While one federal judge in California slapped a Malaysian Web site owner for letting site members view pirated films, another federal judge in California blocked the movie industry from pursuing all but one of a first round of suits against peer-to-peer file swappers.
Tan Soo Leong, who owns and operates Film88.com, was ordered November 22 to pay $23.8 million to the movie industry and destroy all copies of all films he allowed Film88.com to view, the Motion Picture Association of America said November 24. "This case shows that some people will go to extravagant lengths to profiteer from pirating movies," MPAA anti-piracy director John Malcolm said, announcing the judgment.
Leong ran both Film88.com and a company called Movie Surf, which he used to set up overseas computer servers in a bid to block the operation from piracy liability, Malcolm said. Iran and Dutch-based Film88.com let paying members see hundreds of films and vintage television shows for $1 per viewing.
Leong had previously run an operation known as movie88.com, based entirely in the Netherlands, until Taiwanese authorities ordered it closed down on similar copyright violation grounds. The MPAA said Dutch courts ordered closed the servers Leong set up in the Netherlands and in Iran.
Meanwhile, another federal judge ordered the MPAA to put on hold a series of suits against twelve John Does, ruling that tying them to a single case was improper because claims against the twelve were not directly related. "Such joinder may be an attempt to circumvent the filing fees by grouping defendants into arbitrarily-joined actions," ruled U.S. District Judge William Alsup, "but it could nonetheless appear improper."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation applauded the ruling. "This decision helps to give due process rights to the Internet users accused of infringement," said staff attorney Wendy Seltzer. "Lumping them together makes it more difficult for everyone to defend against these claims."
Seltzer also said her group was concerned about the movie studios' alleged failure to show infringement evidence against even the one John Doe whose suit Allsup allowed the MPAA to pursue.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Landed a $309,600 judgment against a former NYPD Blue recurring role player for making promotional "screener "copies of The Last Samurai and Mystic River available for DVD bootlegging and Internet swapping. Carmine Caridi refused to answer to the studio's infringement suit, forcing them to get a federal court's default judgment in the case.
