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Over the years, dozens of entertainment industry companies have used copyright law to protect their rights online. Some have targeted regular internet users while others have focused on pirate sites. At times, even internet intermediaries have entered the mix.

But when it comes to serial litigants Voltage Pictures and parent company Voltage Holdings, no target is too small and no target is too big to avoid scrutiny. The company has sued individual downloaders , pirate sites , apps , VPN companies , advertisers, hosting providers and ISPs, even an Internet backbone access company .

Voltage-Led Coalition Sues Major U.S. ISPs

As far as Voltage is concerned, a case can be built to show that anyone involved in an infringement is potentially liable. This month a Voltage-led coalition of independent filmmakers stood behind this assertion once again, initially by suing ISP AT&T for copyright infringement. The group then followed up with similar complaints against Verizon and market leader Comcast.

Generally speaking, ISPs in the U.S. can’t be held liable for the activities of their users, but this so-called ‘safe harbor’ is not absolute. When rightsholders send DMCA notices to ISPs complaining that their customers are downloading and sharing movies, for example, passing on these notices to customers as an early warning is an accepted practice.

When specific customers receive multiple DMCA notices against their accounts, that can be a sign that the warnings aren’t achieving the desired deterrent effect. At this point, the DMCA requires ISPs to terminate the accounts of so-called ‘repeat infringers’ under “appropriate circumstances”.

In all three complaints filed against AT&T , Verizon and Comcast , the plaintiffs claim that terminations were slim or non-existent and, as a result, the ISPs lost their safe harbor protections. No service provider in the U.S. wants to hear those words.

Potential Damages Can Be Punishing

When companies have millions of internet users as customers, being held liable for their copyright infringements is serious stuff, as the billion-dollar judgment against Cox Communications demonstrates perfectly.

Given the high stakes, these cases can run on for years, with every allegation examined in microscopic detail. Even then, repeat infringer lawsuits can be suddenly settled with zero explanation, just hours before going to trial ( 1 , 2 ).

That won’t be the case in the lawsuits filed against AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. In two cases just a couple of weeks and, in one case just a few days after being filed, all three have been dismissed by the filmmaker plaintiffs.

Voluntary Dismissals

The notices for dismissal were filed on Friday at district courts in Texas (AT&T), New York (Verizon) and Pennsylvania (Comcast). In function, the notices are identical – they voluntarily dismiss each lawsuit without prejudice, meaning that nothing prevents the plaintiffs from revisiting their claims in a new action at some point in the future.

The notices cite F.R.C.P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This allows the plaintiffs to dismiss their own case without a court order providing the defendants have not yet filed an answer or motion for summary judgment.

There’s no requirement for the plaintiffs to say why they dismissed the lawsuits and in none of the three dismissal notices have the movie companies offered any clues. There are several possibilities, including the intent to refile for any number of reasons, or in response to an understanding between the plaintiffs and the defendants.

What Agreement – If Any?

Copyright cases involving Voltage tend to have several goals, mostly centered around money. While cash solves most copyright problems, it seems likely that the company would’ve insisted on tougher sanctions against repeat infringers moving forward, including account terminations.

Voltage and partners also want the ISPs to begin blocking torrent sites including RARBG, The Pirate Bay and YTS, but whether service providers are ready for this remains to be seen. Either way, reaching agreement on such important issues usually takes more than a few days so other factors may be at play.

Filing three multi-million dollar lawsuits against three separate ISPs (in three different districts) and then being able to dismiss them all on the same day may be an indicator of a fundamentally common denominator, one that may not have been apparent when the lawsuits were filed.

What that might be, if anything, is open to speculation. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that bigger things may be in the works, including matters that can do without parallel litigation complications. In any event, it’s not at all like Voltage to drop lawsuits this quickly, so won’t have done so without good reason.

All three notices of voluntary dismissal can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In 2019, a Virginia jury ordered Internet provider Cox Communications to pay a billion dollars in damages to record labels including Capitol Records, Warner Bros, and Sony Music.

The plaintiffs alleged that by failing to terminate subscribers that had been accused of copyright infringement multiple times, Cox failed to meet its obligations under the DMCA.

