A 67-year-old man who says he doesn't even like watching movies has been sued by the film industry for copyright infringement after a grandson of his downloaded four movies on their home computer.

The Motion Picture Association of America filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Fred Lawrence of Racine, seeking as much as $600,000 in damages for downloading four movies over the Internet file-sharing service iMesh.

The suit was filed after Lawrence refused a March offer to settle the matter by paying $4,000. "First of all, like I say, I guess I'd have to plead being naive about the whole thing," he said. "I personally didn't do it, and I wouldn't do it. But I don't think it was anything but an innocent mistake my grandson made." Lawrence said his grandson, who was then 12, downloaded "The Incredibles," "I, Robot," "The Grudge," and "The Forgotten" in December, without knowing it was illegal to do so.

The Racine man said his grandson downloaded the movies out of curiosity, and deleted the computer files immediately. The family already owned three of the four titles on DVD, he said.

(Yahoo)

[ 11-06-2005, 08:33 AM: Message edited by: Dreamer128 ]

Why don't they just sue the people who put them on the net for free download instead? If they can track down one they can track the other. It's like prosecuting drug users without going after the dealer.

Bah, the MPAA should hang their heads in shame. Still, I'll sleep easier knowing that such dangerous figures as these are in the dock. I agree completely with Melcheor - why not go after the hardcore file-sharers?

Piracy crackdown? I thought the Royal Navy did a good job 100 years ago. Sorry, couldn't resist. Anyways, what on earth did the MPAA hope to accomplish by taking some befuddled old man to court over downloading movies? Jeez, if your going to do it, then target the download jockeys with 2000 files...

On a side notice... any idea how they could have found out he downloaded the movies?

Well, every site you visit, you leave your virtual fingerprints, if they really want to,they can track everyone's internet history.

Well, every site you visit, you leave your virtual fingerprints, if they really want to,they can track everyone's internet history. </font>[/QUOTE]Proxies.

It's still the grandfathers responsibility to be aware of what his grandson was doing and where he was going on the internet just as if his grandson was going outside into the "real world."

Granted, there's probably worse offenders to go after but ignorance of the law has never been a viable defense.

But there are limits to what can reasonably be done - i'm sure this 12 year old is quite savvy enough to have his p2p software minimised whilst he innocently browses an educational site in case someone looks over his shoulder.

Are we seriously expecting the average grandfather to install monitoring software and restrictive internet policies on their home computers?

True, I doubt the grandson is as innocent as grandfather would like to believe.

Of course you have to ask what iMesh was doing installed in the first place?