Ben Dover at the High Court

[Trumpton]

lowerloft wrote:

> Well done to Ben Dover/ Golden Eye for making a stand and
> looking to help the whole industry and other studios with this
> fight against piracy.

What a sycophantic response!

As I've stated previously Honey spent the initial part of his career actively circumventing the law - encouraging other's to circumvent the law and to all intents and purposes, pimping! After this he was in the forefront of what became known as "gonzo" - whereby women are subjected to many varying levels of abuse.

Now he's using the law to seek some form of compensation. What about compensation for the victims of abuse?

Once a law breaker always a law breaker.

[one eyed jack]

James W wrote

I noticed that one of the claimants in this case is referred to in the judgement as "One Eyed Jack Productions".

Yup thats right James. If someone gives me a call and says they will fight my corner free of charge, all you have to do is sign up and we'll do the rest. I signed up!

I find Trumptons accusation of Lowerloft not just offensive but misguided as well. If you knew who Lowerloft was you would know he has no interest in sucking up to Ben Dover at all.

I believe Lowerlofts interests are global in that this industry has provided him employment in the various guises he has been in since he started out as a make up artist to where he is now.

Perhaps you have some axe to grind with Mr Honey personally Trumpton. Thats fine but don't take it out on others.

It seems to me that whenever anyone agrees with anyone in the adult business they are accusing them practically of sucking their dick.

Why is this?

Theft is theft no matter which way you want to style it or are you trying to deflect the issue by stating that his conviction at the hand of a legal system thta is already corrupt with a police force that were equally as corrupt sholdnt defend his own commercial interests?

[one eyed jack]

In response to Meatus:

...Who gets prosecuted, the person who has uploaded it illegally on a torrent site and on a tube site or everybody who has downloaded it from there?


They seem to be going after the uploaders because it is their information that can be obtained from the ISP. ACS Law did it wrong, they sent out speculative invoicing to scare people to pay up who would rather avoid the embarrassment of being found out for their viewing habits.

I dont know about all that dawn raid stuff but I'm sure the police wouldnt mind having a ganders at someone computer to see if there is any slightly illegal image they can get a charge out of. Its great for statistics and you never know....You might find a serial killer along the way. All good stuff to justufy the departments annual budget isnt cut.

When I was raided years ago for mail order, I never stored any information on a computer as I never even had one (thats how long ago it was)...My brief told me that I was raided by the friendly face of the police because they were after my mailing list and database to cross reference pople they were after. I have no idea how much truth there is in that and like you said, thats probably why those who got the initial "friendly letter" to pay up and that will be the last of it just simply paid up.

As the business model has changed from people paying for it to getting it for free it only made sense that the adult business would adjust its way of doing business by doing things this way as well.

As Deuce said earlier, there are people who upload stuff because they earn out of it and that army of pirates is growing. If the porn biz got ?700 from any of those pirates the pirates are still $2300 or $3300 quid in pocket if you go by the 3 to 4k earned from uploads per month.

There are probably some very rich young pirates going around in India and China or whatever country is exploiting this right now.

[andy at handiwork]

As a fan of porn in many of its guises, I feel I have to stick up for the guy in that he was prosecuted for something that a few years later would not have been a crime. At the time I was grateful to guys like him for producing what lots of us wanted to see but had great difficulty in getting hold of. There are quite a few offences that as far as I am concerned shouldn't be crimes in the first place; to say 'once a law breaker always a law breaker' in his case is a little unfair.

[one eyed jack]

Flat Eric wrote:

I'm not condoning illegal downloading at all, but whichever way you slice it that is a piss-take, and way out of proportion to any "damages" he claims he may have suffered.


No more of a piss take than having content you paid for passed around to all and sundry for free.

I cant speak for Ben Dover but when told my stuff was being pirated and given away on various forums by way of rapidshare etc I went to have a look and would find the statistics on some of those scenes ran into thousands. If I was to make the calculation I would base it on the percentage of scenes on my sites times the amount I arrived at and would say this was my potential loss,

That figure was just from one forum. Others would be in the tens and hundreds but add them all up and youve got a lot of people watching your stuff for free.

That doesnt mean everyone who downloaded it for free would have ever paid for it. They probably downloaded it because it was available to them for free which is why the uploader should be held accountable.

[Peter]

one eyed jack wrote:

...........I went to have a look and would find the statistics on some
> of those scenes ran into thousands.

There's a story about a guy who made an iPhone app, he sold 1000, but the app has 15,000 users registered. That's $15,000 he's lost to thieves, and that's just a bloke making apps as a hobby. But it's a decent sum which he may have just spend on beer, or re-invested into making a better product.

Multiply his losses by everyone making apps and everyone shooting porn and you can see why its in terminal decline. And no doubt the thieves will squeal the loudest when theres nothing left to steal.

[jimslip]

Remember, these claims in reality are made against an IP Address, ie a router, NOT a person. So if you haven't secured your router properly and your next door neighbour is piggybacking off your router and downloading or uploading porn, you could have found yourself (If the court case had gone to plan) served with a threatening letter demanding ?700 from Messrs Bendover & Co.

This is the problem with this, it doesn't really tackle copyright infringement, it just drags alot of innocent people into a net who are so terrified of being exposed as "Porn junkies" pay up a load of money rather than defend their innocence.

It also puts the fear of God into people who are legitimately surfing for porn, who now have to ask themselves, "Is this trailer a legit download or not, better not look in case I get a summons!" As you can imagine, people are already terrified of being stiched up by pornographers already, this is hardly going to help matters.

I run a successful website which is pirated all over the World, we are spending our time attacking the tube sites, these are the bastards that are creating the problem and making ?millions from us.

This tactic of threatening broadband users just creates even more ill-feeling towards our industry than already exists.

[Meatus]

Talking of dawn raids and you mentioning they would probably like doing that to get a look at people's computers. What are the actual laws on certain porn now? I am referring to a case a few years ago where a man killed his girlfriend and they found out that he was looking at violent porn and BDSM. And i remember there was going to be a change of the law and an attempt to ban this porn. Did this ban go through? And if so, what constitutes an offence of the said law?

[andy at handiwork]

It was largely as a result of that case, despite the judge saying the porn found had no bearing on the man's offence, that we now have the unnecessary Extreme Pornography legislation in place. In general terms, mere possession of material that depicts activity that is likely to cause injury to genitals, breasts or anus will get you gaol time and a place on the sex offenders register. The pros and cons of the law have been gone over here in the past.

[jimslip]