New Twist In Porn Piracy Wars: "You Can't Copyright Porn???"
Posted: February 7th, 2012, 9:47 am
Well...doesn't this put a hammer to the gears this morning:
You Can’t Copyright Porn, Harassed BitTorrent Defendant Insists -- TorrentFREAK
Apparently, the "poor defendant" was busted for downloading a video via bit torrent, and the company threatened to sue her for $150K, but said they would settle for $3,400 to avoid legal action.
There are other controversies about this particular case...but the punchline here is that the defendant is claiming that because California law does not give copyright protection to works that aren't deemed "artful" and "obscenity" is not considered art under the Miller Test standards, then porn, which she declares as "obscenity", is not art and therefore not applicable for copyright protection.
Personally, I think this is BS (and said so in a submitted comment to that article), since porn in Cali is protected speech since the Freeman ruling, thusly very much copyrightable.
I also think that the plaintiffs in this case (Hard Drive Productions) are being a bunch of greedheads in intimidating this woman rather than going after the companies that enable the piracy.
But, this case definitely bares watching.
Anthony
You Can’t Copyright Porn, Harassed BitTorrent Defendant Insists -- TorrentFREAK
Apparently, the "poor defendant" was busted for downloading a video via bit torrent, and the company threatened to sue her for $150K, but said they would settle for $3,400 to avoid legal action.
There are other controversies about this particular case...but the punchline here is that the defendant is claiming that because California law does not give copyright protection to works that aren't deemed "artful" and "obscenity" is not considered art under the Miller Test standards, then porn, which she declares as "obscenity", is not art and therefore not applicable for copyright protection.
Personally, I think this is BS (and said so in a submitted comment to that article), since porn in Cali is protected speech since the Freeman ruling, thusly very much copyrightable.
I also think that the plaintiffs in this case (Hard Drive Productions) are being a bunch of greedheads in intimidating this woman rather than going after the companies that enable the piracy.
But, this case definitely bares watching.
Anthony