Association of American Publishers A Pennsylvania District Court judge seems to be fed up with copyright holders wasting the courts’ time and resources, ordering an adult movie studio and five anonymous alleged copyright infringers to present their respective cases to court in a bellwether trial. Judge Michael Baylson has ordered that their evidence -- gathered from file-sharing client BitTorrent -- be put on trial, which basically means that for copyright trolls, it’s about to get real. In recent years, copyright trolling has become a viable way for small businesses to make millions by scaring people into paying settlements. In the past two years alone, more than 200,000 BitTorrent users have been sued in mass file-sharing lawsuits brought on by copyright trolls. Copyright trolls are usually small businesses that own the rights to some type of media. These businesses hire teams of lawyers to hunt down illegal file-swappers who are allegedly trading, downloading, selling, etc. their copyrighted material. Using little more than anonymous IP addresses as evidence, copyright trolls subpoena Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to give up user information. Armed with this information, copyright trolls contact users and offer them an ultimatum -- face a lawsuit that could potentially cost them thousands of dollars in legal fees alone or accept a settlement. Settlements are typically between $1,500 and $3,000, and most users take them. In fact, copyright trolls bank on the... Continue reading at 'PC World'
[ PC World | 2012-10-10 00:00:00 UTC ]