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The Hurt Locker Fuels War Against Movie Piracy
The battle against movie privacy is heating up with the ‘The Hurt Locker’ producers preparing a lawsuit against thousands of individuals who pirated the film online
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed an exclusive story that reveals a new wave in the battle between the film industry and illegal film piracy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the producers of Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker (which grossed a modest - for a Best Picture Oscar winner - $16 million in the US) are in the process of creating a massive lawsuit against thousands of people who downloaded the movie after it was leaked on the web prior to its US release.
Voltage Pictures, the production company behind The Hurt Locker, has signed up with the U.S. Copyright Group, the Washington-based venture which begun a litigation campaign against BitTorrent users earlier this year.
Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer at the firm, has allegedly stated the multimillion dollar lawsuit should be filed later this week. The number of individuals who are going to be targeted could reach up to 10,000 or more.
The Hurt Locker joins another ten films which have been the basis of lawsuits by the copyright group. These include Uwe Boll's Far Cry, Call of the Wild 3D and Uncross the Stars. Some of these lawsuits raised alarms whilst others joked that the movie industry was only targeting people with bad taste.
"You can guess that relative to the films we've pursued already, the order of magnitude is much higher with The Hurt Locker," Dunlap commented.
Cooperation by internet service providers (ISP) in essential is this fight against piracy as the plaintiffs must subpoena ISP records in order to match IP addresses with illegal downloading on BitTorrent. Lawyers at Dunlop's firm have supposedly said that around 75% of ISPs have cooperated fully leaving the minority of 25% mainly resisting because of the amount of work involved in handing over thousands of names.
Approximately 50,000 individuals have been sued so far with only three of them trying to quash the subpoena. About 40% have settled and the individuals who haven't will be sent a second offer.
Since The Hollywood Reporter broke news of this story, Dunlop has been contacted by independent film groups expressing their frustration with piracy and interest in signing up.
To find out more about the U.S. Copyright Group, visit the website here.