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droidman4
join:2005-12-12
Ottawa, ON

droidman4

Member

Australian version of Voltage case

»www.bbc.com/news/world-a ··· 32200681

Looks like the Australian courts have come to the same conclusion as ours.
JMJimmy
join:2008-07-23

JMJimmy

Member

They awarded costs to the ISP though
droidman4
join:2005-12-12
Ottawa, ON

droidman4

Member

I thought the same is true for us, just that Tek is appealing the amount?
JMJimmy
join:2008-07-23

JMJimmy

Member

said by droidman4:

I thought the same is true for us, just that Tek is appealing the amount?

Tek was awarded 6% of costs and appealing... 6% might have well been zero.

JAMESMTL
Premium Member
join:2014-09-02

JAMESMTL

Premium Member

6% of costs is up for debate. After reading Tek's request and the judgement, i have a hard time believing Tek's request was justified. How can Tek claim what was it , 55K in infrastructure upgrades to deal with DDOS attacks. How is that related to the cost of complying with the court decision to provide Voltage the subscriber information. Same with their claims for marketing costs, CSR expenses and so on.
JMJimmy
join:2008-07-23

JMJimmy

Member

said by JAMESMTL:

6% of costs is up for debate. After reading Tek's request and the judgement, i have a hard time believing Tek's request was justified. How can Tek claim what was it , 55K in infrastructure upgrades to deal with DDOS attacks. How is that related to the cost of complying with the court decision to provide Voltage the subscriber information. Same with their claims for marketing costs, CSR expenses and so on.

TSI's argument would be that the attention brought by the lawsuit resulted in impacts on their business that were not a normal part of doing business for them. Because Voltage made a conscious decision to only target TSI's customers in the lawsuit those impacts are far more concentrated than they would have otherwise been. It's a tough argument to make, and rarely works, but if it's a clear enough cause and effect it can be a valid one. This case it's not clear so was never likely to succeed. I don't think the $55k for infrastructure can be proved... it was convenient timing for the DDoS but you can't conclusively say it was caused by the Voltage suit.

In the matter of increased CSR expenses, I think that is entirely valid. If someone sues you for say a car accident, no one calls up the dealer of the car to ask about the lawsuit, but people did call their ISP to find out about the Voltage lawsuit. That's not a normal cost to bare but due to the unique nature of Norwich orders it's one that occurs. It's a clear impact of the suit that can be itemized and the impact clearly shown due to call logs.

Roughly $180-220k is what they should have been awarded imo.

JAMESMTL
Premium Member
join:2014-09-02

JAMESMTL

Premium Member

As highlighted in the judgement none of those cost were related to complying with the court order to supply the subscriber information. To expand on your thinking, you could equally make an argument that the subscribers whose accounts were involved with the copyright infringements should be held financially liable for all of Tek's cost related in this matter.

Had those subscriber accounts not been used for the purposes of copyright infringements, Tek would never have been subject to any of these expenses.
JMJimmy
join:2008-07-23

JMJimmy

Member

said by JAMESMTL:

As highlighted in the judgement none of those cost were related to complying with the court order to supply the subscriber information. To expand on your thinking, you could equally make an argument that the subscribers whose accounts were involved with the copyright infringements should be held financially liable for all of Tek's cost related in this matter.

Voltage could, and likely will, make that argument if any of the cases make it to trial. It would only be 1/1100th or 1/2000th per person who loses. TSI shouldn't be subject to any costs as they are a neutral 3rd party.
said by JAMESMTL:

Had those subscriber accounts not been used for the purposes of copyright infringements, Tek would never have been subject to any of these expenses.

It's not been proven that any of the accounts did anything. One could also argue that had an illegal search and seizure not taken place none of this would have happened. Canipre should pay it all

JAMESMTL
Premium Member
join:2014-09-02

JAMESMTL

Premium Member

Illegal search and seizure seems like a bit of a stretch. Canipre did not intercept private communications between two parties. These users were publicly broadcasting the fact they were willing to share works for which they were not the rights-holder. Canipre responded by initiating sessions with theses users and downloading portions of the infringing works.

There is no expectatition of privacy when you willingly broadcast something publicly. If you post something on a publicly accessible blog, you can't later claim a person violated your privacy by reading that blog.
JMJimmy
join:2008-07-23

1 edit

JMJimmy

Member

said by JAMESMTL:

Illegal search and seizure seems like a bit of a stretch. Canipre did not intercept private communications between two parties. These users were publicly broadcasting the fact they were willing to share works for which they were not the rights-holder. Canipre responded by initiating sessions with theses users and downloading portions of the infringing works.

