Lawyer Offers Self Help To Sued BitTorrent Users Written by Ernesto on August 29, 2010
In recent months thousands of US BitTorrent users have been sued for allegedly having shared movies such as The Hurt Locker and Far Cry. Because the settlement amount proposed by the copyright holders is less than hiring a defense lawyer, many defendants have not sought legal representation. Acknowledging this injustice, attorney Graham Syfert is now offering a cheap solution to the problem.
The U.S. Copyright Group (USCG) has been all over the news in recent months. The lawyer group sued thousands of BitTorrent users who allegedly file-shared motion pictures belonging to their clients, including the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker and more obscure titles such as Far Cry and Call of the Wild.
On behalf of the copyright holders, USCG has already sent settlement offers to many affected BitTorrent users. To settle the case the alleged copyright infringers have to pay up to $2,500 or face the risk of higher penalties in a full-blown court case.
The problem with this scheme is that defendants have few viable options to defend their rights. Hiring an attorney often costs more than the settlement amount, and ignoring the settlement offer might lead to an even worse outcome.
Two months ago the EFF published a list of attorneys that could help advise and possibly represent subpoena targets. Although this is a great pointer for individuals who don’t know where to get decent legal representation, all the listed attorneys still ask hundreds of dollars or more for their services.
Attorney Graham Syfert of the Affinity Law Firm is one of the lawyers listed by the EFF, and like the others he has been contacted numerous times by those targeted by USCG. Although Syfert is willing to help them all, for many the costs of hiring an attorney are simply too high.
“One of the major problems that people encounter when trying to hire me on these cases, is that a settlement is approximately what an attorney would need to even begin a defense,” Syfert told TorrentFreak.
To address this issue, Syfert decided to prepare several documents that allow defendants to represent themselves. The forms for pro se (self help) representation include a Motion to Quash, Motion to Dismiss, Affidavit in Support and a Motion for Protective Support. All forms are fillable and are accompanied with detailed instructions of how they should be used.
In preparing the documents, Syfert collaborated with other attorney’s listed on EFF’s website, and he has high hopes that they will be sufficient to dismantle USCG’s ‘pay-up-or-else’ scheme.
“My dream would be to have 10,000-20,000 people file all three documents to the lawyers and severely cripple the entire process and show them that you shouldn’t be allowed to join so many defendants,” Syfert informed TorrentFreak. Two of the many defenses listed in the documents:
However, as is often the case when dealing with lawyers, there is a catch. When first contacting TorrentFreak, Syfert was offering the documents for sale, priced at $99.00. Although that’s still much cheaper than hiring an attorney, we voiced concerns that it looks like another attempt to make a few bucks off the lawsuits.
Luckily, these words didn’t go completely unnoticed to Syfert. “I decided to make it $9.99 instead of $99.00, probably for the next 5 days. Still cheaper than a DVD,” he told us after he slashed the price. Defendants can now buy the full package for under 10 bucks. To our best knowledge that is the cheapest solution to counter USCG’s threats thus far.
Even at the low price of $9.99, considering the target group of these cases it probably won’t take long for ‘pirated’ versions of these documents to appear on torrent and other file-sharing sites. Those tempted should keep in mind though that sharing copyrighted material without consent can sometimes lead to trouble, but it’s highly probable they know that already.
When you changed the mode, did you re-install windows?
I just set it to compatibility mode and installed Windows 7 32 bit, everything is working fine now.
When running AHCI on 64bit it ran fine, but when it was on AHCI, windows 7 32bit didn't detect it even though I had re-installed windows 7 with those settings. It beats me how an OS installs with a particular drive and then the drive just disappears afterward.
Yep it was a 64 bit instal and I tried both AHCI and compatability modes for it and it still didnt work, even Lenovo forum had no answers. Maybe the lesson here is dont buy a cheap laptop lol
I just had the same problem when installing 32bit 7 on a Lenovo SL500. It didn't have any problem on the 64bit version.
I tried to install XP and it crashes when the CD ROM is set to AHCI, I'm pretty sure that might be part of your problem. I set the CD-ROM to Compatibility.
Form wiki:
"Many SATA controllers offer selectable modes of operation: legacy Parallel ATA emulation, standard AHCI mode, or vendor-specific RAID. Intel recommends choosing RAID mode on their motherboards (which also enables AHCI) rather than the plain AHCI/SATA mode for maximum flexibility, due to the issues caused when the mode is switched once an operating system has already been installed.[2] Legacy mode is a software backward-compatibility mechanism intended to allow the SATA controller to run in legacy operating systems which are not SATA-aware or where a driver does not exist to make the operating systems SATA-aware.
AHCI is fully supported out of the box for Windows Vista and Linux operating systems from kernel 2.6.19, as well as later operating systems such as Windows 7. Older operating systems require hardware-specific drivers to support AHCI."
On my computer I noticed that once the OS is installed, there is NO way to change the mode of the hard drive controller so you are stuck with what you select originally. Also this explains why the XP install crashes.
I think the problem is that newer machines designed to have 64 bit may potentially have problems with AHCI drives because there are simply not drivers available for it. I checked your post but if you were trying to run 32 or 64bit OS.
If you ever take a crack at the install again, you should set your SATA controller to compatible/parallel ATA mode and see how that goes.
Ho versato da tempo la quota richiesta ($ 5) ma non sono riuscito ad aggiornare il programma per la ricerca. Sarei grato di ricevere istruzioni in merito. marcello rigamonti
