50,000 Bittorrent Users To Be Anally Raped

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Hurt Locker lawsuit: 50,000 sued for BitTorrent downloads - Jun. 10, 2011
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The turn of the 21st century was rife with bitter anti-piracy lawsuits pitting studios against their potential customers, with music labels banding together to blast Napster -- and its massive user base -- to smithereens.

Get ready for round two. This time, it's BitTorrent users facing off against the movie studios.

Nearly 50,000 users of BitTorrent's peer-to-peer downloading software have been targeted in a sting over the past few months, accused of illegally downloading one of two movies.

Voltage Pictures, the studio behind 2009's The Hurt Locker, is suing almost 25,000 BitTorrent users who allegedly illegally downloaded the flick. That came just weeks after 23,000 were sued for downloading The Expendables, produced by Nu Image.

Both of the lawsuits were filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., by the U.S. Copyright Group, an outfit formed by Washington-based law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver. The group filed its Expendables lawsuit in February, then followed with its Hurt Locker lawsuit in April.

"They're copyright trolls," says Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights organization. "They take a dragnet approach to litigation."

The USCG did not respond to multiple calls asking for comment.
A spokesman for Voltage Pictures, the Hurt Locker studio, defended the sweeping lawsuits.

"The lawyers are just doing their jobs," he said. "Somebody stole our property and we are trying to get it back." The representative declined further comment.

The new anti-piracy clampdown: Legal skirmishes over digital piracy happen constantly, and BitTorrent is often in the crosshairs.

The free software program lets users swap and download large media files. It's got plenty of legitimate uses -- online education pioneer Khan Academy recently made its free video catalog available through BitTorrent -- but is also heavily used to illegally trade movies, TV shows and other copyright-protected content.

BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker said that his company merely provides the software, and it can't control what its customers do.
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These guys are going about this the wrong way with these massive lawsuits, and expecting large settlements. Why not just do it like a photo radar speeding ticket is done nowadays? The movie & music corporations have the lobbying power in the US to pass laws like that.

When someone illegally downloads your movie, just send them a bill in the mail to whatever house is registered under that IP address. If they don't pay it, it gets forwarded to a collection agency who fucks with your credit, and possibly, can just take it out of your account. Voila, problem solved. Once thousands of people begin getting these $35 bills in the mail, piracy would probably slow down.
 
This sucks for the people who are on the receiving end, but you can't really blame them for going after people sharing their stuff. On the other hand, I would be really interested to see some real analysis on whether the increased exposure for the movie through illegal downloading compensates for the reduced sales from people who download it. On a personal level I'm very curious about it, but it could turn out to be a win-win for everybody involved if the findings showed that it caused a net increase in profits.
 
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Suing John and Jane Doe: What's striking about this batch of lawsuits is that USGC went after tens of thousands of "John Does," issuing subpoenas to Internet service providers including Time Warner Cable, Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500), Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) and Earthlink for the identities of those users.

ISPs are complying and handing over the details, according to those tracking the case.
"Time Warner Cable has fought the subpoenas, but most ISPs are coughing up about 100 to 150 IP identifications per month," said Eric Menhart, a CyberLaw attorney who is representing about 50 defendants in the Hurt Locker case.

A Time Warner Cable (TWC, Fortune 500) spokesman confirmed that his company traditionally fights these kinds of legal requests. Representatives of Comcast, the nation's largest ISP, did not respond to a request for comment.

The EFF's McSherry is troubled by the move to prosecute thousands of individuals as one linked class. USCG "isn't letting people who have legitimate defenses raise them," she said.

Holding individuals accountable for illegal acts committed through IP addresses they're linked to is tricky. For example, should a parent be responsible for a child downloading a movie through the family's IP address? What about a landlord who supplies Internet to a tenant?

Years after those issues first arose, courts are still grappling with them on a case-by-case basis, legal experts say.
For those hit by the lawsuits, the costs of defending themselves can be daunting.

Dozens of the "John Does" in the Locker case have complained to the court about the distance they'd be required to travel to appear in Washington. Others say multiple computers were linked to their IP address.

So far, the court has thrown out the Does' moves to quash subpoenas sent to their ISPs seeking their personally identifiable information.

Threatened into settling? USCG launched in early 2010 and has filed a stack of digital piracy cases, typically going after a few thousand defendants at a time. Many choose to settle out of court.

McSherry and other critics have attacked the USCG for what they say is a "pay up or we'll getcha" method -- that is, pay a relatively small fee to settle or face tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and potential penalties.

BitTorrent user Dmitriy Shirokov filed a lawsuit last year making the case that the firm has made a business out of threatening people. The suit alleged that USCG exploited copyright law -- and that its goal was to frighten people into paying up a small settlement of $1,500 to $2,500 rather than face litigation.

