Defunct Torrent Service vs MPAA: Case Goes Cold
Though it has yet to be officially confirmed, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) appears to have dropped their long-simmering lawsuit against the admin of the now defunct DVDr-core torrent tracker.
Ben Jones of TorrentFreak gives us a historic primer on the situation between the two adversaries. The way Jones describes it, it basically looks like the MPAA just lost interest in trying to draw blood from a turnip, as it were. The domain owner in question, Alex Hanff of the UK, was served papers in March 2005 about the site he owned, DVDr-core, and which individuals other than himself administered. The site had been closed in December of 2004 by the owner due to rumors he had heard of raids in Holland against torrent sites, but it appears the opeation didn’t close down before MPAA could get the deets needed to go ahead with a lawsuit.
After the suit was filed, the story at the time became fairly big news simple because of the sheer rarity of such a case, and Mr. Hanff ended up appearing on the well-known BBC news program, Newsnight. This appearance ended up costing Mr. Hanff his job - for the fact that his publicly-expressed opinions on copyright infringement did not agreeing with those of his company, and also his failure to disclose his involvement in said lawsuit.
Now, more than three years have passed since the original letter. And the last communication he had ever received was in November of 2005, notifying him of a default judgment. He has never received anything official from the courts. So, he has sat and waited, and waited some more, and now essentially considers the case dead.
It’s difficult to imagine what it must be like with something like this hanging over your head, unresolved for this long. Have they lost interest? Have they forgotten? Did they imagine it possible to lose, given the relative lack of education about torrent technologies in those years?
© Sean P. Aune for Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog, 2008. |
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