There is no expectatition of privacy when you willingly broadcast something publicly. If you post something on a publicly accessible blog, you can't later claim a person violated your privacy by reading that blog.

Canipre is selling investigative services which requires a license/authority from the provincial government. They aren't licensed. If all they did was scrape swarm data it would be as you said, just grabbing publicly available information. They went further and initiated a search by requesting data from an IP and seized what was returned. Voltage could do that on their own or a licensed investigator in cooperation with the police but not any random person/company who decides they want to invade people's privacy.

A simple analogy:

Swarm = a bar, Canipre walks in and hears that you have Yugioh cards at your house. They go to Voltage and say 'we'll get proof all your cards are there if you pay us'... Voltage agrees. Canipre goes into your house, gets 1-2 cards from a card dispenser kept there, without a warrant, and takes that back to Voltage who uses it to prove you've copied all their Yugioh cards. A case like that would get laughed out of court.
MaynardKrebs
We did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee.
Premium Member
join:2009-06-17

MaynardKrebs to JAMESMTL

Premium Member

to JAMESMTL
said by JAMESMTL:

As highlighted in the judgement none of those cost were related to complying with the court order to supply the subscriber information. To expand on your thinking, you could equally make an argument that the subscribers whose accounts were involved with the copyright infringements should be held financially liable for all of Tek's cost related in this matter.

Had those subscriber accounts not been used for the purposes of copyright infringements, Tek would never have been subject to any of these expenses.

There's no absolute or even balance of probability that ANY of those accounts actually infringed anything - yet.

huh_wha
@start.ca

huh_wha

Anon

said by MaynardKrebs:

There's no absolute or even balance of probability that ANY of those accounts actually infringed anything - yet.

That's a recurring theme here, people forgetting that in any prosecution, criminal or civil, the first order of business is gluing the infraction to the defendant.

When said defendant is standing over a body with a blood-spattered gun still in the hand, that glue is real easy.

When all you have is the likes of [:cough:] Canipre asserting that their overseas-based, flawed Guardaley software detected someone using a very easily spoofable network address thousands of miles away, sight unseen, well...

Of course, none of that will ever be heard in a courtroom, because the last thing Voltage wants is litigation and they'll absolutely never allow an actual trial process to begin. They wouldn't even make it through discovery without getting laughed at. Out loud.

Frankly, allowing this to proceed even this far makes a mockery of our justice system. Something real easy to do these days.
taraf
join:2011-05-07
Ottawa, ON

taraf to JMJimmy

Member

to JMJimmy
said by JMJimmy:

Canipre is selling investigative services which requires a license/authority from the provincial government. They aren't licensed. If all they did was scrape swarm data it would be as you said, just grabbing publicly available information. They went further and initiated a search by requesting data from an IP and seized what was returned. Voltage could do that on their own or a licensed investigator in cooperation with the police but not any random person/company who decides they want to invade people's privacy.

Canipre also didn't download the files in their entirety from the swarm, so they can't actually prove that the file was actually the movie in question.
JMJimmy
join:2008-07-23

JMJimmy

Member

said by taraf:

Canipre also didn't download the files in their entirety from the swarm, so they can't actually prove that the file was actually the movie in question.

I think a better argument for that is that the law requires a substantial portion of the work to have been copied for infringement to occur. Because they only compared a couple fragments they only have proof of insignificant copying. That's part of why they'd want access to peoples hard drives, to gain access to the upload ratio number.

Spike5
Premium Member
join:2008-05-16
Toronto, ON

Spike5 to droidman4

Premium Member

to droidman4
I think its scary that the US is the only ones with rulings that follow common sense. Another one came recently.
This is why the copyright cartels are pushing their efforts onto other countries (like the UK) in an attempt to create an example for the US to follow.

»torrentfreak.com/judge-i ··· -150410/
MaynardKrebs
We did it. We heaved Steve. Yipee.
Premium Member
join:2009-06-17

MaynardKrebs to JMJimmy

Premium Member

to JMJimmy
said by JMJimmy:

said by taraf:

Canipre also didn't download the files in their entirety from the swarm, so they can't actually prove that the file was actually the movie in question.

I think a better argument for that is that the law requires a substantial portion of the work to have been copied for infringement to occur. Because they only compared a couple fragments they only have proof of insignificant copying. That's part of why they'd want access to peoples hard drives, to gain access to the upload ratio number.

A book can have some pages photocopied by a user as 'fair use' - let's say 10 pages of perhaps 300, or about 3.3%. By that metric, somebody who torrents the same percentage of say a 2Gb movie before they realize that nothing from Voltage is worth watching will have downloaded about 66Mb before they kill the d/l.