courts
NEWS
“The BiTTorrenT economy is desTroying The middle class in The movie indusTry.” —carl crowell
15 years, had taken Internet-related cases in the past but got started on movie piracy in 2013, when Voltage Pictures hired him. He says he gets more requests to take such cases than he can handle. Like all piracy lawyers, he starts with raw data. A torrent file lists the unique IP addresses of each the connected computers, which are publicly visible to anyone using BitTorrent— something Crowell says most people don’t understand. “There is no anonymity online,” he says. “If you want to pirate content, you have to do so publicly.” The studios buy that data in bulk from a service that scrapes the lists from popular torrents and narrows it down by location. Crowell then begins the slow process of identifying the most prolific torrenters and compiling a list of all their downloads. When the record is complete, Crowell will subpoena the pirate’s Internet service provider to get the address holder’s name. The provider usually also sends the person a warning letter. If the person doesn’t stop, then Crowell will move in with a copyright complaint. It can take up to 90 days to determine a subscriber’s name, plus more time to verify whether the subscriber is the pirate, so Crowell works on several cases at once. When Crowell files a claim in U.S. District Court, he asks for statutory damages plus his own legal costs. If the target admits to Crowell that they pirated the content, that’s where it stops—along with a legal agreement to stop using BitTorrent. But people often deny guilt or blame others, such as a visitor stealing the user’s Wi-Fi. Crowell’s demands start to increase if a person continues to deny their torrenting activity despite contradictory evidence. So far, every case has eventually ended in a settlement, but Crowell says he doesn’t move forward unless he’s confident he can win in court. “Think of it as a police car chase,” Crowell says. “When they get you, you can’t go back and just take the speeding ticket.” Crowell’s legal opponents express grudging respect for him. “My sense of Carl is, he doesn’t want a payment unless the infringement actually occurred,” says Lake Perriguey, an attorney for several defendants Crowell pursued. “He’s not interested in money, primarily.” Others view him as more of a double-edged sword. “Every case is a one-off case, which makes it tougher on both sides,” says Seattle lawyer Benjamin Justus, another frequent opponent. “He’s fair but tends to drive sort of a hard bargain.” Crowell and Castle eventually reached a settlement of $4,500. Castle’s not happy about what amounts to a very expensive movie ticket, and says he still thinks of Crowell as a copyright troll. Crowell says people like Castle don’t like to be held accountable. “We come up with derogatory names for any figure of authority we disagree with,” he says. “At the end of the day, he was stealing my client’s content.” Willamette Week AUGUST 26, 2015 wweek.com
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