The case is currently pending in U.S. District Court in Washington.
Booth Sweet attorney Dan Booth, who filed that suit, said that USCG hasn't responded to the claims, and has moved to have the case dismissed. It also asked the court to sanction Booth Sweet, a Massachusetts-based law firm, for taking the case.

Menhart said he's seen "an uptick in this style of litigation" over the past two years. The small sums at stake can add up fast.

As TorrentFreak, the first blog to report on the Locker case, points out: If only 10,000 of the alleged infringers pay a $2,000 settlement, it would net $20 million for Voltage and USCG. In comparison, The Hurt Locker grossed $17 million at the U.S. box office.
Menhart hopes mass dragnets like this one will draw attention to a legal issue that's faded into the shadows in the years since Napster collapsed. Nearly everyone agrees illegal downloading is wrong. But how draconian should the punishment be?

"I think there will be a call from people asking, do we really want Grandma to pay $2,000 to settle over a movie her grandson downloaded?" Menhart said. "There's just something about it that doesn't feel right."
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They've had the tech to solve this for years. In 2005 my cable ISP provider sent me a paper letter saying "we saw you download "bewitched" and you have to stop doing stuff like that or we'll be forced to let you go as a customer."

I thought it was pretty cool that they gave me warning without a lawsuit threat... Naturally I found other ways to download but that was a torrent and so all of these 50K people are easily known by their ISP and even the title of what they downloaded.
 
good thieves should be punished
it is not just hurt locker producers who are out money
there are alot of taxes that were not paid because of all those thieves

my main thing is streaming video content...so if it wasn't all being away for free, there could be more money made by me..lol
 
Really I think the idea is pretty stupid to file lawsuits against people watching movies online. So what they want to see it early, I just want to see some hard evidence of "money" they lost by people downloading...in fact I'd like to see a statistic of people who download -> purchase the movie on dvd/payperview/netflicks/etc.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
These guys are going about this the wrong way with these massive lawsuits, and expecting large settlements. Why not just do it like a photo radar speeding ticket is done nowadays? The movie & music corporations have the lobbying power in the US to pass laws like that.

When someone illegally downloads your movie, just send them a bill in the mail to whatever house is registered under that IP address. If they don't pay it, it gets forwarded to a collection agency who fucks with your credit, and possibly, can just take it out of your account. Voila, problem solved. Once thousands of people begin getting these $35 bills in the mail, piracy would probably slow down.
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This isn't a terrible idea, but even better would be to provide a way for people who want to dl early or whatever legally and charge a reasonable fee. I consider this growing pains for the movie industry. Most people will pay a reasonable fee to watch this stuff and for the ones who won't ad rev share would be another good option to make up the difference. bts aren't going anywhere, so it's time to adapt or get out.
 
This is old news. I know because someone in my family was targeted by this lawsuit months ago. Want to hear something funny? No one downloaded these movies via bittorrent and there were no bittorrent clients on any computers in the house that got targeted. This being said I have no idea how this can be legal for them to do or how they can win since this seems to be the case with a lot of the people targeted in the suit--i.e. old women who have one computer in their house, etc. Makes no sense.
 
I would just say I must have has a virus, I cant see how this would ever hold up
 
BlokBlok said:
I would just say I must have has a virus, I cant see how this would ever hold up
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Wouldn't it be a great idea if you were a struggling director who makes shitty movies to hire someone to make a virus that does nothing other than download a small piece of a movie then calls home with the IP of that computer? Then just sue, bank 20 million, keep making shitty movies, etc.
 
EricVonDoobie said:
Wouldn't it be a great idea if you were a struggling director who makes shitty movies to hire someone to make a virus that does nothing other than download a small piece of a movie then calls home with the IP of that computer? Then just sue, bank 20 million, keep making shitty movies, etc.
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A better scheme is if they were deviant porn movies. Very few people will stand up in court and fight a case that they downloaded "Hot Anal Soldiers In Rubber" when they can just pay £300 to settle.
 
EricVonDoobie said:
Wouldn't it be a great idea if you were a struggling director who makes shitty movies to hire someone to make a virus that does nothing other than download a small piece of a movie then calls home with the IP of that computer? Then just sue, bank 20 million, keep making shitty movies, etc.
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amateursurgeon said:
A better scheme is if they were deviant porn movies. Very few people will stand up in court and fight a case that they downloaded "Hot Anal Soldiers In Rubber" when they can just pay £300 to settle.
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Thank you gentlemen, I shall steal your ideas and pitch them to venture capitalists.
 
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