https://torrentfreak.com/usenet-provider-giganews-wins-landmark-copyright-battle-170124/
Giganews is celebrating a hard-fought legal battle against adult publisher and serial copyright litigant Perfect 10. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed the Usenet giant a comprehensive victory in the long-running case, one that will prove so financially damaging to Perfect 10 that the company will go into liquidation.
Over the years, adult image publisher Perfect 10 developed a reputation for making a business [http://torrentfreak.com/?s=giganews] out of suing Internet services for alleged copyright infringement.
The company targeted Google, Amazon, MasterCard and Visa, even hosting providers such as LeaseWeb and OVH. After securing several private settlements in earlier actions, the company sued Usenet provider Giganews after Perfect 10 images appeared on Giganews servers. Things didn’t go well.
In November 2014, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California found that Giganews was not liable for the infringing activities of its users. Perfect 10 was subsequently [https://torrentfreak.com/giganews-wins-perfect-10-copyright-battle-150209/] ordered to pay Giganews $5.6m in attorney’s fees and costs. [https://torrentfreak.com/perfect-10-ordered-to-pay-giganews-5-6m-after-failed-copyright-battle-150325/]
With Perfect 10 not quite done the case went to appeal, but in an opinion just handed down by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the adult publisher has received a crushing defeat. The panel held that to be held liable for direct copyright infringement, Giganews must have committed some voluntary act that caused the infringement to occur. The requirements for such “volitional conduct” were not met.
“The panel concluded that the evidence showed only that Giganews’ actions were akin to passively storing material at the direction of users in order to make that material available to other users upon request, or automatically copying, storing, and transmitting materials upon instigation by others,” the ruling reads.
The panel also found that Giganews was not liable for contributory infringement after Perfect 10 failed to show that Giganews “materially contributed to or induced infringement.”
On Perfect 10’s claim for vicarious infringement, the panel upheld the district court’s summary judgment in Giganews’ favor, noting that Perfect 10 failed to show a “causal link between the infringing activities and a financial benefit to Giganews.”
Ron Yokubaitis, Co-CEO of Giganews, said that his company’s decision not to give in to Perfect 10 had resulted in a long and hard-fought battle, but the end result meant it had been worth it.
“We decided that it would be important to stand up to Perfect 10 and not be bullied by its abusive litigation tactics. We were not going to settle this case just to avoid the risk of potentially catastrophic statutory damages in today’s crazy copyright world, a threat that unscrupulous plaintiffs like Perfect 10 use to extract unjust settlements from more timid companies,” he said.
“We took a stand for Usenet, for technology and online platforms, for the public, and for ultimate benefit of rational copyright law. We were not just battling Perfect 10: standing behind Perfect 10 – and even sharing in its oral argument at the court of appeals – was the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA), which tried to argue [https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-and-tech-giants-clash-in-usenet-piracy-case-160303/] that it was voicing the interests of small copyright holders.”
Giganews went on to thank several groups that gave it support during its battle with Perfect 10, including the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, EFF, and Public Knowledge. While Giganews will continue in the Usenet business, Perfect 10’s efforts to extract billions in damages from the provider have essentially developed into a suicide mission.
“With this decision, Perfect 10’s days as a copyright troll masquerading as a porn company are now finished,” Giganews said.
“The case now moves to its final stage to collect attorney’s fees from Perfect 10. Giganews is seeking the appointment of a receiver to take charge of all of Perfect 10’s copyrights, trademarks, and domain names and to liquidate them in partial satisfaction of Giganews’ judgment against Perfect 10.”
The only area where Giganews failed to convince the court was in its request to add Perfect 10 founder Norman Zada to the verdict. The district court already denied that request and the panel at the court of appeal upheld that decision.
The full ruling is available here [https://torrentfreak.com/images/Giganews-Perfect-10-2017-01-23.pdf]
>>103731
nice
>>103731
Good post. Undercovered story.
>>104154
It sets a nice precedent to deter copyright trolls who are going after companies that simply host content that third parties add to without their knowledge of what is what. This very well could be the start of a step in the right direction of reasonable copyright law.
>>104156
>It sets a nice precedent to deter copyright trolls who are going after companies that simply host content that third parties add to without their knowledge of what is what.
Which is pretty important to the survival of 4chan. Correct me if I'm wrong but besides operating costs I think the major sinkhole for this site financially is litigating shit like this.
>This very well could be the start of a step in the right direction of reasonable copyright law.
Not while the Mouse lives. Once the copyright on Mickey Mouse is about to expire you can expect yet another duration extension pushed by Disney. I'm pretty sure mankind will go extinct before Mickey Mouse or any other Disney property is public domain (ironic for a company whose animated films are built on public domain stories, like Snow White).
>>104159
>Not while the Mouse lives.
I actually heard something about them tradmarking the steamboat™ willie® version of the mouse℗ and his℠ wife©. Trademarks have completely different rules for example they terminate due to non-use after a certain period of time but have no upper limit to their lifetime. There has to be some sort of upper limit on their copyrights though, 500 years protection would simply be ridiculous.
>>104171
I get the difference between trademark and copyright, but Disney definitely has a hand in extending copyright well past where it's supposed to be.
>There has to be some sort of upper limit on their copyrights though, 500 years protection would simply be ridiculous.
It is ridiculous, but it keeps happening. Every time the mouse is about to have his copyright runs out, the number of years after the death of the author for the copyright increases. Right now it's, what, 95 years after the author's death? That's absolutely insane. In that time frame, not only is the author dead, but so are the children of the author, the grandchildren, and maybe the great grandchildren. At that point, nobody who personally knew the author is alive anymore.
Copyright is important so authors can benefit of their work (and are therefore encouraged to make more), but the current infinity-1 system is plain ridiculous because it does nothing towards those main goals of copyright.