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Comment by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF | Hacker News Reader

> Voltage Holdings and Screen Media Ventures cited Reddit posts in which users say that Frontier didn't terminate their Internet service despite sending many copyright infringement notices about torrent downloads. One of the users wrote, "I got a total of 44 emails from frontier about downloading torrents and that it could terminate service. They haven't yet. And I kinda feel like if they didn't do it after 44 emails. That they won't… ."

Don't they just want to file a lawsuit against Frontier? What is Reddit's involvement other than their website being used for this communication?

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I suspect the conversations went something like this:

Film industry lawyer: Tell us everyone who pirated our movies.

Frontier lawyer: We've told you everyone we know of.

Film industry lawyer: What about those people on reddit bragging about getting away with it?

Frontier lawyer: We don't have any way of knowing if those are actual customers, let alone if they're telling the truth. If you have a specific IP you want us to look into, we'd be happy to help.

(later)

Film industry lawyer: Give us the IPs of these users who made comments bragging about getting away with pirating.

Reddit lawyer: No.

Film industry lawyer: Okay, see you in court.

I'm actually kind of surprised Reddit didn't just cooperate? As a company which frankly has been acting with particular contempt for users of late, how does Reddit profit from fighting this?

People like their anonymity on Reddit. Every action reddit takes to make it less anonymous looks really bad. That kind of thing scares people and reddit already has some PR problems.

If word spread that Reddit would name people writing specific comments about various "controversial" topics i think millions would flee?

The entire spirit of Reddit is because of anonymity, from askreddit, to intimate questions, to political talk. Also there's lots of lying, fantasy, larping and fiction.

On the flip side, what's in it for them if they cooperate? There's no profit involved with procuring information for another for-profit entity that they have no business relationship with, and then likely having to show up for some other court battle to testify about the accuracy of the data.

> On the flip side, what's in it for them if they cooperate?

My thinking was, cooperating would mean they don't have to go to court, which costs money...

> and then likely having to show up for some other court battle to testify about the accuracy of the data.

...I suppose that could potentially cancel out the savings. However, I would expect testifying to cost much less money than being sued!

If you get sued and it turns out to be bullshit, there are potentially ways to recoup your legal costs.

Or if you do it once, then the film industry expects and requests for you to do it all the time, maybe? This is me just spit balling. If pulling this data costs m, then its m * number of request indefinitely. m is lower than the cost of a lawsuit over a sufficient number of requests. Where as, Reddit eats a lot of cost up front to try to prevent the film industry from racking up costs constantly requesting this information. And it perhaps bleed outside of the film industry. If they capitulate to film, then music might be next, followed by game studios, followed by software companies.

Not to mention the fact that in recent memory, they've already had to contend with the threat of a mass exodus of users due to unhappiness with how the site was run. Whether or not it ended up making any sort of impact in the long run, I have to imagine that their management has no desire to risk that sort of controversy again.

It'd probably reveal how many of their users are actually bots, which would hurt their upcoming IPO valuation.

I think that you are unfairly extrapolating from a couple of high-profile decisions that upset, in particular, nerds.

I think it was a bigger deal than that, but regardless: absent evidence to the contrary, my default assumption is that a for-profit company will prioritize profit at the expense of everything else. Recent events by Reddit merely deepen my conviction.

Goodwill, for an easy "fight" for a well-funded org with legal people "sitting around" on retainer.

Which they can subsequently burn on "more important" or more profitable user betrayals.

They are planning an IPO ... so this is good publicity for cheap and helps counter the bad PR they've been receiving from all their actions.

Cooperate how?

Do you think they are going to install LLM based surveillance and then hand check the comments in case the LLM is inaccurate?

My understanding is that the users in question were talking about piracy or committing piracy on reddit and the movie companies want to get the IPs of those users from reddit in order to prove that Frontier isnt terminating people committing piracy.

Alternatively, depending on how large the list of users they requested IPs for from reddit is, it could be a fishing expedition to see if any of them happen to belong to frontier

It would be interesting to know if an admission to pirating content on Reddit is actually admissible. I would think it falls under free speech.

Eg: someone makes a parody of an old Monty Python song and states, “I’m a pirate and that’s ok.”

Should this count in an age where the vast majority of legal notices in this genre are robo-lawyers? Should my internet connection be severed because a guest was bored and posted to Reddit while at my house?

At some point in my life I committed a crime.

Here's to hoping that's not enough to have me subpoenaed.

See you in court

I think I get your point but being free speech and being an admission of a crime are not mutually exclusive.

IANAL, but I think free speech is about being jailed for what you say. This is more about admitting to an action that allegedly performed. The speech isn't the problem, it's the action the speech is talking about.

I think they'd have a hard time moving forward on that alone. They need some kind of proof, which is what I think they were trying to get. All they can prove is that the person said they got 44 emails, the person could be lying. There is no law against lying on an internet message board.

>I would think it falls under free speech.

Yes, admitting to committing a crime is not in and of itself illegal. It does, however, make it a lot more likely you'll be tried and convicted for the crime you admitted to committing.

Just because the words came out of my mouth or from my finger tips typed into this little text area does not actually mean I did the thing I'm "admitting". I could be saying it for the clout. I could have said it but forgot the /s. I could be an actor performing the dialog. Where's the witness I actually typed it? Even if there is video, it's all fake news from an AI deep fake. Believe none of what your read or hear, and only half of what you see. Or some such.

I'm not sure what your point is. Nobody (in the us) is shipping people straight to prison on the basis of public admissions of guilt. You still shouldn't publicly admit to a crime.

Just pointing out how ridiculous some post on a forum being used as evidence sounds.

The most ridiculous part was where you suggested that witness testimony was authoritative.

For piracy yea, but what about something more extreme like murder?

Depends on the murder. We’ve seen gang killings hyped and liked on socials, and cops not doing a lot with it. We’ve seen social live streaming of organized looting and not much being done with it. We’ve seen cops on video committing heinous acts and getting away with it. So why do we feel making shitposts on socials is going to do much?

Not very well. Of course it's evidence. You can't convict someone based on them walking into a police station and confessing to murder, either, but you can certainly arrest them or call them as a witness in a trial relating to that murder.

yes, but now it makes it easier to go look for the evidence on you specifically for the crime you claimed to commit.

you know, instead of fishing in the large.

> It would be interesting to know if an admission to pirating content on Reddit is actually admissible.

The problem here is tying the account to a real person. Technically anyone could be using that account, his daughter, brother, wife, etc., just like anyone could be behind the wheel of your car if it's used to commit a crime.

> Technically anyone could be using that account

Not just the account but the internet service as well. Even if they get the IP addresses for the reddit posts, and they're Frontier IPs, it's still possible that the person who wrote the post submitted it/logged in/created their account over a loved one's home network.

Just create an open wifi network and throttle it down to 1kbpm, plausible deniability!

This is correct, the Reddit poster(s) in question were discussing how lax Frontier was about Copyright strikes. The movie company presumably wanted to have that person testify about said lax policy in court.

> What is Reddit's involvement other than their website being used for this communication?

I think that's it, which is why reddit is referred to as non-party in the motion.

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