American has to pay 1.5 Million USD for sharing 10 movies




Seriously, what the heck ... A federal court in Illinois has handed down the largest ever damages award in a BitTorrent case. In a default judgment defendant Kywan Fisher from Hampton, Virginia is ordered to pay $1,500,000 to adult entertainment company Flava Works for sharing 10 of their movies on BitTorrent. The huge total was reached through penalties of $150,000 per movie, the maximum possible statutory damages under U.S. copyright law. It’s expected that the verdict will be used to motivate other BitTorrent defendants to settle their cases.
Since early 2010, hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. have been sued for downloading and sharing copyrighted content on BitTorrent.
Nearly all of these cases end up dismissed or settled, but one involving Kywan Fisher from Hampton, Virginia, has turned into a financial disaster.
In 2011 Fisher and several other defendants were sued by adult entertainment company Flava Works. The case in question differs from the so-called “John Doe” lawsuits as the copyright holder had detailed information on the defendants who had paid accounts on the company’s movie portal.
For Fisher the trouble started when instead of just viewing the films for personal entertainment, he allegedly went on to share copies on BitTorrent. These illicit copies were traced directly back to his account through a code embedded in the videos.
“Plaintiff has proprietary software that assigns a unique encrypted code to each member of Plaintiff’s paid websites. In this case, every time the Defendant downloaded a copy of a copyrighted video from Plaintiff’s website, it inserts an encrypted code that is only assigned to Defendant. In this case, the encrypted code for Defendant is: ‘xvyynuxl’,” Flava informed the court.
Copying films was expressly forbidden in the user agreement Fisher signed with the video portal, allowing Flava to claim willful copyright infringement for 10 titles.
According to Flava the copies uploaded to BitTorrent by Fisher went on to be downloaded thousands of times.
“Defendant’s conduct was willful to the extent that he copied or distributed Flava Works, Inc.’ intellectual property at least 10 times and caused the videos to be infringed or downloaded at least 3,449 times.”
Because Fisher failed to defend himself Judge John Lee had little choice but to find Fisher guilty.
This week the Judge handed down the largest ever damages award in a BitTorrent case, 10 times the maximum statutory damages for willful infringement, totaling $1,500,000.
“Given the materials submitted by Plaintiff in support of its motion and in light of the absence of any objection by Defendant, Plaintiff’s motion for entry of default against defendant 11 is granted. Judgment is entered in favor of the Plaintiff Flava Works, Inc., and against the Defendant Kywan Fisher in the amount of One Million Five Hundred Thousand Dollars ($1,500,000.00),” the judgment reads.
Senior Member
Posts: 1066
Joined: 2011-12-04
Obviously this guy didn't have the sense to run the dvd's through copying software which would have removed all that sort of digital tagging, and then share the copies on BitTorrent.

Senior Member
Posts: 7279
Joined: 2005-12-06

Obviously you don't know how these lawsuits work.
Senior Member
Posts: 715
Joined: 2009-10-11
hmm
Porn Industry = Run by crooks, and low lifes.
Court System = Run by crooks and high-end low lifes.
There is a connection somewhere
Verdict = Maximum Penalty (in crysis suit voice)
Senior Member
Posts: 5344
Joined: 2011-07-20
Sounds like he was the the original uploader!...Bankrupt......
Senior Member
Posts: 2714
Joined: 2007-10-12
Fantasy nummbers the court have come up with.
Senior Member
Posts: 6559
Joined: 2009-10-12
Man, this is bull****. That's way too high.
If only there were some way he could've avoided such charges.
Senior Member
Posts: 1267
Joined: 2004-05-18
This guy had it coming. He ripped the movies from a paid ******ing service with whom he signed a digital copyright agreement. He then uploaded the material which had been tagged with an identifying code on BT, which allowed the copyright holder to trace it right back to his account. Then he doesn't defend himself in court. The judge had no choice but to use the strictest punishment.
Senior Member
Posts: 989
Joined: 2008-04-04
Man, this is bull****. That's way too high.
If only there were some way he could've avoided such charges.He could have not been a hero and not uploaded copyright material, porn or otherwise.
That would be the most logical way to avoid the charges.
Just because everyone else uploads copyright material, doesn't make it acceptable to do so legally or otherwise.
But I agree the fines are just stupidity, unless he's got a healthy bank account and he can afford them.
If he hasn't then why bother making such silly high fines other then to make an example of someone.
Senior Member
Posts: 1267
Joined: 2004-05-18
******ing is blocked. LOL
Senior Member
Posts: 154
Joined: 2010-07-26
USA - country of freedom and limitless opportunities.

These are the days of my life...
When living in a corrupt post-totalitarian banana "republic" suddenly seems as not such a horrible thing...

Senior Member
Posts: 2057
Joined: 2011-05-19
True, after appeals, etc, it'll be lowered significantly.
Senior Member
Posts: 2844
Joined: 2011-11-01
@Radiopassive: Oh didn't you know? They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Jail time would be less sting.
Senior Member
Posts: 1015
Joined: 2009-12-25
I'm not really surprised by this. This is exactly why many companies put digital signatures into their stuff whatever it may be. They have the right to protect themselves.
Besides, why pay for subscriptions when there are probably plenty of free sites to watch that kind of stuff in the first place?
Senior Member
Posts: 154
Joined: 2010-07-26
Lol, good one.

Anyway, personalities of similar judges capable of throwing you into a debt trap for the rest of your life for sharing a few porn flicks are at least very questionable for me.
Oh, I get it now. They just want for the procedure to take as many steps (appeals, repeals... whatevers) as possible, so all the attorneys in their various roles in the "justice" system get properly enormous piece of the pie.
Senior Member
Posts: 3017
Joined: 2006-02-27
sigh. no pun intended.