The decision is being appealed but in the meantime other ISPs face similar allegations, including AT&T and Verizon , who were sued earlier this month.

Both of these lawsuits were filed by Voltage Pictures and several movie industry affiliates, together behind movies such as “After We Collided,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Room 203,” and “The Bird Catcher”. This week, the same companies filed yet another lawsuit, this time targeting the largest broadband company in the United States.

Lawsuit Accuses Comcast of Copyright Infringement

In general terms, the new lawsuit filed against Comcast is almost a direct copy of those filed against Verizon and AT&T. It alleges that the ISP can easily take action to prevent piracy carried out by its customers using BitTorrent networks. All it has to do is terminate their subscriptions.

“Comcast can stop providing internet services to a customer at any time. It can stop providing internet services to customer accounts that repeatedly use its services for piracy. And Comcast doesn’t have to find these repeat offenders itself — copyright holders like Voltage already do that for Comcast, by sending copyright infringement notices. But Comcast does not take this simple step,” the lawsuit alleges.

The filmmakers say that Comcast doesn’t terminate repeat infringers because their business is lucrative. Each customer account returns between $400 and $1,000 in additional profits and when combined, these accounts add tens of millions of dollars to Comcast’s bottom line.

More Than 250,000 DMCA Notices Sent to Comcast

The plaintiffs say that third parties (Comcast subscribers) are responsible for downloading torrents from sites including RARBG, 1337x, The Pirate Bay, YTS, and the less-well-known Russia-focused torrent site seleZen.

By joining torrent swarms and sharing their movies, the plaintiffs say that Comcast subscribers reproduced, distributed, publicly displayed, and publicly performed copyright works without permission from the rightsholders.

The plaintiffs say that evidence of this infringement was captured by Maverickeye, a company well known for its involvement in ‘copyright-trolling’ cases against single BitTorrent users. Over the past three years, the German-based company logged hundreds of thousands of infringements carried out by Comcast users, the plaintiffs say.

The movie companies say they notified Comcast of these infringements in more than 250,000 DMCA notices.

Failure to Terminate Repeat Infringers

Despite receiving more than a quarter of a million copyright notices, Comcast failed to take action against its allegedly infringing customers, the lawsuit claims.

“Comcast failed to terminate the accounts associated with these IP addresses or otherwise take any meaningful action in response to these Notices. Comcast often failed to even forward the Notices to its internet service customers or otherwise inform them about the Notice or its content,” the plaintiffs say.

“Instead, Comcast continued to provide the internet access and services necessary for users to commit further online piracy. Comcast continued to provide access to the internet from the IP addresses that infringers used to pirate movies.”

The complaint highlights several instances of particularly egregious conduct. One particular IP address was reported 782 times for infringement, another 626 times. Two IP addresses had 609 and 532 copyright infringements logged against their respective accounts, with several others having a minimum of 373 complaints filed against theirs.

Comcast does have a published repeat infringer policy but the lawsuit claims that the company’s failure to terminate repeat infringers means that it no longer enjoys safe harbor from liability under the DMCA.

“Comcast only counted the DMCA notifications regarding a customer account in each month, rather than counting total DMCA notifications. Under this policy, Comcast did not terminate an account that had a very high number of infringements over several months, but not in any one month,” the lawsuit notes.

Several Types of Copyright Infringement

Due to the alleged inaction of Comcast, the plaintiffs claim that the defendants are liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. These claims alone could run to many millions of dollars in damages.

Due to the plaintiffs’ Copyright Management Information (CMI) being removed or altered in movie files distributed via BitTorrent by Comcast customers, the ISP is also liable for contributory and vicarious violations under the §1202(a)(b) of the DMCA, the complaint adds.

The plaintiffs demand actual or statutory damages and an order that compels Comcast to implement a repeat infringer policy that terminates the accounts of repeat infringers.

In common with the plaintiffs’ lawsuits against AT&T and Verizon, the complaint demands an order that compels Comcast to block access to pirate sites listed in the USTR’s Notorious Foreign Markets report. These include YTS, The Pirate Bay, RARBG, and 1337x.

