Dozens of movie studios are suing six VPN providers together. Not only should you be held accountable for copyright infringement by your clients, but you should also prevent it by blocking the network. The plaintiffs are also demanding that the operators record everything and disconnect them. In addition, there is a desire for triple damages and punitive damages.
This stems from a lawsuit that the movie studios filed in updated form in the US District Court for Eastern Virginia on August 24. The plaintiffs include movie rights owners such as Bodyguard, Rambo V, Dallas Buyers Club, and Hitman 2. The defendants include VPN providers Surfshark, VPN Unlimited, Express VPN, VPN Consumer Network, and also Germany's Zenguard GmbH (CyberGhost VPN). heise online has contacted Zenguard for comment.
Customers break the law, VPN operators should be held accountable
Facsimile from the app: Rights holders want these pages blocked, among other things.
The 70-page lawsuit states that some clients of VPN providers do not comply with applicable law. One accessed child pornography, another posted malicious comments. Some users would use VPNs to bypass geo-restrictions. This would allow them to watch movies that are legally offered in another country.
Some users would make parts of movie files accessible to third parties via VPN and bit torrent processes, which is copyright infringement. The plaintiffs also refer to blog posts and advertising statements by VPN operators that explain or advertise circumvention of geographic access restrictions, non-blocking of bit torrent ports, and lack of logs. The lawsuit accuses two companies of incorrectly specifying the email address for abuse reports in the ARIN (American Registry of Internet Numbers) IP address directory.
Extensive demands
Legally, the plaintiffs claim seven variations of the law by the VPN provider, including direct copyright infringement, contribution to copyright infringement, indirect copyright infringement, and violation of Federal Law. Millennium Digital Copyright Act (DMCA) from the US, because they're your customers too. copyright infringement. Two companies accuse the plaintiffs of incorrectly specifying the email address for abuse complaints in the ARIN (American Registry of Internet Numbers) IP address directory. That interprets the lawsuit as fraud.
At the same time, the plaintiffs are making extensive claims. Infrastructure providers that VPN operators rent servers from are not complaining; however, they should be forced to shut down the VPNs. The VPN operators themselves should force the court to monitor their clients from now on, record and store logs, exclude clients within 72 hours of three uncontested copyright complaints, and block access to "notorious piracy websites of foreign origin ".
All of this is only intended to reduce copyright infringement on some movies. Furthermore, there is a desire for compensation many times greater than the actual damage suffered by all relevant copyright infringements by VPN clients, which would add up to billions. Virginia's place of jurisdiction is explained by the fact that VPN providers use US payment systems, have registered their trademarks with a US authority in Virginia, have clients in Virginia, and in some cases, they also rent servers there. The lawsuit seeks a civil jury trial, which is possible in the United States.
The demand is called Millennium Funding et al v. Surfshark et al. and is pending in the United States District Court for Eastern Virginia under Ref. 1: 12-cv-00643.
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