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[Lion7718]

Source: TorrentFreak

In a case involving the administrator of a BitTorrent tracker this week, a judge felt that punishments should reduce if low quality movies were being shared. On the other hand the plaintiffs argued that since their product was being devalued with poor quality reproduction, compensation should actually increase. In a separate case in Argentina, seven pirates just walked because their copies were poor, and the public knew it.

Considering the huge crackdown against illegal camming in recent years it’s clear that the movie industry, rightly or wrongly, perceives this type of piracy as a serious threat. Indeed, they have succeeded in making the activity a criminal offense in many parts of the world.

One might argue that their actions have been pretty successful. Five years ago or more, very high-quality cammed movies were commonplace on the Internet and the release of the best Telesyncs (cammed video with a direct sound source) from Scene groups such as Centropy and maVen were a highly prized and anticipated event. These days, although cams are still reasonably common, very high-quality releases are much less prevalent. Mission accomplished then? Maybe not.

This week the case against the administrator of the EliteBits BitTorrent tracker came to its conclusion, with the judge pondering on an interesting issue.

The judge said that since he could not assess the quality of the movies being offered via EliteBits, he found it difficult to know how much compensation to award the movie companies. The implication was that rightsholders should get less money if the product was low quality – cammed movies for instance – but lawyers for the plaintiffs disagreed. They said that rightholders lose goodwill when films are distributed in poor quality so the compensation should be more.

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