The filmmakers’ complaint filed against Comcast at the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Efforts to hold internet service providers in the United States accountable for the piracy activities of their subscribers are gaining momentum.

In 2019, Cox Communications was ordered to pay a billion dollars in damages to record labels. The decision is being appealed by Cox, but it set the stage for similar lawsuits, including a new complaint reported just yesterday targeting AT&T .

Filed in Texas by filmmaker Voltage Pictures and several affiliates, together behind movies such as “After We Collided,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Room 203,” and “The Bird Catcher”, the lawsuit lambasts AT&T for not doing enough to prevent subscribers from engaging in movie piracy.

A new and broadly similar complaint filed against Verizon Communications and Cellco Partnership follows a similar template.

Verizon Hit With Copyright Complaint

The premise of the lawsuit is that Verizon “can easily take action against online piracy” by disconnecting customers who repeatedly use its services to download and share movies. The company doesn’t even have to find these pirates itself because the plaintiffs have provided infringement notices carrying all of the information it needs.

The reason that Verizon hasn’t taken action, the complaint notes, is because Verizon makes between $400 and $1,000 in additional profits per ‘pirate’ account. But this isn’t permissible under law, the plaintiffs claim, because when Verizon receives knowledge of repeat infringement yet fails to disconnect the associated accounts, it can be held liable for customers’ piracy.

Hundreds of Thousands of Infringements

According to the plaintiffs, IP addresses allocated to Verizon/Cellco Partnership were monitored by anti-piracy tracking outfit Maverickeye downloading and sharing pirate copies of their movies. Over the past three years, “hundreds of thousands” of these infringements were logged and over 90,000 corresponding infringement notices were sent to the ISP.

On this basis, the plaintiffs believe that Verizon/Cellco were willfully blind to these infringements because neither took meaningful action to prevent ongoing infringement by their customers. In some cases, infringement notices weren’t even forwarded to the allegedly-infringing subscribers, the plaintiffs add.

The complaint highlights several specific IP addresses allocated to Verizon customers, for which the plaintiffs sent large volumes of copyright infringement complaints. One IP address was listed in infringement notices 800 times, another appeared 700 times, with three others being identified on 600, 500 and 400 occasions.

In these cases and others like them, it’s alleged that Verizon had the opportunity to suspend customer accounts but failed to do so.

Repeat Infringers and the DMCA

When Congress passed the DMCA in 1998 (not 1988, as this lawsuit alleges), service providers were given ‘safe harbor’ protections if they adopted and reasonably implemented policies for terminating repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances.”

Verizon publishes its policy here but according to the complaint, the implementation of the Verizon policy places an unfair burden on rightsholders.

The plaintiffs say that BitTorrent-style infringements must be reported via ‘Conduit Notice Forms’ but Verizon prohibits these from being filled out using automated processes. Verizon does operate the “Verizon Anti-Piracy Cooperation” program but the plaintiffs say the contract contains “onerous” terms.

These include an agreement not to sue Verizon for copyright infringement alongside processing fees of $75 per hour for IP address lookups.

In any event, the lawsuit claims that Verizon failed to terminate customer accounts, even when it received multiple complaints against specific accounts. As a result, it has lost its safe harbor protections under the DMCA.

Several Types of Copyright Infringement

Due to the alleged inaction of Verizon/Cellco Partnership, the plaintiffs claim that the defendants are liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. These claims alone could run to many millions of dollars in damages.

Due to the plaintiffs’ Copyright Management Information (CMI) being removed or altered in movie files distributed via BitTorrent by Verizon customers, the ISP is also liable for contributory and vicarious violations under 17 U.S.C.S. §1202(a)(b) , the complaint adds.

The plaintiffs demand actual or statutory damages and an order that compels Verizon to implement a repeat infringer policy that terminates the accounts of repeat infringers.

In common with the lawsuit the plaintiffs just filed against AT&T, the complaint demands an order that compels Verizon to block access to pirate sites listed in the USTR’s Notorious Foreign Markets report. These include YTS, The Pirate Bay, RARBG, and 1337x.

A copy of the complaint, filed by Voltage Holdings et al. at the District Court of the Southern District of New York, can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.