The Lawsuit Locker

Copyright is a complicated issue, and I often find myself conflicted about it.

On the one hand, as a former movie theatre manager, I totally get the conservative argument that films cost a lot of money to produce, and that piracy threatens to reduce the incentive for studios and theaters.   Since I like to watch movies (and listen to music, and play games, and read books, and etc), I spend money on them.

On the other hand, as a fan of sci-fi, I dream of a utopian golden era where civilization is enriched by the free sharing of ideas. And I look at the technology we have, and realize that optimistic dream could be true today if not for stodgy rich people desperately clutching at all the money they can grab.

In general, this results in me supporting independent productions and alternative distribution channels as much as I can. Put the money in the hands of the artists, and not in the hands of some corporate suit. I buy direct from the artists, jump on the Humble Indy Bundle bandwagon, etc.

When I read articles like this one at CNN, I find whatever little sympathy I might have had for the rich bastards and their incentive system just boils away:

Voltage Pictures, the studio behind 2009's The Hurt Locker, is suing almost 25,000 BitTorrent users who allegedly illegally downloaded the flick. That came just weeks after 23,000 were sued for downloading The Expendables, produced by Nu Image.
 ...
"The lawyers are just doing their jobs," he said. "Somebody stole our property and we are trying to get it back." The representative declined further comment. 

That statement from a Voltage representative is just a little bit misleading, methinks. What exactly is the stolen property that they are trying to get back? It's certainly not the physical copies of the films in question. No one is deprived of watching, enjoying, or collecting these films legally because they've been "stolen" by someone else. There's no empty vault or warehouse at Voltage, no one who came home to find that his shelves were ransacked by a burglar (at least not in this court case). What's been "stolen"? What does this executive at Voltage think he owns, that has been wrongly taken from him?

Sadly, what he thinks he owns is the money in other people's wallets. Money he himself has never held, but which he has convinced himself somehow belongs to him. You not buying from him = you stealing from him (in his mind). He's somehow certain that you would have spent that money with his company, and since he believes that to be true, he's decided to take you to court over it. That seems pretty fucking presumptive to me.

He's assuming that instead of passing on his movie, if you couldn't download it for free you automatically would have bought it. That instead of buying it at the thrift store, or borrowing it from a friend, or paying 99 cents to rent it somewhere, you would have, in his mind, spent $25 for the Blue-Ray version at some store. The store takes a cut, the supply network takes a cut, and maybe if he's really lucky, his company pockets $12 on the sale. Of course realistically those 25,000 "thieves" would have included at least 15,000 (and probably a lot more) who passed, borrowed, rented, bought it on deep discount, etc, so at the very most one could maybe argue that each of those downloaders "owes" him $5. And honestly, that figure seems wildly generous and optimistic to me.

So how much is his company asking for? Tens of thousands of dollars per person. Talk about punitive damages! But he'll settle for a quick two grand if you want to roll over out of court. What a dick. It seems to me that this is not about protecting their property, or their rights, it's about making a quick buck.

As TorrentFreak, the first blog to report on the Locker case, points out: If only 10,000 of the alleged infringers pay a $2,000 settlement, it would net $20 million for Voltage and USCG. In comparison, The Hurt Locker grossed $17 million at the U.S. box office.