Copyright troll Rightscorp has filed suit against two Comcast users after the pair repeatedly ignored settlement requests and copyright infringement notices. For a few years now Digital Rights Corp (aka Rightscorp) has been trying to turn copyright infringement notices into a revenue stream, sending accused pirates letters telling them they can avoid court battles if they just pay a $20 fee.
Usually Rightscorp doesn't head to court, since the name of the game is making money off the "settlement-o-matic" requests used to scare users into paying up front.
In this case, the two people in question were sued for trading a pair of twenty year old albums, including When the Kite String Pops, the 1994 debut album from sludge metal band Acid Bath.
While one of the listed defendants ignored 11 notices from Rightscorp, the other ignored quite a few more.
"Rightscorp sent Defendant 288 notices via their ISP Comcast Cable Communications, Inc. from December 14, 2014 to May 12, 2015 demanding that Defendant stop illegally distributing Plaintiff’s work. Defendant ignored each and every notice and continued to illegally distribute Plaintiff’s work," the complaint reads.
Rightscorp's client in this case (Rotten Records) is demanding an injunction blocking further infringement by both individuals, deletion of the offending material, a settlement of $150,000 per work if the infringement is deemed willful, and attorneys' fees. Comcast is likely being targeted specifically since the ISP sometimes strips the settlement requests out of Rightscorp infringement notices.
While most ISPs have agreed to turn over customer information to Rightscorp quickly, some ISPs like Mediacom Communications and Windstream have been fighting these requests for several years now. These fights have come at a cost; last quarter Rightscorp spent about $1.24 million in data collection and legal fees to collect just $308,000.
As such, a win here against these two customers will surely be used by the outfit to loudly trumpet Rightscorp's continued viability.