While nobody at HSE will ever suggest that piracy is a good thing, it has been an open question as to just how bad piracy truly is. It might be easy to look at actors with eight-figure movie deals and figure that they could live without one or two extra sales this year, but that is not what this article is necessarily about. Nor is this article about the mathematics of how many people are employed per star, and how that are somehow hurt more than the actor in question despite not being involved in any profit sharing; there are plenty of articles that cover this in great depth. Even smaller studios and indie-efforts are getting involved.
Instead, this article is about the cost of the legal obligations thrust upon broadband providers and how they are forced to deal with it. Remember that these broadband providers are also in a position where their financial livelihood impacts that daily lives of tens of thousands of people in a very direct way, and hundreds of thousands more indirectly. In short, the same argument that is used against those pirates or pro-pirates that suggests that pirating hurts the studio can also be used here too. In fact, it would probably be fair to say that the logic is not only sound, but that it is more prevalent in this instance as broadband providers employ people all over the country on an ongoing basis instead of just in a relatively confined region of California.
Time Warner Cable Speaks Out
Time Warner Cable has cemented their position as one of the leading media and broadband giants of the country, while simultaneously maintaining multiple studios; after all, Time Warner is one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, so who better to listen to on the subject than a company that understands the position of both studios and providers?
Time Warner was recently good enough to share their thoughts on the recent requests for copyright infringement information: “If the Court compels TWC to answer all of these lookup requests given its current staffing, it would take TWC nearly three months of full-time work by TWC’s Subpoena Compliance group, and TWC would not be able to respond to any other request, emergency or otherwise, from law enforcement during this period. TWC has a six-month retention period for its IP lookup logs, and by the time TWC could turn to law enforcement requests, many of these requests could not be answered.”
Before discussing these points in detail, here are some hard statistics that resulted from a recent 2094-defendant lawsuit, in the words of a Time Warner representative: “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. 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.”
Priorities and Subpoenas
Time Warner Cable mentions that they currently try to prioritize requests. Time Warner Cable attempt to prioritize requests for information that may be relevant to acts of terrorism, violence, or theft of physical property, especially in cases where the illegal act has yet to occur. This certainly makes sense, but the company does also have the obligation to attempt to answer subpoenas in a timely fashion as well. This is where the heart of the problem is, particularly because the easy solution is a bad solution for all customers.
The Easy Wrong Solution: Hire More People
Companies are formed to make money, but that does not excuse them from following the law or neglecting their obligations. TWC is a massive media conglomerate that would apparently need to hire several new people to meet all of the requests for data relating to piracy. How many would be required? TWC is not forthcoming, but they are willing to state that every single lookup costs TWC $45. That is $45 that will eventually be borne by all consumers since TWC is not likely to be sharing in the awards from such lawsuits. TWC could staff more people, but then they would not only be using more resources, but they would be accelerating the leakage of money relating to copyright infringement related requests.
TWC’s current answer to the problem is to request that existing subpoenas be quashed, primarily because of the overhead involved. In short, TWC considers these subpoenas to be an abuse of discovery, a legal process that is usually used to uncover more information about existing defendants as well as explore the possibility of others involved in the same alleged wrongdoing. Since there is little reason to suspect that any two torrent-users knew one another, it would seem reasonable to suggest that they are not part of the same lawsuit, which raises a question as to whether or not the discovery process was ever intended to be used in this manner.
The Saddest Part
The saddest part of this entire affair is that the recent 2094-person request stems from the alleged illegal downloading of the latest Uwe Boll movie, Far Cry. In the opinion of HSE staffers, Uwe Boll movies are possibly torture devices that should be outlawed under international law. Perhaps this trial should be moved to the international courts as a crime against humanity. At the very least, it should be considered a crime to let Uwe Boll within 1 mile of a movie set. Perhaps a compromise can be reached, one where anyone who actually watched Far Cry will be considered to have already suffered enough.
As for TWC’s involvement, it is interesting to see a media conglomerate take such a logical approach. Will it work? Does it make sense? Only time will tell.
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