Intelligent people understand why intellectual property is important. It creates a cultural and a commercial value. The following illustration explains my point.
One day, out of the blue, I was approached by a person trying to develop a technology to block or interfere with the bittorrent traffic. However, bittorrent has mechanisms that prevented blocking and if this is not enough, they always implemented something. So the idea was almost abandoned, but not quite.
What happened? A German lawyer developed the idea to hand over ‘speeding tickets’ to infringers. Then, he would get the names and addresses to send out legal demand letters for his client’s software production company. Eventually, more and more clients joined – music labels, movie studios, etc.
In Germany, we still have unrestricted Autobahns of which I really enjoy. However, going too fast 1 km/h will cost you a lot in a 30 km/h zone section. Unfortunately, I’ve had to pay a lot on speeding tickets. This relates to my thinking about these programs that our lawyers are currently working on. You may get lucky and get out of the trouble for a while, but eventually, you’ll get caught and pay for infringing.
Currently, independent broadband analysis has shown that p2p file sharing has decreased by 30% since 2009, and this trend is decreasing.
Of course people are using VPNs and went to streaming sites, for even my friends pirate movies, too. Since we started in 2009, my own personal attitude has changed 180 degrees. Piracy harms THE WORLD – not only in Hollywood, or the ‘stars’ but THE WORLD.
Piracy affects jobs, talent, and the future. Our clients have asked us, “Why only antipiracy in Germany?” We agreed and realized to push antipiracy on a global scale. As a result, here we are in 2010.
I can 100% guarantee you that any damages earned on a movie were reinvested in new movies which created approximately 3500 jobs for 6 months every time. As quoted – Nicolas Chartier doesn’t need to make these movies. Enough money has already been received from other business ventures. What we are fighting against is the culture of “everything is for free,” but it is not. To illustrate, some of our clients took the $3,000 US they received, fixed their roof and booked a flight (e.g. money for the airline) to the next film market. It’s a sad story that without our program these investments wouldn’t have been accomplished.
I personally don’t think an infringer should get sued for hundreds of thousands of US Dollars. Usually, our clients keep their demands pretty low?
Often I got named as a witness and have been deposed. While waiting in front of the courtroom, I was able to talk with infringers. Guess what? All the infringers said “sorry,” and that’s what you do when you do something wrong – say “sorry”.