'Hurt Locker' Studio Now Suing Nearly 50K Pirates
Nearly 50,000 alleged file-sharers will be sued for copyright infringement relating to The Hurt Locker.
Lawyers representing Voltage Pictures, the independent production company behind the Oscar-winning war movie The Hurt Locker, has announced via legal findings (Scribd) that they plan to go after 24,583 individuals who allegedly shared the movie via BitTorrent. The copyright complaint originally sought after 5,000 "John Doe" defendants back in May 2010 when it was filed with the federal court in Washington D.C.
According to the announcement, most of the supposed copyright infringers reside on Comcast's network: a whopping 10,532 individuals. The company is reportedly playing hard ball with the plaintiffs, refusing to fork over personal information solely based on an IP address. Verizon, on the other hand, has agreed to provide the information of its 5,239 accused customers, but only 100 per month. Charter is ratting out its 2,699 defendants too at a much faster rate: 150 customers per month. Time-Warner has 1,750 defendants on its hands, although it's unclear if the broadband provider is caving in or sticking with Comcast.
Voltage Pictures' case is similar to others filed across the United States: it's a fishing expedition to acquire the names of broadband and wireless internet subscribers associated with an infringing IP address. These people may or may not be responsible for actually downloading the studio's movie, but apparently in some states it doesn't matter. Someone is going to pay.
Right now the lawsuit is in the "fishing" stage, pushing ISPs on a legal front to provide their customers' information. But unlike several cases in other states which have been thrown out of court, the defendants listed in the Hurt Locker lawsuit might not get off so easy. Voltage Pictures' trio of lawyers Thomas Dunlap, Daniel Grubb, and J.W. Weaver, whose main office is located in Washington D.C., is backed by the U.S. Copyright Group (USCG). To make matters worse, the judge presiding over the case – Judge Beryl Howell – was a former RIAA lobbyist.
Last month the USCG announced a separate lawsuit (Scribd) against 23,322 defendants for allegedly downloading The Hurt Locker. Combined with the case filed by Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver, Voltage Pictures is looking at 47,905 defendants it can possibly sue. The USCG is looking to pull $2,000 from each individual – a meaty $95.81M if everyone coughs up the cash. The movie itself only raked in $17M at the box office, and even if only a fourth produced the $2,000 fine, that would still be more than what the film actually earned.
Monday brought reports that one Illinois judge banned "John Doe" cases from his court, complaining that many of the alleged defendants weren't even residents of Illinois. Another judge ruled that an IP address doesn't equal to a person because the address could be used by anyone, whether it's the subscriber, a guest in the house, or a neighbor leeching off an unprotected network. The latter judge even referred to an incident where the FBI raided the house of one man, accusing him of downloading child porn. Eventually it was discovered that a neighbor was accessing his home wi-fi network from a nearby apartment.
The problem with these federal court rulings is that they're not applied nationwide, only within their specific state. Judges residing in other states can use those judgments as references, but still have the freedom to make their own conclusions. Unfortunately for the 47,905 defendants who face charges of copyright infringement, Judge Howell resides in a district that still believes that IP addresses are tied directly to specific people.
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this will keep anonymous busy for a while. RIAA will never learn.
http://youtu.be/ALZZx1xmAzg
At least now we know why the legal system is so corrupt... They came from the RIAA, the most sociopathic elitist cult in the nation.
Doesnt the judge have a bit of a bias in this case, then? Couldnt it be thrown out or pulled for a new judge just because of that fact?
Guess Comcast isn't completely evil, I agree with all the comments above. Hey the thumbs system works again, now if only Tom's would let me post comments without turning on compatability mode in IE9!
i wonder what they do when they see TONS of ip's coming from a proxy server......
Doesnt the judge have a bit of a bias in this case, then? Couldnt it be thrown out or pulled for a new judge just because of that fact?
It sounds very likely IMO. Still, maybe that lobbyist was sexually harrassed or overlooked for promotions while working at RIAA until she finally quit and now she hates their guts. You never know... Lots of people hate their former employers.
It's stories like this that make me glad I'm in the not-insane (yet) part of North America, where our police focus on real crimes like, say, selling downloaded movies/games/other counterfeit things as the real McCoy, or other things such as actual theft, with guns and such.
The thing is, is that this is just a cash grab.
They're just sad that their movie isn't worth watching and so they try to get money other ways even though they've already earned back their initial investment.
Also, it's the jury that has to make the decision. If I'm wrong about that, the defense in these cases could certainly try to claim a biased judge, and it wouldn't be hard to do so considering past activities.
And it's not like the workers here are getting the pay they deserve if this case turns out to be a gold mine from citizens- since the creative minds and talent in the movie won't see one red cent of this money.
While I do believe that you should pay for stuff you use, I don't believe that crooks such as the RIAA, MPAA, and the USCG should be allowed to abuse the justice system like this. I'm not alone in saying they deserve nothing, and I'm saying 10 bucks per person is more than enough for these people much less two thousand.
On a side note: if you're dumb enough not to use onion routing and encryption layers (i.e. Tor) in the 'States and decide to download movies you've got it coming to you.
And, @aevm, it's obvious that she still has RIAA interests in mind since she refuses to accept reason: that an IP address is NOT a person!
The defendants should counter-sue in a civil suit if this goes through, because you know, you can sue for any reason in America.
