrent
- chairmankaga 14y agoHow does this distinguish between nodes that are only there to collect the IP's of all other users?
- mikeash 14y agoThose nodes should be run by the studio that produced the movie in question, while this post is, as I understand it, about studio A downloading a movie that belongs to studio B.
- indiecore 14y agoUm...duh? Employees of studios are people too, people are known to download stuff at work. This doesn't signal an official position of a company, just some people torrenting at work.
- csense 14y agoWith the huge damages that can be gained from copyright lawsuits, why don't the studios just sue each other into oblivion over this?
- usaphp 14y agoLOL now everybody in Warner Bros know who downloaded AssHoleFever: http://torrentfreak.com/images/warner-pirates.jpg http://torrentfreak.com/images/warner-pirates.jpg
- jspthrowaway2 14y agoThis isn't the first time. As with the last time a similar story made the rounds, I'm surprised by the cognitive dissonance among those that would sympathize with pirates: when it's Joe Homeowner, an IP address does not identify a person!, but when we find an IP out of Warner Brothers's netblock, the studio "is caught". Let's be honest. In all likelihood, this is an employee sitting around after hours abusing the bandwidth, or a compromised machine, or something -- Warner Brothers very likely didn't have a meeting and say "let's pirate some films". (This does not reflect upon my views re: piracy/copyright nor which side I'd claim to fall on, which might surprise you after reading this comment, it's merely something I've observed from the pro-piracy camp.)
- cozeulodorieso 14y agoIt's not cognitive dissonance; it's a relevant distinction in the law. Adults aren't responsible for the actions of other adults (generally, and with respect to piracy). So while an IP address can identify a group of adults, it can't ever identify which one was committing piracy. But corporations are typically responsible for the actions of their employees, that is, they are vicariously liable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability. Under at least some circumstances, if a studio's employees are committing piracy, the studio is also liable for that piracy. As long as the IP address corresponds to that corporation, it's "close enough" to signal legal liability (under some circumstances).
- jspthrowaway2 14y agoMy comment has nothing to do with the law.
- cozeulodorieso 14y agoLegal distinctions may have no bearing on your ethical judgments, but they may for other people -- and an explanation of other people's ethical judgments is what you asked about. Edit: I don't wanna get in an internet fight, dude.
- SCdF 14y agoSo? This shows that there exists employees of anti-pirate companies who themselves pirate. This doesn't prove that, say, the head of these organisations-- who are the ones setting these policies and conversing with the media-- are the ones doing the pirating. I can't be a surprise to anyone that people's moral compass doesn't consistently align with their employers.
- mgkimsal 14y agoBut will one of the studios have the MPAA or some other org file lawsuits against that studio? So what if it was just a few low level people doing it - it happened with the studio's equipment. All of them were gung-ho to send threatening notices to university campuses when some students were pirating. Either their policies should be enforced across the board, or they lose any moral weight in this discussion (which, ftr, I think they lost ages ago).
- novamantis 14y agoIt hasn't got anything to do with morals; it's about ideology.
- photorized 14y agoHow many of those machines are pwn3d?
- elssar 14y agoMeh, the studios will just claim that they were researching torrents and illegal file sharing.