Sunday, April 3, 2011

Porn Company Says You Owe $25k If Content In Your Account Ends Up Pirated... Even If You Prove You Were Hacked [Updated]

Liberty Media/Corbin Fisher continues its somewhat aggressive attempts to blame everyone but itself for failing to put in place a better business model. Remember, we just noted the bizarre claim that it made in the mass infringement lawsuit it filed that anyone who did not secure their internet routers to block all infringing material was negligent. In the comments to that post, someone pointed out that the company also had recently changed its terms of service to say that if anyone with an account had content from that account end up pirated, the user owed $25,000 even if they could prove that the account was hacked (see update below):
6.6
You agree to take all possible measures to keep your username and password secure.

6.7
You agree that if your password security is breached, you are solely responsible for any damage or liability occurring by this breach.

6.8
You agree that, even if you can prove hacking by clear and convincing evidence, you are still liable for any 3rd party use of your username and password.

6.9
You specifically agree that if your account is used to download any of Our content and that content is later found on a one-click hosting site, a file locker site, a torrent site, a tube site, or any other site, service or server or any other medium used for sharing content, that You will pay liquidated damages of $25,000 to Us."
Whether or not you can give up such a right via a terms of service, I'm not sure, but from a business standpoint, this seems like a really, really dumb move on the part of Liberty Media/Corbin Fisher. As this information gets out, who's actually going to sign up for an account? A move like this puts tremendous liability on customers, and makes a clear case for interested people not to become customers in the first place. Who wants to take on the possibility that, even if you're hacked and had nothing to do with it, you might owe $25,000? The entire strategy here seems brain-dead from a business standpoint.

Update: It appears that after the original site posted this information, the company did, in fact, change their terms of service, adding a line noting that you would not be liable for the $25k if you could prove that you were hacked.... There was a comment made on the site that explains:
I brought your issues to to our general counsel. After reviewing your concerns about the terms and conditions on Corbin Fisher we adjusted the language to be more relaxed. We do not want to punish our users for our own security issues or system breaches. We are specifically targeting users who share their accounts with infringers or are direct copyright infringers who lie and use the "my account was hacked" excuse.


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