If they can't show it was redistributed, the cost should be that of the movie on a shelf.
If you didn't keep it, the cost at Redbox would seem appropriate.
Let's see the lawyers split that.
This is just stuped. Next they should sue anyone who thought or talked about the movie. Wouldn't that be exciting?
In my opinion laws about intellectual property should be applied only to those transactions that involve money and profits. In their digital (low quality) form everything should be shareable on the internet, starting from books and music to movies. On the other hand if you burn them to a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc that should be considered counterfeiting and sanctioned severely. Printing out books and installing pirated software should continue to be illegal.
To sum it up, companies should pay for everything they use or sell (software, movies, music...etc), while home users should only pay for software, as long as they don't make real world copies of the downloaded copyrighted material (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, external hard drive, printed book ...etc.).
Jack Valenti, where is your dead body when we need it? The RIAA and MPAA need to change their name to the NAZI'S or PLO.
This is just stupid
Listen up kids... this is why you don't pirate...
Movie sucked anyway...proof that quality scripting is going down. However, Americans living in the United States will have to pay for all illegal downloads while others around the world enjoy everything for free or cheap (the blu-ray of most movies sells for about $2 in Asian countries).
Good luck to them, if they actually make *any* money from this fishing expedition I'd be surprised, and it would mean the system is truly tapped. Sounds to me like someone at the RIAA is trying to setup the perfect storm by getting this motley band together.
As a business model its pretty good.
They could end up making more money suing pirates than they did from movie sales.
50,000 successful cases x $2,000 per case = $100 Million
According to IMDB Hurt Locker only grossed $12 Million at the box office.
in two words about all of it - bs
i am glad i am fucking russian
so if i
get 50 people together
I ctrl+c the movie file
I get those 50 people to hit ctrl+v into 50 folders
now I have reproduced/ redistributed the movie 50 times
troll logic
lol....only 50k? should be a lot more, lol.....stupidity
As a business model its pretty good.They could end up making more money suing pirates than they did from movie sales.50,000 successful cases x $2,000 per case = $100 MillionAccording to IMDB Hurt Locker only grossed $12 Million at the box office.
well i guess this is the new way of making money when a movie sucks....look at how much money other movies make....take TITANIC for example....it's called being original
a $2000 movie rental for a crappy movie sounds like a pretty bad deal. Redbox is much cheaper.
if they actually pursue this suit, then future movies made by this studio should be boycotted....oh wait, The Hurt Locker pretty much already was!
Bloody hell, they should have paid ME to watch that piece of shit movie.
So if the studio wins, who pays? you still have to get the 50k users to individually fork our their penalty. That would most likely result in 50k summons.
when will people learn and stop using torrents i stopped a 4-5 years ago to much safer way to do downloading and much faster is to use Usenet yes you have to pay for it but what is 10-20 Bux a month 0.33c a day to 0.66 c a day for having unlimited bandwidth for downloading and not having to Share it back to a ratio of 1:1 witch is some cases takes 3-4 days and anyone that gets on that tracker can see what IP addresses are linked to it also with Usenet some of the better Servers allow you to SSL from them to you at usually 256 bit so you really don't have to worry in my house there are Two people that use Usenet and we have two separate connections one DSL and one Comcast there have been months that on the DSL accnt we've downloaded over 1 TB i got a call from Comcast telling me i was using to much before they put the Caps in place and they had me at just over 500GB and i was still a week from the month ending.. and i know some people might say it's too complicated and it's really not just Try
Sabnzb+ it's a catch all for usenet
you own internet service. its connected to your pc. But like others have said, a guest can use it, so can your neighbors via wifi. isnt there a burden of proof beyond associating an IP with a person?
That's like me saying that I associate a car to be owned/used by a person. If a thief drives off with it, and runs someone over, am I responsible for that persons death, just because i own the vehicle?
I have no love for the RIAA, but how much longer before people start catching on that this is the digital age, and you don't have to physically leave your house to commit a crime? Sure, watching a crappy movie isn't the same as robbing a bank, but it is the modern-day version of sneaking in a theater without paying. The only difference is now 50,000 people are sneaking in to watch a free movie, so yeah, the industry that wanted to sell 50,000 tickets/DVDs is going to bite back. If they can't appeal to your sense of honesty, they'll appeal to your fear of getting your bank account taking a big hit. You can keep telling yourself (and the rest of us) that it's not a crime, or it's a victimless crime, or somehow you're making the world a better place, but that's all just a bunch of rationalization for wanting to play without wanting to pay...good luck with that when the RIAA gets your name from your ISP.
so can your neighbors via wifi. isnt there a burden of proof beyond associating an IP with a person?
In Germany, they've made it illegal to operate a wifi without encryption. I guess that makes their burden a little easier. People caught file sharing are getting a notice that they owe 10,000 Euro. I know of two people in my community that got a notice. I think at least one person got there penalty reduced to about a thousand Euro.
At least now we know why the legal system is so corrupt... They came from the RIAA, the most sociopathic elitist cult in the nation.
Quoted on my book face
"These people may or may not be responsible for actually downloading the studio's movie, but apparently in some states it doesn't matter. Someone is going to pay."
What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Seems the other way around when it happens to be a corporation that sues but sues the other way is always innocent until proven guilty... Strange "justice"
If someone get shot on a lawn and there is no clue who actually did it, should the lawn owner be the "guilty" party? Insanity!