Village Roadshow Promises To Mete Out Its Brand Of Justice As Inequitably As Possible

from the tipping-scales dept

Village Roadshow, an Australian film distributor, has always been something of a strange anomaly. Like many others in the copyright industries, the organization has embraced copyright trolling as a business model, even touting the kind of trolling-automation that has since seen so much backlash over its inherent collateral damage toll. On the other hand, Village Roadshow was also one of the few film distributors I've seen actually come out and state that windowed releases are really, really stupid. On the other, other hand, the distributor subsequently went ahead with windowed releases anyway.

Ambiguity appears to be somewhat in Village Roadshow's DNA. So, perhaps it isn't entirely surprising that upon announcing plans to take Australia back to the early 2000s by suing individuals for piracy, the company also made sure to inform the public that it will do so with almost perfect inequity.

Let's start with Village Roadshow's plan, which is essentially to ape the RIAA from the days of peer to peer filesharing. It was a strategy, it should be noted, that was dropped because it wasn't particularly effective. But that isn't going to stop Village Roadshow from giving it another go.

Many thousands of people were fined and the campaign raised awareness, but it did nothing to stop millions of file-sharers who continue to this day.

That’s something that Village Roadshow co-chief Graham Burke now wants to do something about. He says his company will effectively mimic the RIAA’s campaign of 14 years ago and begin suing Internet pirates Down Under. He told AFR that his company is already setting things up, ready to begin suing later in the year.

This plan will rely on ISPs to give up customer information, which will likely lead to a fight in Australian court. While the outcome of that fight is uncertain, it can be reliably claimed that what Village Roadshow actually wants is for pirates to pay fines to not go to court. This reads like classic copyright trolling, except that village Roadshow is making a great deal of noise about being prepared for actual lawsuits, while most copyright trolls avoid the courtroom at all (literal) costs. That won't win them many fans in the public, if the American experience is anything to go on.

It's perhaps in anticipation of that, however, that Village Roadshow commits its worst sin, although I am sure it thought it was going to win points with the following.

“We will identify people who are stealing our product, we will ask them do they have ill health or dire circumstances, and if they do and undertake to stop, we’ll drop the case,” Burke says.

While being upfront about such a policy has its pros and cons, Burke is also reducing his range of targets, particularly if likes to be seen as a man of his word, whenever those words were delivered. In March 2016, when he restated his intention to begin suing pirates, he also excluded some other groups from legal action.

“We don’t want to sue 16-year-olds or mums and dads,” Burke said. “It takes 18 months to go through the courts and all that does is make lawyers rich and clog the court system. It’s not effective.”

This says everything you need to know about how closely Village Roadshow's plan intersects with actual justice. The concept of real justice rarely makes full exemptions for teenagers and parents, never mind the poor or ill. In criminal cases, sentencing guidelines may take those circumstances into consideration, but Burke is essentially saying that teenagers and the poor or ill get a free pass on copyright infringement. I am sure he thinks he's going to win points of sympathy from the public with this stance, and perhaps he will, but he certainly should not. Either this plan is a valid form of combat against infringement or it isn't, full stop. If your justice can't survive the PR surrounding having it meted out against a poor teenager, then it isn't justice at all.

It's rent-seeking from those that can afford it, based, as always, on the flimsiest of evidence and predicated on the public being scared of actual lawsuits that Village Roadshow may actually want to file. That isn't justice. It's gross.

Filed Under: australia, copyright, copyright trolling, lawsuits, suing fans
Companies: village roadshow

Spanish Indie Labels To Sue The Gov't For Not Stopping File Sharing

from the that's-one-strategy dept

We've discussed recently how Spain seemed to be one of a very small number of countries whose legal system seemed to be doing a decent job in responding to copyright issues. It has rejected three strikes, said that broadband is a basic right, said that personal file sharing is legal and even fined "anti-piracy" groups for "bad faith actions." Of course, all of those reasonable moves have made Spain something of a target. Industry lobbyists have convinced the government to propose new copyright laws.

But it's not just the big entrenched players. Reader Tor sends over the troubling news that a group of indie labels in Spain are suing the government for "negligence" in failing to stop file sharing. Specifically, they're really upset about the rulings that have found personal, non-commercial file-sharing is legal. They want the right to sue their biggest fans. Apparently, they haven't been paying attention to how that's worked (i.e., it hasn't) elsewhere:

"The measure would not resolve the most relevant problem, which is the actual impossibility of us taking civil action against those final users who appropriate music without paying, and systematically violate intellectual property rights," he adds.

"We think the Administration is responsible for our plight," says Carton. "We demand that the government take effective measures imminently to protect the rights and interests of the record industry, as well as the intellectual property rights of the agents that intervene in the creative musical process within Internet."

This is pretty disappointing. Last year, I actually bought a bunch of CDs (yes, physical CDs) from an indie label in Spain that I only heard about after a friend sent me some MP3s suggesting I might like a couple of the bands on the label. After checking out their websites (and being able to listen to some of the songs) I ended up ordering a bunch of CDs from the label. Just last week, I bought two more albums (downloads, via CDBaby) from the same label. Yet, according to these labels (and I can't tell if the label whose CDs I purchased is part of the lawsuit), they would have been better off suing my friend. Indie labels should be leading the way here: focusing on giving fans real reasons to buy, rather than suing the government for not putting up more protectionist barriers to pretend it can hold back what the technology allows.

Filed Under: civil lawsuits, file sharing, indie labels, labels, spain, suing fans