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Court Fines Man $1.5 Million for Uploading 10 Porn Flicks to BitTorrent
Court Fines Man $1.5 Million for Uploading 10 Porn Flicks to BitTorrent
Posted By Dominick Severance, Jan 17, 2013
Flava Works is a porn company that produces porn videos, posts them online, and allows users to pay to legally download copies of those videos. Before a user can download a video, the user must agree to a contract that expressly forbids the copying and distribution of videos downloaded from the Flava Works website. To help enforce this provision, Flava Works embedded in each downloaded video an encryption code with the user information of the person who downloaded the video. Kywan Fisher was a paid user of Flava Works and legally downloaded 10 porn videos from the site. Fisher then uploaded all 10 videos to BitTorrent. Those videos were then downloaded 3,449 times by BitTorrent users. Flava Works traced the uploaded videos back to Fisher and filed willful copyright infringement charges against him. Based on the fact that Fisher did not show up for his defense and the encryption code linking Fisher to the uploaded videos, Illinois Federal District Court Judge John Lee ruled that defendant Kywan Fisher must pay a $1.5 million dollar fine. This figure represents $150,000 per video or roughly $470 per download from users on BitTorrent. Since Fisher did not show up for his defense, it is unlikely that he will appeal the matter. Source (CNet): http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57544158-93/illegal-file-sharer-gets-slapped-with-$1.5-million-in-damages/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title Source (Gizmodo): http://updates.gizmodo.com/post/34822889443/how-10-porn-movie-downloads-cost-one-man-1-5 Source (TorrentFreak): http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-pirate-ordered-to-pay-1-5-million-damages-for-sharing-10-movies-121101/