

Hollywood Studios Caught Pirating Movies on BitTorrent - derpenxyne
http://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-studios-caught-pirating-movies-on-bittorrent-121225/

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SCdF
So?

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.

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mgkimsal
But 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).

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csense
With the huge damages that can be gained from copyright lawsuits, why don't
the studios just sue each other into oblivion over this?

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sukhbir
Probably because they want to fight collectively under the MPAA for the
"greater good".

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balbaugh
Wrong industry. RIAA is for the recording industry, whereas MPAA is for motion
pictures.

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sukhbir
Oh yes.

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chairmankaga
How does this distinguish between nodes that are only there to collect the
IP's of all other users?

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mikeash
Those 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.

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usaphp
LOL now everybody in Warner Bros know who downloaded AssHoleFever:
<http://torrentfreak.com/images/warner-pirates.jpg>

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elssar
Meh, the studios will just claim that they were researching torrents and
illegal file sharing.

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photorized
How many of those machines are pwn3d?

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jspthrowaway2
This 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.)

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cozeulodorieso
It'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>. 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).

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jspthrowaway2
My comment has nothing to do with the law.

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Dylan16807
I can try to explain it in a different way. Individuals are not and should not
be expected to have ironclad control over their connections and monitor all
users. If you see traffic from a residential IP you have no idea who initiated
it. With a corporate network, on the other hand, 90% chance it was an employee
doing it, which makes the corporation responsible. It doesn't matter how many
layers of management were involved, and there's even a good chance that the
pirate _is_ a manager. I won't blame them if it turns out they got hacked, but
I will call them incompetent. Corporations have dedicated IT departments to
make sure that only authorized users get on the network.

tl;dr No cognitive dissonance: Corporations vet network users, 99% of homes
don't.

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jspthrowaway2
Even you admit that it's not a 100% chance, which is my point -- we're using
an IP address to identify the studio as the responsible party here, which we
frown upon for home users.

You talk about the stuff that all defense attorneys do in the residential
cases, then say for some reason a corporation should be better equipped to
handle it. Which, maybe there's some relevancy to that, but still the root
point is: we're using an IP address to identify a responsible party, which
isn't a 100% science.

This also isn't a trial, it's a published article.

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Dylan16807
If you show me a residential environment that has a dedicated IT staff that
only allows qualified people on the network, then you can assume _one of_ the
qualified people is responsible for the traffic. You still have to figure out
which one because 'an IP address is not a person'.

I'm applying the same standards to either situation. The way a corporate
network is configured (excluding cases of incompetence) gives you pretty solid
evidence that AN employee was in violation. You still have no idea which
employee, which is why an individual suit like in the residential cases would
be highly unfounded. Same standard when it comes to that rule. The only
difference is that you can go after a corporation as a cohesive group, whereas
you cannot go after a household as a cohesive group.

