200,000 U.S. BitTorrent Users Sued

Welcome to the U.S. Where everyone is sued.

The RIAA need to calm down and realize that they'll get very little from these cases

I don't think the RIAA, a private corporation, should have access to see what I do online at all. They have no authority there and should not be able to pressure ISPs into doing their bidding. I think the government should stop them before it gets out of control.

Or we could sue the RIAA for invasion of privacy.

US is F'ed.

Reality theater time. Those who pirate are going to pay and soon it will be a felony with mandatory prison time.

America is just... screwed up. For a country that always talks about "freedom" and "rights". Their people seem to have very little of it.

You see... China, a communist country wouldn't let the RIAA do what they want.

America needs to stop bending over when someone has a whinge

Whoa, that was a bad movie (not good-bad, but bad-bad).
Taste aside, this whole RIAA thing suing people left and right is ridiculous.

The whole suing people in general is just becoming stupid. All the tech companies are doing it.

If I were a judge, I'd be banging my head on a wall every day.

No, actually copyright holders have a legal obligation to sue or they can lose their copyright. Pirates however do not have a right to pirate. That is why every civilized country in the word is increasing the penalty for piracy. No one is losing any rights or freedoms. Nothing is free in this life. If you want something then you must pay for it.

If you think China is better I suggest you move there and see if you are killed for posting an opposing view to the government. It happens all the time.

Right, why does China need the RIAA? The "People's Gov't" already tells you what you can & can't watch, and what you can & can't download. Great Firewall of China, anyone?

Communism isn't the problem, corruption is, and the unadulterated capitalism of the last 2 decades that has crushed the middle class, and put a crap load of the gov't under corporate control proves that the US isn't immune to the very same problem. E.g. FCC, Comcast, NBC deal, where one of the regulators took a very lucrative job at Comcast/NBC only weeks after voting to approve the merger. [Troll] If only the damn teabaggers would stop voting corporate yes men into the house of reps, crap like this would be prosecuted. [/Troll]

That's the point. If they actually get to a lawsuit, they'll almost certainly win, but it will involve huge amounts of time and money, and the chances that they'll actually get the full amount of the applicable fine is virtually nonexistent - an immediate $150,000+ debt would crush most people that are pirating stuff. However, if you can settle out of court for even a fraction of that, you still have the potential to recover a massive amount in the aggregate, without incurring a majority of the costs associated with actually litigating.

Surely the RIAA would lose money by suing everyone?

The average joe who downloads isn't made of gold.

It won't. Their entire existence is derived from the fear they put into content creator's and studios heads that if they didn't go to insane extremes, no one would get a dime.

No, they are just "opening new Revenue streams". By strong arming the US government and laying down tons of nasty invasive laws, they find ways for the government to enforce ways for them to extort money form people.

The report they buried that said "Pirates buy the most media" doesn't help their case. They're suing their own customers.

The demand is there for things customers want, but in order to keep their tight control over things they have to abuse the legal system and our rights. If they would find ways to offer people the things they want for reasonable prices, there would be FAR less piracy.

How is it a loss of billions if a percentage of the people pirating something cannot even hope to afford the product? Outside the US in some countries the price of some of the things pirated are more than a years salary.

Find ways to help service your customers! Don't force the government to mandate your bad business model!

America is f'ed up. But its not the all the people its the liberals running this country. The liberals are a very corrupt political group. They rule buy kanzian economics. Basically communists. We will vote them out in 2012 and america will be back to is freedom and liberty under god.

That is the point, they save money by bundling the lawsuits together and using it to force ISPs and others to give them the info, then offer to settle, turning it into a business opportunity.

The courts were not there to be a way to make money, but a way to settle disputes. When it becomes a way to make money, its legitimacy is lost.

America has a broken system. That is why it's in a crap situation.

Reality Dropkick Time. Those who impose on the God Given Rights outlined in the Constitution of the United States of America, such as the the 14th Amendment, will either find the righteous foot of the Supreme Court lodged in their asses, or enrage those who they rely on enough that they are tossed into obscurity and unimportance while the world moves on without them.

Despite the faced of eroding freedom, the United States has had far more imposing civil liberty threats on the horizon in the last few hundred years than we do now. And there's just absolutely no way that the RIAA and MPAA can continue what they're doing on an individual level without due cause/due process of the law.

im sure most of the people won't even watch the movies if it isn't free.

These lawsuits may make them a quick amount of money, but if they managed to catch 200k people, how many are actually doing it, over a million? Are they going to just sit around and take this legalized extortion? The long term result of these suits will not be a revenue, but public outcry.

