
2,919 Movie Pirates Walk Free as BitTorrent Trolling Scheme Falls Apart - jaytaylor
http://torrentfreak.com/2919-movie-pirates-walk-free-as-bittorrent-trolling-scheme-falls-apart-130802
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GabrielF00
There's another interesting copyright issue regarding the film in question
here, "All Things Fall Apart". Apparently, 50 Cent wanted to call the movie
"Things Fall Apart", but Chinua Achebe, who wrote a famous book by that name
in 1958, refused to sell him the rights for $1 million. The crazy part of this
is that Achebe took the title from a line from Yeats' 1919 poem "The Second
Coming". How Achebe can turn around and prevent someone else from using a
title he himself borrowed is beyond me.
[http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/sep/14/chinua-
achebe-5...](http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/sep/14/chinua-
achebe-50-cent)

~~~
harshreality
I don't think that's a _copyright_ issue, rather something more related to
trademark (although I don't think you can trademark the title of a book
either, there are a bunch of more obscure IP-related protections and this
might fall under one of them).

Nobody can _copyright_ a three word phrase. [edit: almost never, see [1]]

Copyright also applies if you copy enough story elements, but that doesn't
apply because 50 Cent's movie is not in any meaningful way a copy of Achebe's
story. And if that were the case, even changing the title completely wouldn't
avoid infringement. You would violate Rowling's copyright, for instance, if
you took a Harry Potter book, outlined the plot (even with character and place
names changed), and wrote a new novel from scratch using that outline.

 _" The novel with the said title was initially produced in 1958 (that is 17
years before [50] was born)," replied his lawyers, according to Naijan. "[It
is] listed as the most-read book in modern African literature, and won't be
sold for even £1bn."_

I think this was IP bullying by Achebe's legal team (if were laywers at all).
They claim to have a monopoly to use the very generic title (even when
separated from the underlying story), and when offered a lot of money (I'd
love to hear 50 Cent's lawyers reason for offering a million dollars to use
that title), they make a category error, confusing rights to the book itself
with rights to a fairly generic title.

[1]
[http://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection_...](http://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection_for_short/)

~~~
thaumasiotes
If the state of the world is anything to go by, you indeed cannot protect the
title of your book, as it's quite frequent for two books to have exactly the
same name.

> You would violate Rowling's copyright, for instance, if you took a Harry
> Potter book, outlined the plot (even with character and place names
> changed), and wrote a new novel from scratch using that outline.

Terry Brooks might be surprised to hear this, as he seems to have been safe
from the notoriously litigious Tolkien estate. Try reading _The Lord of the
Rings_ sometime, then read _The Sword of Shannara_ (accurately described as
"especially blatant in its point-for-point correspondence" [1]).

Again, though, all that's only relevant if you're interested in the actual
state of the world.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara#Sword_and...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara#Sword_and_The_Lord_of_the_Rings)

~~~
makomk
You can protect the title of your book, it's just that most authors don't.

~~~
harshreality
You might be able to trademark it, if it's sufficiently unique in its market
to be trademarked. (i.e. you form a corporation with the book title as its
slogan, or you attach the trademark to some product or service you sell.)

However, contrary to popular belief, trademarks do not prohibit others using
your trademarks in their writing. They prohibit others using your trademarks
deceptively or in a way likely to cause confusion. Which means you don't have
the same ability to prevent someone from using your trademark in the title or
content of their book, that you have to prevent them from using _copyrighted_
material in their book.

------
syjer
What's amusing is that being a swiss company, what they are doing is illegal,
as IP address are considered part of the private sphere and they cannot be
harvested ( [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/09/switzerland-
gathe...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/09/switzerland-gathering-ip-
addresses-from-bittorrent-sites-illegal/) )

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beloch
It's amusing how the troll-firm defines itself as non-profit. It must mean the
firm doesn't accrue any value from its operations. If it takes a few bonuses
for the partners to ensure that never happens, well that's okay!

~~~
Cthulhu_
It means they probably siphon the money off somewhere (shell companies, the
companies that hire / enlist them, etc) so that they're only non-profit
because their books balance out and because of the tax exemption status it
gets them.

~~~
nodata
Non-profit doesn't mean they don't make a profit.

~~~
elnate
What does it mean?

~~~
Retric
They can't have dividends, any profit must be reinvested or given to another
non profit.

~~~
sliverstorm
I presume it can also be spent on increased operational expenses, e.g. salary,
perks, etc?

~~~
Retric
Up to a point, there are issues if you start a non profit and then pay
yourself as CEO a truly insane income.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Can you elaborate on some of those issues? I've heard the unsubstantiated
claim that the NYSE works on essentially that principle, and the much better-
substantiated claim that that's what's going on with Morris Dees and the SPLC.

edit: stop impugning the SCLC; correctly impugn the SPLC.

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vanderZwan
As someone on Reddit pointed out: _alleged_ movie pirates.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Yeah, the title could be done a bit more tactfully. They're not pirates (or,
guilty of copyright infringement) until they're convicted by a court, and
iirc, the number of people actually brought to court, charged, tried and
convicted is very small. Usually they're coerced into paying a settlement and
the thing is over with.

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RubyWestcoast
Wait, let me get this straight. A company with no vested interest in the
copyright, no association with the party who owns the copyright, was claiming
copyright infringement and trying to subpoena identities? What the heck?

~~~
ori_b
They bought the right to sue from the actual copyright owners. Think of it as
outsourcing the copyright enforcement.

~~~
MichaelGG
Didn't Righthaven get slapped down for that? At least in the US, you can't
sell the "right to sue" for copyright.

~~~
nness
Ars did a post-mortem of sorts that explained just that, that Righthaven did
not posses any actual interest in the copyrights themselves, and had no
standing to sue.

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/copyright-
troll-r...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/copyright-troll-
righthaven-finally-completely-dead/)

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znowi
Curious why the submitter rounded off the number :) Anyhow, good news. A small
win for the pirates.

------
kevinburke
How did this get to court? Who hired the lawyers to defend the pirates?

~~~
laurent123456
Contra Piracy only had IPs, so they went to court to request the identities of
the file-sharers from ISPs. At that point, there was nobody to defend since
they had no names.

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MyDogHasFleas
I don't know about "walk free". If I were Contra Piracy, I would simply go
back to Hannibal Pictures' lawyers and get them to file the suit. Clearly as
the actual copyright owners, they have standing to file. Thus Contra Piracy
would become a subcontractor to Hannibal Pictures, and probably clear fewer
bucks, but at least it wouldn't be a complete loss.

~~~
smsm42
Actual copyright holders don't want to, it doesn't scale. The scalable model
is to demand settlement (marginal cost of roughly $0 after making email
templates and writing IP harvesting software) not to hire expensive lawyers to
actually file lawsuits.

~~~
MyDogHasFleas
It'll be interesting to see what happens with this. You may be right. Depends
on how enterprising Contra is, and how willing the studio is to engage in more
than just selling some rights and walking away. It's not really that much
potential revenue, the studio may not want to do any more.

