Itsme

MILWAUKEE Nov 2, 2005 — A 67-year-old man who says he doesn't even like watching movies has been sued by the film industry for copyright infringement after a grandson of his downloaded four movies on their home computer.

The Motion Picture Association of America filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Fred Lawrence of Racine, seeking as much as $600,000 in damages for downloading four movies over the Internet file-sharing service iMesh.

The suit was filed after Lawrence refused a March offer to settle the matter by paying $4,000.

"First of all, like I say, I guess I'd have to plead being naive about the whole thing," he said.

"I personally didn't do it, and I wouldn't do it. But I don't think it was anything but an innocent mistake my grandson made."

Lawrence said his grandson, who was then 12, downloaded "The Incredibles," "I, Robot," "The Grudge," and "The Forgotten" in December, without knowing it was illegal to do so.

The Racine man said his grandson downloaded the movies out of curiosity, and deleted the computer files immediately. The family already owned three of the four titles on DVD, he said.

"I can see where they wouldn't want this to happen, but when you get up around $4,000 … I don't have that kind of money," Lawrence said. "I never was and never will be a wealthy person."

Kori Bernards, vice president of corporate communications for MPAA, said the movie industry wants people to understand the consequences of Internet piracy. She said the problem is the movies that were downloaded were then available to thousands of other users on the iMesh network.

"Basically what you are doing when you use peer-to-peer software is you are offering someone else's product that they own to thousands of other people for free, and it's not fair," Bernards said.

Illegal downloading costs the movie industry an estimated $5.4 billion a year, she said.

BigJon

Hm...guess he wasn't using safepeer. n00b.

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bachviet

I hope that he wins this case.

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johnnymk

Does any other industry in the world have this kind of protection?.... the steel industry, the auto industry, etc.

The main reason these laws were passed is that Congressmen are afraid what the media giants can do to their careers. These kind of laws should have never passed and they should be repealed.

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ooBaKeep

Oh my. 4 movies, are they for real? Give the old man a break, if anything $50.00 for the cost of the movies and the grandson works it off washing the cars.

Grubbie

But they alredy own three so it should only be 15$ or so

InfiniteNothing

He might have. I really think safepeer gives a false sense of security.

I wrote my representitive.http://www.house.gov/writerep/

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As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

Bires

Makes me all warm and funny inside to think the only movie I have paid to see in the last four months was Serenity.

Suck on boycott, ya greedy, corporate bastards!

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Five years...

Sirrich3

MOney Hungry!!

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