These days, how is content piracy being addressed online? Well, since the beginning of 2010, some 200,000 BitTorrent users have been sued in mass file-sharing lawsuits by "copyright trolls," according
to TorrentFreak. Copyright trolls, if you're not familiar, are small businesses that hire teams of lawyers to go after illegal file swappers. The perceived purpose behind these mass lawsuits is to
gather the personal info of the targeted BitTorrent users, at which point the copyright troll organizations often offer violators the opportunity to "settle" their case for a few hundred up to a
couple thousand dollars.
As a result, "Added up, the potential profit from the so-called pay-up-or-else scheme runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars," TorrentFreak estimates.
"Copyright holders have embraced this new revenue stream by the dozen and new lawsuits are being filed every week."
As TorrentFreak notes, however, not a single such case has made it
into a full jury trial. Therefore, "The evidence [Copyright holders] claim to hold has not been properly tested."
Read the whole story at BitTorrent »
