The ‘Legal Blackmail’ Business: Inside a P2P-Settlement Factory

[n2doc]

By Nate Anderson, ars technica
October 3, 2010

British pornographer Jasper Feversham was fed up. The Internets were sharing his films, quality work like Catch Her in the Eye, Skin City, and MILF Magic 3. He wanted revenge—or at least a cut. So Feversham signed on to a relatively new scheme: track down BitTorrent infringers, convert their IP addresses into real names, and blast out warning letters threatening litigation if they didn’t cough up a few hundred quid.

“Much looking forward to sending letters to these f—ers,” he wrote in an email earlier this year.

The law firm he ended up with was ACS Law, run by middle-aged lawyer Andrew Crossley. ACS Law had, after a process of attrition, become one of the only UK firms to engage in such work. Unfortunately for Crossley, mainstream film studios had decided that suing file-sharers brought little apart from negative publicity, and so Crossley was left defending a heap of pornography, some video games, and a few musical tracks.

Crossley parleyed the porn into national celebrity—or perhaps “infamy” would be a better word. Earlier this year, Crossley was excoriated in the House of Lords by Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall—yes, I know—for what “amounts to blackmail… The cost of defending one of these things is reckoned to be £10,000. You can get away with asking for £500 or £1,000 and be paid on most occasions without any effort having to be made to really establish guilt. It is straightforward legal blackmail.”



Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/the-legal-blackmail-business/

[RandomThoughts]

1. The fix to sharing changed versions of films is easy.

Realize that copyrights are for a modest payment, not a life time crutch.

Every film over some set amount of years old, and every TV show should be on the internet not modified. Maybe 20 years, maybe 10. That is a discussion point on accurate payment.

And it is not his film, if he can't say where his ideas came from. And also claim those original ideas were his.

Films and stories belong to everyone. Actors, directors, and producers, just get a modest wage for building them in a form that could be seen. When they use copyrights to stop them from being seen, they are doing it backwards. And Internet companies, and distribution companies are in that same set. They should have a modest income to allow information to be seen by many people, not just to have luxury for themselves, and not for some idea of having power over what people are able to see or think about.


Before film and radio, entertainment professionals would make money on stage, from a few people watching paying to see their work, and that was pretty balanced pay. The payment for films leverages tech to make the work done out of balance with the pay. Then that lack of balance leads to more consolidations and abilities to buy laws that make for more imbalance by copyrights.

Fix the copyright laws, and that fixes the imbalance in that sector. And the use of consolidations to control information made for anyone that wants to watch it to see it.


Tv and Internet should be geared to allow for a wider audience, and more choice of what you watch, not just money for a few people. That is the wrong reason.

Side note, in SG1 episode one of the writers, said a writer doesn't know where his information comes from.

On a Married with Children episode, a writer on an episode show said he did not care where the information came from if it made money for him, hard to respect that view.

[Pab Sungenis]

2. You are quite off base.

Before radio and TV, there were still people who created material without ever setting foot on stage. Song writers earned money off of copyrights through sheet music publishing and royalties from people performing their songs. (Not every entertainer wrote their own material.) Authors earned royalties from publication of their books and stories. Authors wrote plays for others to perform. And so on.

I agree that the current copyright laws allow for too long a protection. It used to be that they lasted for 17 years and needed to be actively renewed or the copyright would lapse.

Still, filmmakers (even pornographers) invest money in their work, as well as creativity (although with porn that might be slightly debatable), and should be compensated for their work and investment.

[RandomThoughts]

3. I was speaking of trends.

Not saying in all cases, since there are exceptions.

But if you compare the 1800, 1900, and today, you see a trend of more money to individual writers and performers because of larger distribution because of tech advancements, basically from Printing, radio, tv, internet tech advances.

In some cases the tech can also increase those able to distribute adding diversity, that is a good thing, but in media, that was removed by consolidations of those that choose what goes on tv. And they are trying to do it for control reasons on the internet.

The topic has no relevancy to porn. That is an odd thing to add to the post.