back to article $17k win for man falsely accused of a terrible crime: Downloading an Adam Sandler movie

Hollywood lawyers have been ordered to foot more than $17,000 in legal bills after falsely accusing a bloke of illegally downloading and sharing the Adam Sandler flick The Cobbler. Thomas Gonzales, of Oregon, US, was sued by legal eagles retained by the movie's makers on the basis that an IP address he paid for was being used …

  1. BillG
    Devil

    Cruel and Unreasonable

    Sadly the court can't rule on damages for accusations of being an Adam Sandler fan.

    Damn the U.S. Court system!

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Re: Cruel and Unreasonable

      Defamation of character?

  2. thomn8r

    In addition to paying damages, the plaintiffs should be forced to watch said movie.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Twice a day, in their own time, for ten years.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Isn't that cruel and excessive punishment?

        1. breakfast Silver badge

          "Ve cannot afford to risk breaking ze Geneva Convention."

  3. Likkie

    Push???

    Have they invented some kind of new push based torrent that forces people to download crap movies?

    How else would anyone have a copy of this movie?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Push???

      No, it was probably someone with very advanced Alzheimer's who mistook it for a proper movie that would actually entertain a human viewer.

      Grown Ups was good though. Speaking of which, I have 2TB of media for anyone who greets me and says; "gimmie the goods, me ol' son!" That is 460 SD quality movies and about 100+ mostly complete TV shows from 60s cartoons classics and up until present day, and only shit someone would watch over and over again, classic stuff for nerds and wannabe nerds alike. It's like Hulu that is not 80% garbage shows the networks gave up on. You must provide your own 3TB disk device for the copy. It takes about a day to copy it on one RPi with the lowly USB 2.0 ports, but it gets there in the end.

      The RIAA and MPAA cannot stop SneakerNet. I fucking shit on those guys. Every. Single. Day.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Push???

        2TB.... pffffttttt.....noob. :)

        That's so small and tiny it's almost cute. :P

        1. Huw D

          Re: Push???

          "That's so small and tiny it's almost cute. :P"

          <obresponse>That's what she said.</obresponse>

    2. Eddy Ito

      Re: Push???

      Undoubtedly it's someone who thinks they can fix it by doing to Sandler what was done to Jar Jar in The Phantom Edit.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well thought out strategy

    Clearly Mr Gonzáles knows what he's doing, judging by his meticulous record keeping (e.g., the 55.2 hours of legal advice and the parking tickets). Well done to him, and I hope he will also be able to claim for his own time spent fighting off those ambulance chasers.

    1. WolfFan Silver badge

      Re: Well thought out strategy

      Parking expenses, not tickets. That's probably money charged by the theiving pay garage at the courthouse.

      1. Simon Brady

        Re: Well thought out strategy

        She ruled that Gonzales was right to bill them for the 55.2 hours of lawyer's time he had paid for.

        What about the parking fees? Trust El Reg to leave out the most important part...

  5. asdf

    has the mouthbreather market locked up

    It's just too bad Eddie Murphy quit being allowed to release stinkers as Adam doesn't have as much competition for all time most razzie awards winner (Sly Stallone right up there too but sadly Adam has a lot more years left, groan). Winning both worst actress and worst actor in the same movie for Jack and Jill was pretty "impressive".

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: has the mouthbreather market locked up

      What about Steven Seagall? Isn't he still making 2 straight to DVD productions a year?

      At least they've got funnier dialogue than Adam Sandler movies - even if it is questionable whether that's deliberate...

      1. asdf

        Re: has the mouthbreather market locked up

        >What about Steven Seagall?

        Actually thought of far worse a few minutes after posting but just now got around to reminding everyone of the horror. When it comes to the lifetime low score on rotten tomatoes tough to beat Larry the Cable Guy (sorry being the voice of Mater doesn't make up for the craptastic movies).

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    The real crime is forcing someone else to watch Adam Sandler movies.

    In some kind of diabolical Clockwork Orange-style torture chamber.

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Re: The real crime is forcing someone else to watch Adam Sandler movies.

      Such as being smashed over the head with a ceramic dildo?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cobblers to that!

    These guys are like the private car parking fine agents. They operate a private 'infringement' system outside the local councils and the authorities jurisdiction. Where I live, if it's a private operator, and even if they get your details, just don't pay *, despite the warning letters.

    * This is not legal advice, I recommend that you seek professional legal advice.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cobblers to that!

      > Where I live, if it's a private operator, and even if they get your details, just don't pay *, despite the warning letters.

      What should you do if they have clamped your car or impounded it?

      1. Goldmember

        Re: Cobblers to that!

        Private parking companies can't legally do either of those things in the UK. All they can do is send you an invoice disguised as a "ticket."

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cobblers to that!

        What should you do if they have clamped your car[?]

        In most circumstances you can let the air out of your tire (or tyre if you're British) and the thing will come right off.

  8. PhilipN Silver badge

    55 hours of legal time?

    That's almost a week and a half full time. To say "I wasn't there and it wasn't me"? (which was accepted as a fact by the claimant's legal team).

    Or did his lawyers leave the clock running while they took a holiday?

    1. Colin Millar

      Re: 55 hours of legal time?

      Nah - Thats just the lawyers mantra

      "Someone is going to get fucked at both ends and we don't care if it's our client or the opposition"

      Plaintiffs lawyers create a mountain of BS = loadsachargeablehours

      Defendants lawyers read the mountain of BS = loadsachargeablehours

      Everybody who is a lawyer wins wins wins$$$$

    2. GrapeBunch

      Re: 55 hours of legal time?

      "Or did his lawyers leave the clock running while they took a holiday?"

