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| MPAA's Big '$80 Million' Settlement With Hotfile Was A Lie | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 28 2014, 12:38 PM (114 Views) | |
| George K | Dec 28 2014, 12:38 PM Post #1 |
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Finally
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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141224/06321429517/sony-hack-reveals-that-mpaas-big-80-million-settlement-with-hotfile-was-lie.shtml For years, we've pointed out that the giant "settlements" that the MPAA likes to announce with companies it declares illegal are little more than Hollywood-style fabrications. Cases are closed with big press releases throwing around huge settlement numbers, knowing full well that the sites in question don't have anywhere near that kind of money available. At the end of 2013, it got two of these, with IsoHunt agreeing to 'pay' $110 million and Hotfile agreeing to 'pay' $80 million. In both cases, we noted that there was no chance that those sums would ever get paid. And now, thanks to the Sony hack, we at least know the details of the Hotfile settlement. TorrentFreak has been combing through the emails and found that the Hotfile settlement was really just for $4 million, and the $80 million was just a bogus number agreed to for the sake of a press release that the MPAA could use to intimidate others. Of course, all of this is just for show. You can safely assume that none of the much lower $4 million went back to any content creators. Instead, it's likely it got plowed back into the MPAA's vast "anti-piracy" machine, allowing it to be used for other lawsuits and funding investigations by state Attorneys General. Still, is it any surprise that the industry famous both for its fictional "Hollywood Endings" and "Hollywood Accounting" where a hit movie like one of the Harry Potter films can bring in nearly a billion dollars, but still have a "loss" for accounting purposes, would create a made-up scenario in which everyone pretends many tens of millions of dollars are paid due to "infringement"? |
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