Piracy case over Dallas Buyers Club ends

Much-publicised legal action over piracy of The Dallas Buyers Club has come to an end with lawyers representing Dallas Buyers Club LLC confirming they will not be appealing a December ruling.

Michael Bradley, managing partner of Marque Lawyers has said that DBC LLC’s decision was a purely commercial one, “based on the costs and benefits of taking the case further.”

In April last year, DBC LLC was granted the right to access the details of 4726 account holders accused of sharing its film online.

Originally DBC LLC wanted the cost of the film, plus a fee for each individual who had viewed, “punitive damages” based on the volume of copyrighted works that weren’t Dallas Buyers Club each individual had downloaded, and costs incurred to gain access to each individual’s details.

However, in August Justice Perram ordered that DBC LLC would only be able to seek the cost of the film, a single “reasonable” license fee, and court costs.

The license fee became a sticking point, with DBC LLC unable to confirm what it would consider “reasonable”.

DBC LLC was also restricted from viewing the customer details of iiNet account holders until it paid a substantial bond and could convince the court it wouldn’t start sending the alleged pirates high bills for damages.

“Obviously, this is all extremely frustrating for rights holders because they know their IP is being pirated, serially and on a massive scale,” said Bradley. “They know it’s possible to identify who’s doing it. While the copyright law remains as it is, their rights won’t go away and I expect they’ll continue to seek a practical way to enforce them.”

Meanwhile non-profit group Internet Australia believes that it is time to accept the pointlessness of current strategies to deal with content “piracy”.

“It would be in the best interests of content producers, as opposed to content distributors, if we all accepted that the main reason why most people unlawfully download is that they can’t get what they want through legitimate channels. There is ample research evidence that people are willing to pay if they can get the content they’re after. In fact, surveys show that the people who ‘pirate’ are also among the most active legal downloaders”, commented CEO Laurie Patton.

“There is little evidence from overseas that these warning notice schemes actually work and that are quite expensive to administer. Understandably, then, why would either party want to bear the costs of running something that isn’t going to achieve much? It is not surprising, therefore, that the copyright notice scheme hasn’t materialised”.”

The group supports intellectual property rights but not the blocking of websites.

Source: IT News, Gizmodo, CNet