Piracy may be wrong, but sueing people with a frightening number to get them to settle for less is wrong as well. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip and you can't take money from people who are already going broke from the recession. They can just not pay, go to prison, fill up our already overcrowded prison systems, then what? You can't stop over a million people, they lost the war on piracy from the moment they didn't understand it.

While not a huge fan of the RIAA, nor a huge fan of the cost of media, I have to say that I am kinda glad this is going on. America is for freedom, the freedom to pursue dreams, and make something from nothing. If copyright law was not how it was then the people with the ability to make these movies and music a reality would either not bother, or not put as much effort into it. Unless the artists/directors/actors/etc are protected in their work then it all dries up and we become every other countries film and music industry, which (with rare exception) absolutely sucks.
Back when almost all movies were $15+, and all CDs were $10+ it made sense to pirate because the risk was low, and the media expensive. But now songs are $.50-$1, CDs (after a few months) are generally $5, and most movies are in the $5-15 depending of the medium/format, not to mention dollar rentals, and cheap streaming services like hulu and netflix. And this is after years of inflation as well. The less people pirate, the less the artists and distribution companies will work with the RIAA (yes, they hate them too), and the cheaper all media will get.

If a terrorist attacked the RIAA, very few would be angered.

the RIAA seems to be the last organization to understand that a small amount of piracy is actually beneficial. most artists know this, many software/games developers know this, but the RIAA is still keeping their head in the sand.

we've all heard rumours of the study that found that pirating is primarily used for "try before you buy" and pirates spend much more on movies/music/games than the non-pirate (true in my case), or that record labels got hit with 7% decline in revenue shortly after napster was taken down. true or not, the fact remains piracy IS advertising.
when people pirate movies/music/games and enjoy them there's a chance they'll go BUY a legit copy that they wouldn't have otherwise, and even if they don't buy it they still advertise to their peers how enjoyable that movie/album/game is who, in turn, might buy it.

hell, i've even heard M$ wants a balance of upwards of 30% of their software to be pirated because it helps ensure their software dominance. true or not, it makes sense. everyone has M$ office because everyone else does, even if only most copies out there are genuine.

I'm from New Zealand. I know of artists here that are encouraging people to pirate their music. That way... it goes around the world

The real problem now that everyone has internet is that they make you believe you can't live without it, in which case they can dictate to it's customers anything they want.

All ISP's are in it together.

Those were the good old days...I miss supernova as well. A friend and myself both had our IPs blocked in college thanks to supernova. He panicked and reformatted his hard drive.

If a terrorist attacked the RIAA, he could hardly be considered a terrorist..... While our soldiers are busy fighting "terrorists" in foreign countries, our own gov't is supporting terrorists in our own country. The RIAA is nothing but a terrorist group using the judicial system instead of weapons to terrorize people. Their goal isn't to recoop money lost because of piracy, it's to make a profit. The RIAA makes more off the settlements than the recording industry they claim to be protecting does.

There are artists in the US doing the same....and it still doesn't stop the RIAA from sueing people downloading music from these artists....even when the artist posts it for people to download freely. Was a thing on the news a couple years ago about a local artist that posted his own music for download...and had the RIAA file suit against him for it claiming "copyright infringement"....was pretty hysterical. He won in court obviously as they couldn't prove he did anything wrong being that he owned sole rights to the tracks he posted.

Browse through Amazon and look at the cost of movies. There are about 1500 Bluray movies selling for under $15. There are plenty of much cheaper rental services as a well. Absolutely nothing justifies stealing luxury items, which movies and music fall under. Nothing. If you can't afford $15. Too damn bad. The reason movies and music are stolen so much is because it is easy to do, and no one ever thinks they will get caught. I wish Lamborghini would charge more "reasonable" prices for their cars so I can buy one. $200,000+ for a car is a completely insane price to charge for a car. That doesn't in any way justify me going to a dealership and stealing one, and then crying foul about my constitutional rights being violated when the authorities come after me using whatever methods they deem necessary.

One word. Proxy.

This is so pointless... I just wish someone would realize these organizations are nothing more than scam artists and force them to disband. But the US is ruled by the corporations, not by the people, and not by the president by any means. Big Business rules this country, and the government and Constitution are the costume they do it in. They play by the rules that were set down a couple centuries ago on the face of things, but they've wheeled-and-dealed, and bribed and cheated their way to being in control. The only thing they fear is the sheer mass of people they don't directly control... and they're working on ways to remedy that situation as well. Be warned, US citizens! Be warned! I'm one of you, and I fear the direction this country is headed in. I support the constitution, as it was written, and the amendments that really make life better! Not what it has become, and definitely not the way it's trampled on on a daily basis... Sigh...

20,000 have settled?
Why would anyone settle with the RIAA?

This is so well stated that I am copy/pasting into a .txt file so I can read it once in a while and get motivated to save up for my move to northern B.C.