By Sam Biddle - Gizmodo
The RIAA Pirated $9 Million Worth of TV Shows
By
The same RIAA that makes examples out of ordinary folks by suing them for millions of dollars for file sharing? Turns out someone there's been pirating full seasons of Dexter. Nine million dollars worth. Whoops!
That number—$150,000 for each of the 60 episodes illegally downloaded on the RIAA HQ ISP (OK?)—comes compliments of YouHaveDownloaded which logged the BitTorrent activity of some 50 million users and revealed that not only are the major movie studios pirating their own movies, but the RIAA is downloading pirated TV shows. Lots of 'em.
Again, this is the same RIAA that has been shaking down a Minnesota mother of four for $1.5 million over 24 songs she shared on Kazaa. And it turns out, they're being generous in that case! Since the statutory damages cited by its own guidelines are much higher:
Look, the RIAA's method of "enforcing" copyright law by suing people to oblivion is unfair. But to layer hypocrisy on top of that unfairness is just gross. How about you get your own house in order before you target your next Minnesota mom?
The same copyright barons pushing SOPA, the awful
internet act, are enormous hypocrites, TorrentFreak reports. They want the
law as a means of stopping online piracy—but maybe they should start with their own employees.
A Russian BitTorrent tracking firm traced pirated movies and television show downloads back to IP addresses from Sony, Fox, and NBC—as TF points out, "these are the same companies who want to disconnect people from the Internet after they've been caught sharing copyrighted material."
This shouldn't surprise anyone. When studios push fascist copyright law, they're speaking on behalf of their shareholders, not the thousands of people they employ. Those people are ordinary people, who, yes, sometimes pirate albums, movies, shows, and games, like millions of other ordinary people around the world. But the hypocrisy is more than superficial. We shouldn't ever let companies that can't control their own miscreant employees shape federal legislation for all of us.
A Russian BitTorrent tracking firm traced pirated movies and television show downloads back to IP addresses from Sony, Fox, and NBC—as TF points out, "these are the same companies who want to disconnect people from the Internet after they've been caught sharing copyrighted material."
This shouldn't surprise anyone. When studios push fascist copyright law, they're speaking on behalf of their shareholders, not the thousands of people they employ. Those people are ordinary people, who, yes, sometimes pirate albums, movies, shows, and games, like millions of other ordinary people around the world. But the hypocrisy is more than superficial. We shouldn't ever let companies that can't control their own miscreant employees shape federal legislation for all of us.
...and...
The RIAA Pirated $9 Million Worth of TV Shows
By
The same RIAA that makes examples out of ordinary folks by suing them for millions of dollars for file sharing? Turns out someone there's been pirating full seasons of Dexter. Nine million dollars worth. Whoops!
That number—$150,000 for each of the 60 episodes illegally downloaded on the RIAA HQ ISP (OK?)—comes compliments of YouHaveDownloaded which logged the BitTorrent activity of some 50 million users and revealed that not only are the major movie studios pirating their own movies, but the RIAA is downloading pirated TV shows. Lots of 'em.
Again, this is the same RIAA that has been shaking down a Minnesota mother of four for $1.5 million over 24 songs she shared on Kazaa. And it turns out, they're being generous in that case! Since the statutory damages cited by its own guidelines are much higher:
… copyright holders can sue you for up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each of their copyrighted works that you illegally copy or distribute.So let's see, $150k per episode times 60 episodes comes out to roughly... $9,000,000, checks payable to CBS.
Look, the RIAA's method of "enforcing" copyright law by suing people to oblivion is unfair. But to layer hypocrisy on top of that unfairness is just gross. How about you get your own house in order before you target your next Minnesota mom?
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