      No. Due diligence required that they watch the film. And then recover from it.

  9. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Kudos

    to anyone who can make lawyers pay. I hear it is as hard as extracting blood from a stone

    1. MotionCompensation

      Re: Kudos

      I'm afraid whoever is paying the Hollywood lawyers, is paying for all the lawyers in this case. Money always flows towards lawyers, even if it has to flow uphill.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Kudos

        In the magistrate's ruling, the company (whose name is "Cobbler", so one might reasonably impute their existence to this one movie) objected to the award of parking fees. She excluded (page 13) the parking expenses of $12.40. However, the company did not object to the number of lawyer hours nor the rate of $us 312 per hour. So yes, Virginia, there is honor among [class which includes some lawyers]. Furthermore, the magistrate amply considered the "reasonableness of the billing rate", even though it was not objected to, and found it right and just. So yes, Virginia, "Money always flows towards lawyers".

        IANAL, but I wonder if she could have gone further. She objects to the company's lawyers' tactics, yet she holds back from calling it ~conduct which tends to put the administration of justice into disrepute~ (or whatever the phrase is) (which it clearly is) and throwing them, the company's lawyers, in the brick house.

        No, I'm not talking about the specter of a country's resources being depleted over an item that you could probably buy for $1 on DVD at the discount rack. And if you got caught stealing that item, the consequences would be relatively minor. That, too. But about the tactics she explicitly objected to in her ruling.

  10. Potemkine Silver badge

    False accusations

    Mr Gonzales should get a fair compensation for being falsely accused and having his public image damaged... looking at the penalties MPAA asks to the people it accuses, a few millions of $ would be a fair compensation.

    1. Chris G

      Re: False accusations

      How do you put a value on damage done to his public image by being accused of watching Adam Sandler?

      Hollywood is guilty of many things but allowing Adam Sandler in front of a camera is inhuman, letting him attempt actual acting is beyond the pale.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: False accusations

        "How do you put a value on damage done to his public image by being accused of watching Adam Sandler?"

        what always gets me on these things though is that the guy who makes the accusation is neither the one who suffers from a false accusation not the one who pays the bill if the court says damages due ... there needs to be a way to make the lawyers themselves take responsibility for their actions, not hide behind "I was only obeying the client's orders". Same as there needs to be a way to make "no win no fee" lawyers also liable for the other side's costs (if they share the winnings, they share the losses on exactly the same basis, and as individuals, not hiding behind corporate shields) ...

    2. Velv
      Boffin

      Re: False accusations

      Since the judges also acknowledge the worrying trend with lawyers exploiting the system, perhaps it's time to introduce punitive rewards for vexatious prosecutions.

      Plaintiffs should have a realistic prospect of winning their case on the evidence presented in court, not the defendant failing to turn up.

  11. Zap

    I was in LA for few months this year, the ISP sent the person I was staying with a notice that IP had been detected on torrent networks.

    As it happened the wifi had been hacked, every time we changed the passwords they got back in, must have had a network sniffer.

    We hid the SSID and even got a new router, still got in.

    We pointed out wifi is not possible to secure and suggested they investigate themselves if they wish to take it further.

    What amazed me was that there were 32 wifi SSID's visible on my laptop, biggest issue was them bumping into each other.

    I hate the way these film companies go after people, it is like killing one ant and expecting it to make a difference.

    The greed of studios is the root of this, instead of fighting they should embrace the torrent arena as a market, produce a product for it and price it at a price affordable for that market.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > As it happened the wifi had been hacked, every time we changed the passwords they got back in, must have had a network sniffer.

      (Aside: are you sure they got in via the wifi? For example, if you go into the access point do you see their MAC address associated with the access point?)

      Anyway, to deal with this:

      1. Choose a very long and genuinely random pre-shared key. At least 96 bits of entropy (randomness) so that it can't be brute-forced offline.

      e.g. use this under Linux or OSX for a 16 character key:

      dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=12 | base64

      2. Install this key manually on your router and on all the clients. *Don't* use any auto-security-setup button you have (e.g. anything labelled "WPS")

      3. Make sure there are no other ways into your network - e.g. you are not using any powerline ethernet devices.

      If you are, you'll want to reset the keys on those too. Best to take them all to a completely separate location, plug them in, reset the keys, then bring them back home.

    2. Sandtitz Silver badge

      We hid the SSID and even got a new router, still got in.

      Hiding the SSID is a rather pointless exercise.

  12. ukgnome

    There is a crime here folks

    The Cobbler is beyond terrible, although I hear that Richard Herring has a soft spot for it.

    Adam Sandler shouldn't just be arrested - he should be sent to the gulags.

  13. Chris G

    Sandlerised

    If Adam Sandler is so universally despised as he seems to be on these comments, how is it he continues to produce movies?

    Is it a plot financed by our Lizard Illuminati overlords to keep the human race dispirited and under their control?

    1. DavCrav

      Re: Sandlerised

      "If Adam Sandler is so universally despised as he seems to be on these comments, how is it he continues to produce movies?"

      I don't know if you have noticed, but Register readers are not representative of the general population.

      Having said that, Adam Sandler is useless.

  14. Tom 38
    Coat

    Mine's the one with the asbestos lining

    I actually quite like Adam Sandler movies - his last film was Waterboy, right?

  15. kain preacher

    he is going to make a movie with rob Schneider, Eddie Murphy and Nicholas Cage.

    1. Swarthy
      Trollface

      Nick Cage may actually improve that movie.

      Now add in Keanu Reeves and have Michael Bay direct it, you could have the movie that everyone will love to hate.

      1. kain preacher

        but this is going to be a remake of pluto nash

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