PostSimple - MPAA Offers To Settle (Again)

MPAA Offers To Settle (Again)
by Shawn @ 4:17 pm · filed under Movies, Law

There is an "Early Neutral Evaluation Conference" on May 23, 2006 to determine if this matter can be settled. Personally, it seems like an utter waste of time because at this point about the only thing I would settle for is if they dropped the case, paid my attorney fees and then dissolve their whole organization.

They offered me an initial settlement of $2,500 (before they decided to take it to court), which was rejected on the basis of principal. Then today I talked to my attorney and they are offering a settlement of $3,500.

Bahahahahahaaha! So if I refused your $2,500 out of principal, what exactly makes you think I'm going to give you $3,500 now? That's comedy. :)

From everything I've read online, the MPAA (and RIAA) has been pretty much extorting everyone simply because they can't afford to fight it. This certainly will give me something interesting to blog about. I just pray it goes to a full trial, where they will loose and then give everyone else that is being sued a nice lawsuit they lost as a reference for their lawsuit... "MPAA vs. Shawn Hogan" That has a nice ring to it. Maybe this loss will be the start of their demise. (Hmmm... I seem to have quite the aspirations, eh? haha)

From a purely business standpoint, I think all the lawsuits that the MPAA and RIAA are throwing out are only hurting them in the long-run. From everything I've read, it does not curb piracy at ALL. I would even argue it increases it because all of a sudden people that weren't aware you could download music/movies now realize you can (and some will start). Then you are going to compound this by everyone talking about it and reading other's blogs. I'm a perfect example... from talking my attorney and then researching stuff online as a result of that, I now know that if you have the proper software installed, you can download pretty much any movie (or anything else) you want.

Not only that, but you would think they would be wiser about who they choose to extort.

For as big of an organization they are, my website gets roughly 10,000 times more traffic than theirs (then again, I get more traffic than buy.com or adobe.com.. hehe)

So what just happened? Well now a few hundred thousands people per day were just educated about 1. about their general extortion and 2. they also now know that you can download whatever you want. I'm starting to think maybe the MPAA might actually kill the movie industry (which this dude shares my viewpoint). If they were smart, they certainly would choose their racketeering targets a little wiser (like maybe someone without the resources to fight and a captive audience of 80 million people per month that will read my viewpoint). This could turn out to be some good/interesting reading though. Reminds me a bit of the Winn and Sims fiasco.

Wanna see something else funny? Check Google's top 10 results for "MPAA"... It seems I'm not the only one that thinks the MPAA is looney. :)

http://www.google.com/search?q=mpaa

Oh, and just as a side note, they are utter liars... They told me they identified the specific computer that did whatever they claimed and they traced it back to me (of course I knew that was a lie since it never happened). But now they are saying they don't have any such information (MAC address basically). {rolls eyes}

Comments

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I like the second link on that google lookup

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060124-6036.html

Title MPAA admits to unauthorized movie copying. Genius

If you need help financially I would suggest setting up a PayPal account for donations. I believe we do need someone to stand up to these bullies at the MPAA/RIAA and I think we should all help you take that stand and make this a case for them to remember.

I wonder if the arguement "Your failed business model is not my problem" would hold up in court...

As a member of the ACLU and the EFF, you have my full support against the media cartels. Good luck Shawn and give them Hell!

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I wonder if the arguement "Your failed business model is not my problem" would hold up in court...

And they can't get your mac address unless your ISP releases it's DHCP logs to them, and that only works if the your NOT using a router. If you are using a router (especially a wireless router that's unsecure), there's no way for them to pin this on your MAC address. Anyone can log into an unsecure wireless router and use someone else's IP address to do what ever they want.
Keep up the fight, cause God knows these morons know nothing about the computer industry.

if praying actually did ANYTHING......i would pray for you.

so i will just say best of luck to you!
i have actually stopped watching movies......i want as few dollars as possible to go to those bloodsucking parasites in hollywood.

the time for revolution is near!

Fook yea!! I'm sure you're going to win and I hope you or your lawyer check out the transcripst of the past cases.

I really hope you win this lawsuit. I wonder if blogging about it may hurt your case, though. MPAA lawyers might be able to take something you write out of context that would sway a jury. Good luck!!

Believe what you want to believe but it does get those traffic levels. The server just can't handle it anymore (they are having a fund raiser for $100K worth of new kit - raised 30K+ thus far). One little traffic spike and it's on its ass nowadays it seems.

for a site that supposedly gets 10,000 times the traffic of the RIAA site it sure cant much load. A few hundred thousand people every day .. uh huh .. sure.

Good luck to him anyhow.

This is a cached version (Dugg to the scheissenhausen) of http://www.digitalpoint.com/~shawn/2006/04/mpaa-offers-to-settle-again.html All credits to the original copyright holder... And sorry for killing your site, again :)