Usenet Provider Celebrates Victory in a Landmark Copyright Battle

The Court of Appeals handed the Usenet provider Giganews a comprehensive victory in the long-running case against adult publisher Perfect 10. Over the years, the latter developed a reputation of a copyright troll who sued Internet services rather than file-sharers. Perfect 10 targeted Google, Amazon, MasterCard, Visa, and even some hosting providers, securing a number of private settlements. Finally, the troll sued Usenet provider Giganews after its images were found on Giganews servers. The settlement was not reached in this case.

 

Instead, the U.S. District Court found in November 2014 that the Usenet provider was not liable for the infringing activities of its users and ordered Perfect 10 to compensate Giganews $5.6m in legal costs. Perfect 10 appealed the decision, but received a crushing defeat in an opinion just handed down by the Court of Appeals. The court said that Giganews must have committed a voluntary act that caused the copyright infringement to occur, which he hadn’t.

The panel also found that the Usenet provider was not responsible for contributory infringement and noted that Perfect 10 failed to show a causal link between the infringing activities and a financial benefit to the provider.

Giganews thanked all the groups that supported it during the legal battle, including the EFF, Internet Infrastructure Coalition and Public Knowledge. The most interesting part of the case is that Giganews now is seeking the appointment of a receiver to take charge of all of the copyright troll’s copyrights, trademarks, and domain names and to liquidate them in partial satisfaction of Giganews’ judgment.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

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SaM

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