Thanks go to [H]ardOCP for alerting us to this tidbit of information via their news page. This story is an exclusive over at Wooba so there is not yet any collaberating evidence to the validity of this claim. Also, we can not be sure that we are getting the full story, there may be more to it. If true however, it is mind boggling that a user downloading a single movie, was tracked down in three days and given a warning by his ISP!
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February 13, 2004 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures sent a letter to Robert (* not his real name) today, threatening to sue him for downloading and sharing "The Perfect Score" movie via the BitTorrent Network (a peer-to-peer file sharing network) just three days ago. Robert received a copy of this letter from his cable modem provider. His cable provider stated that if they continued to see this "kind of activity" from his account, that they would shut down his account. Paramount Pictures wrote that they "reserve the right to take any legal action" whenever they want. They said they have a record of his IP address downloading it from BitTorrent. Robert does not want his identity revealed, for obvious reasons. This is the first reported account of a film studio threatening action on a BitTorrent user. Considering that this person did not upload or share this complete movie by himself, I do wonder what liability he does have, since partial files in any P2P application are pretty much worthless on their own. Also, Paramount itself MAY have been sharing this movie, otherwise, how would they know that Robert was downloading the movie from BT? |
This story troubles me in that I think there has to be missing information, maybe there are more letters and we just don't know yet. Maybe Robert is a wee bit more active than this story gives credit. But I thought we would be interested in knowing about this situation as it unfolds. Let's assume for a moment that this is pretty much what happened. It would then be worthy of note the extremely low tolerance that Paramount has for file trading, zero.
Perhaps, since so many can be involved in the uploading, it is more convenient to harass the downloader in this type of network. Obviously, we will keep an eye peeled for further developments. The strategies and policies of these copyright holders are critical information.
Share your thoughts on this story here or in the Music Downloads, P2P and Legal Issues Forum.
Source: Wooba
