Why didn't Oink, Elitetorrents etc. users get mass sued?

[bijoy]

Where has my country flag gone by the way?

lol.. :-P

[Rart]

[My last post didn't show up, but I seem to be able to post elsewhere so I'm not sure what's going on. Apologies if this turns out to be a double post in a couple of hours.]

Some of your posts were triggering the anti spam filter. Not exactly sure why, but I've approved the posts for you.

[chrisbeebops]

It becomes a cost/reward problem for RIAA/MPAA/etc. Why bother paying someone to go through the trouble of registering on a few private trackers and tracking a few dozen peers max on most torrents, when you could instead join a public tracker and log thousands in one shot on a fresh movie or music release?

The companies which track down users may know about private torrent sites and may even be members, but the people who hire these companies do not. All they care about are numbers. As big as some private trackers are, none compare in size to public trackers like the pirate bay.

There will always be a certain amount of piracy, but the media companies primarily target the source (people releasing the movies, music, etc.) and the most public piracy (public trackers and p2p apps).

[DanielleD87]

Well yes, but don't these sites keep extensive records? They log all account IPs and that is attached to a list of downloads and uploads. Maybe it's not enough for a criminal prosecution (which is fine, because file-sharing is not generally criminal in UK), but civil damages only require a preponderance of evidence.

It is because the evidence on the site is hearsay making it not admissible in court:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay

[RasToRizE]

maybe they didnt have enough prooof

[BABBY]

its not easy to sue any member using torrents or any p2p network

because their are people from different countries and any country cannot interfere in any other countries constitutional rights

more over their are many places where p2p stuffs are not a crime.

no one can do anything to them.

[haslingdene]

Well yes, but don't these sites keep extensive records? They log all account IPs and that is attached to a list of downloads and uploads. Maybe it's not enough for a criminal prosecution (which is fine, because file-sharing is not generally criminal in UK), but civil damages only require a preponderance of evidence.

It is because the evidence on the site is hearsay making it not admissible in court:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay

Hearsay is admissible in the UK, where OiNK was based.

Furthermore, I doubt that server logs constitute hearsay: the server does after-all have 'direct experience' of who is connected to it and what they're doing. While they may be unreliable, I'm not sure there is even reasonable doubt that if you have a tracker account, and a load of stuff logged as downloaded, and the tracker primarily or exclusively deals with copyrighted content, that you didn't in fact download copyrighted content. Let alone the far far weaker "preponderance of evidence" standard required in civil cases. It's certainly no less reliable than a policeman's observations written in his pocketbook, which are perfectly admissible and often the sole evidence even in criminal trials.



I mean, I'm not entirely sure what the servers even log, so perhaps there's just not the information there, but I don't see how they can't attach an IP to it.

[DarkLured]

It is because the evidence on the site is hearsay making it not admissible in court:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay

That is incorrect - information contained in logs/databases would not constitute hearsay. They would be admissible in court, though they might not have great evidentiary weight, which may be one reason users haven't been sued en masse after site takedowns.

[DakotaJune]

I don't think they wanted to spend the resources to prosecute thousands of users. They did go after major uploaders (from ET) though