Pensioner Settles With The Cartel

[GhostShip]

They are joking with this settlement, some poor old guy has to make pro RIAA/MPAA speeches to avoid paying thousands of dollars perhaps, he cannot afford to go to court on this even.  

http://www.jsonline.com/news/racine/dec05/378950.asp

A 67-year-old Racine man who was sued for up to $600,000 by a group of major film studios over four movies his grandson downloaded will lecture children about Internet piracy as part of an out-of-court settlement.

In the settlement reached late last week, Fred Lawrence agreed to work with the movie companies and the Milwaukee Bar Association in coming weeks to develop a program to teach local families and school children about copyright law, said his attorney, Jill Gilbert Welytok.

"My client maintains that at the time the downloading occurred, neither he nor his grandson understood that they were infringing the movie studios' copyrights," Welytok said. "This is an area of the law where education rather than litigation is appropriate."

Lawrence's grandson, then 12, admitted downloading "The Incredibles," "I, Robot," "The Grudge" and "The Forgotten" over a peer-to-peer electronic file-sharing network last December, not knowing it was illegal.

Lawrence was sued in federal court in November after he ignored a letter offering to settle the matter out of court - a letter similar to one sent in March to hundreds of alleged illegal file sharers across the country.

I suspect they will even videotape the poor guy and claim this as a "work for hire "..lol

Seriously though, they have a weak grasp of the law but big pockets folks, picking on those who cannot afford to defend themselves even though in this case the Cartel lawyers agree the 12 yr old did the infringing is a sick and callous thing to continue with against a man whos only crime was to allow his grandson to play with the computer  

[Scyre]

Sad days we live in when the spirit of the law is dead. That poor old man didn't deserve a pack of wolves tearing at him from all sides, and neither would his 12 year old grandson.

This is further proof that they are not truly interested in what is right, only what can be profitable. The cartel has repeatedly rejected ideas that would trace the original leaks of the materials such as watermarking. Why? because it is much more profitable to allow thousands of people to get copies so they can sue each and every one of them.

I am, however, comforted byt he fact that the other countries around the world are starting to see the american media system for whta it is and several are starting to fight back. Hopefully when the cartel sees that their way of doing things is less popular than they thought, changes will happen.

Be Good!
Scyre