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By now, the USCG (US Copyright Group) BitTorrent lawsuits are all the rage. Motions have been filed, opposition established, subpoena’s quashed, rights groups up in arms, and lots of fun has been poked at the movie titles. But wait – did you know that in Texas a new round of lawsuits are beginning to take shape? It’s Lucas Entertainment, a gay porn distributor, versus 53 (thus far) unnamed BitTorrent defendants accused of sharing the movie “Kings of New York”.
As some have noticed, this string of lawsuits isn’t quite gaining the attention that the USCG lawsuits have. In fact, if we look at the court docket, the pace of this case is moving much faster than the USCG brand of lawsuits. True, there are many more USCG lawsuits – potentially up to 14,000 so far. Also, rights groups such as the EFF and ACLU have submitted amicus briefs (friend of the court) in order to ensure the rights of the accused are ensured, while also slowing the process down.
There doesn’t seem to be much opposition against Lucas Entertainment, at least not yet. The EFF and ACLU’s involvement against the USCG ensured that when a user is identified, a clear notification is sent informing the accused of their rights. Currently, there are two sets of lawsuits open from Lucas Entertainment – one group of John Does sued in July (65 defendants for allegedly sharing the movie “Missing”), and another set of lawsuits open in August (53 defendants for “Kings of New York”). Without a similar ruling looking out for the rights of the accused in the Lucas Entertainment lawsuits, the plaintiffs may have a much easier time having their way.
The story behind this group of alleged P2P butt pirates is remarkably similar, yet in many ways drastically different, than most other BitTorrent/P2P/file-sharing lawsuits. The story begins with Gay-Torrents.net, whose background was extensively covered by TorrentFreak. According to the site administrator, they run a DMCA-notification friendly operation, and are willing to go to whatever lengths to comply with any takedown notice. According to the administrator, no take down effort by Lucas Entertainment was made.
Instead, Lucas is moving forward with their campaign. In a motion filed on August 13 to take leave so they can fulfill their discovery, the plaintiffs are requesting permission from the court to identify the 53 suspected infringers.
Date: 2010-08-16 |