How long would it take for a production company file a lawsuit against someone for illegal downloads?
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at
12:57 am
My friend downloaded two movies on our school’s network and got in trouble with the school after the production company contacted the school and told them about the downloads. It has been a little less than a month since the downloads happened but my friend is still worried buy without a prescription about possibly hearing from the production company again. How long would it take for the company to contact my friend about filing a lawsuit against him? Is it something that would be immediate or would it take a while before my friend would hear from them? Any information on the topic would be helpful.
First, it depends on what school we’re talking about.
If this is a highschool or situation involving minors, it wouldn’t be your friend that would be contacted/sued.
He has no assets. Your friends parents would be the ones contacted about a settlement and/or lawsuit.
If it’s a college network and the individual involved is no longer a minor….There still probably wouldn’t be much benefit in going after him in court.
As for how long…
Under Federal copyright law, the owner of the copyright has up to 3 years to bring suit from the date of the last infringing action.
So if your friend didn’t download or distribute the company’s intellectual property since being notified, they’d have 3 years from then.
If the files are being shared via bittorrent or other means, it’s a continuing infringement and thus they’d have three years from whenever the files were no longer shared by your friend.
Up to 1-2 years if they ever do it at all. Which I doubt.