Saturday, May 15, 2010

Time Warner Gives USCG, Federal Courts, One-Fingered Salute.

In a strange twist of fate, Time Warner Cable threw itself under the anti-movie piracy bus today, stating publicly that it had no intention of complying with the 2,049 subpoenas generated by German crap-filmmaker Uwe Boll's suit against peer-2-peer downloaders. None. Zip.

I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, this is just one more example of the fact corporations can do whatever they want, and will do whatever they can get away with, employing any excuse. In this case, it's lack of manpower, and resources tied up in the parallel wars on Crime (remember that one?) and Terror.

"Copyright cases involving third-party discovery of Internet service providers have typically related to a plaintiff's efforts to identify anonymous defendants whose numbers rank in the single or low double digits," wrote the cable company. "By contrast, plaintiff in this case alone seeks identifying information about 2,049 anonymous defendants, and seeks identifying information about 809 Internet Protocol addresses from TWC."

Time Warner Cable does not have enough employees to respond to these requests. In a typical month, the company receives an average of 567 IP lookup requests, nearly all of them coming from law enforcement. These lookup requests involve everything from suicide threats to child abduction to terrorist activity, and the company says that such cases take "immediate priority."

On the other hand, I cannot support anyone, anywhere, exchanging money for a Uwe Boll film. Fuck Uwe Boll, and his horrible movies. Fuck the underwear models posing as lawyers on the U.S. Copyright Group's website. USCG has made a name for itself partnering with independent film studios, distracting the courts with these massive lawsuits in a futile attempt to roll back the technological clocks to 1995.

On the third hand, I can't support illegal file sharing, because I'm afraid I'll get sued if I do. And that, in case anyone was wondering, is how terrorism works.


No comments: