Grandpa sued over grandson's downloads (1 Viewer)

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A 67-year-old man who says he doesn't even like watching movies has been sued by the film industry for copyright infringement after a grandson of his downloaded four movies on their home computer.

The Motion Picture Association of America filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Fred Lawrence of Racine, seeking as much as $600,000 in damages for downloading four movies over the Internet file-sharing service iMesh.

The suit was filed after Lawrence refused a March offer to settle the matter by paying $4,000.

"First of all, like I say, I guess I'd have to plead being naive about the whole thing," he said.

"I personally didn't do it, and I wouldn't do it. But I don't think it was anything but an innocent mistake my grandson made."

Lawrence said his grandson, who was then 12, downloaded "The Incredibles," "I, Robot," "The Grudge," and "The Forgotten" in December, without knowing it was illegal to do so.

The Racine man said his grandson downloaded the movies out of curiosity, and deleted the computer files immediately. The family already owned three of the four titles on DVD, he said.

"I can see where they wouldn't want this to happen, but when you get up around $4,000 … I don't have that kind of money," Lawrence said. "I never was and never will be a wealthy person."

Kori Bernards, vice president of corporate communications for MPAA, said the movie industry wants people to understand the consequences of Internet piracy. She said the problem is the movies that were downloaded were then available to thousands of other users on the iMesh network.

"Basically what you are doing when you use peer-to-peer software is you are offering someone else's product that they own to thousands of other people for free, and it's not fair," Bernards said.

Illegal downloading costs the movie industry an estimated $5.4 billion a year, she said. - Source, other stories here

Hmmm... the grandson downloaded the movies, but the grandpa gets charged cause he owns the computer. Is this going just a little bit too far?


I_F

 

[Owyn]

they made an idiotic mistake if this article is true, because cracking down, "may" have an effect, but targeting a case where it involves a 12 year old and an old man who own the products and arent long time users will send a message that crackdowns are completely random and unfair, and will do the opposite, likely incourgae pissed off people to ignore things like, its not fair, which is the only reason other then ignorance why ALL movies are not pirated.

 

[santaslayer]

its harsh but the thing is that the grandpa had a duty to look after his own computer because he owned it.


but i do agree.,...fucked up decision...


funny thing is that they could of paid 4000 instead.

 

[loquasagacious]

This reminds me of a similar case of legal bludgening some years back when the RIAA sued a 14 girl for using Kazza to download music. The girl in question thought she had done the right thing by paying to use Kazza and hence was not breaking the law. The RIAA used strongman legal tactics and settled out of court before interested parties could provide the girl with a decent lawyer.