{"id":3,"date":"2006-07-25T14:19:30","date_gmt":"2006-07-25T20:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcguyverofbeer.com\/?p=3"},"modified":"2006-07-25T14:22:36","modified_gmt":"2006-07-25T20:22:36","slug":"a-stand-against-the-mpaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"A Stand against the MPAA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Last November,<\/strong> Shawn Hogan received an unsettling call: A lawyer representing Universal Pictures and the Motion Picture Association of America informed the 30-year-old software developer that they were suing him for downloading <cite>Meet the Fockers<\/cite> over BitTorrent. Hogan was baffled. Not only does he deny the accusation, he says he already owned the film on DVD. The attorney said they would settle for $2,500. Hogan declined.<\/p>\n<p>Now he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s embroiled in a surprisingly rare situation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a drawn-out legal fight with the MPAA. The organization and its music cousin, the Recording Industry Association of America, have filed thousands of similar lawsuits between them, but largely because of the legal costs few have been contested and none have gone to trial. This has left several controversies unresolved, including the lawfulness of how the associations get access to ISP records and whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible to definitively tie a person to an IP address in the age of Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n<p>Hogan, who coded his way to millions as the CEO of Digital Point Solutions, is determined to change this. Though he expects to incur more than $100,000 in legal fees, he thinks it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a small price to pay to challenge the MPAA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tactics. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re completely abusing the system,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Hogan says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would spend well into the millions on this.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the MPAA isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t backing down either. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I hear Mr. Hogan has said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m absolutely going to go to trial,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and that is his prerogative,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says John G. Malcolm, the MPAA\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head of antipiracy. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We look forward to addressing his issues in a court of law.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Look for a jury to weigh in by next summer.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00e2\u20ac\u201c David Goldenberg<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Finally they&#8217;ve gotten themselves into trouble by sueing people that can actually afford to defend themselves&#8230;. <em>&#8211;Scott<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last November, Shawn Hogan received an unsettling call: A lawyer representing Universal Pictures and the Motion Picture Association of America informed the 30-year-old software developer that they were suing him for downloading Meet the Fockers over BitTorrent. Hogan was baffled. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/?p=3\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-online-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottharvanek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}