Posted on 05/29/2010 5:44:48 PM PDT by grand wazoo
Producers of Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker" have made good on a promise to file copyright lawsuits against people who have illegally downloaded the movie via file-sharing networks.
Voltage Pictures, an independent production company, filed a copyright complaint on Monday against 5,000 John Does in federal court in Washington, D.C. According to court records, next on the company's to-do list is to learn the names of the John and Jane Does from their Internet service providers.
Attorneys for Voltage wrote in the complaint that unless the court stops the people who pirate "The Hurt Locker," then Voltage will suffer "great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money."
Voltage has asked the court to order anyone who downloaded the movie illegally to destroy all copies of "The Hurt Locker" on their computers and any other electronic device that they may have stored the film.
As for monetary damages, the movie's producers did not ask for a specific figure but want those found to have pilfered the movie to pay actual or statutory damages and cover the costs that went into filing the suits.
So, here we go again.
Some big hurt The "Hurt Locker" producers aren't the first to kick off this new round of suits against individuals. A company calling itself the U.S. Copyright Group seems to be spearheading these efforts and has filed lawsuits on behalf of 10 other movies, including "Far Cry" and "Call of the Wild 3D."
None of those flicks have come close to earning the notoriety of "Locker." The film won six Academy Awards this year, including one for "Best Picture." The movie was a disappointment at the box office, however, grossing only $16 million domestically. Nonetheless, a film with an Oscar pedigree could potentially whip up a lot of sympathy among independent filmmakers for the idea of taking a stand against file sharing.
"The plaintiff has identified each defendant by the IP address assigned to that defendant. The plaintiff believes that information obtained in discovery will lead to the identification of each of the defendant's true name." --Voltage Pictures in complaint
But the filing of a lawsuit does not a successful legal campaign make. Not when you're talking about the volume of file sharers Voltage has set its sights on.
This is well tread ground after all. The four top record companies attempted to use litigation as a deterrent for five years and were confronted by bad publicity, big legal costs, and this little nugget: the suits didn't slow illegal downloading.
And the labels are large corporations with lots of cash to fund antipiracy operations. Voltage is relatively small and isn't backed by the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade group representing the six largest film studios, including Disney, Sony Pictures, and Paramount Pictures. The MPAA employs staff to help prevent studio-backed films from leaking to the Web and track them down when they occur.
It appears the Copyright Group, which is private and has nothing to do with the government despite the official-sounding name, is offering smaller film companies a means to fight back against piracy.
Your IP address Whether Voltage can bankroll a legal campaign involving 5,000 people, or whether litigation can make up for lost profits remains to be seen. But two things are for certain: First, Nicolas Chartier, who co-founded Voltage, doesn't appear afraid of some bad publicity. On the contrary, he seems to welcome it. Not only did he get banned from the Academy Awards for lobbying judges to vote for his film, but he recently called those who disagree with his lawsuits "morons."
The second thing that "Locker" downloaders should know is that according to the filing, Voltage already has the Internet protocol addresses of the 5,000 John and Jane Does. There was some question whether companies such as Time Warner and Comcast would provide the information because the Copyright Group has filed so many requests for IP addresses; about 50,000 for a dozen or so films. The ISPs say they don't have the resources to chase down this many. Remember, in five years, the RIAA filed suit against less than 40,000 people.
"The plaintiff has identified each defendant by the IP address assigned to that defendant," Voltage's attorneys wrote. "The plaintiff believes that information obtained in discovery will lead to the identification of each of the defendant's true name."
Yes, in the simplest case, with a 10 year old or a liberal that has no clue, they can track and id to the computer.
If someone has a little more sophistication, they can throw a few levels of obfuscation in to make it much more difficult and expensive.
If someone has access to network admin privileges, suddenly, YOU downloaded the original "Parent Trap". And they watch their stolen movie.
It's a morality and marketing issue. Technically, the sky is the limit for someone willing to spend the effort.
/johnny
As I recall, mom paid about $5k in a case that actually was adjudicated.
Kid did it. It was one of the early cases.
/johnny
yes and no. There are numerous 'tracking servers' that keep track of torrent locations. When someone downloads a torrent the tracking server gathers all the locations sharing that torrent and then pulls small portions from each 'seeder' and send them to the downloading location.
This is how the plaintiff is getting their "IP" information I imagine. Whoever happens to be online and sharing that file at the time they take their 'snapshot' of IP's will be their targets.
To continue the thought above - I would imagine they are using a ‘honeypot’ type setup. They have “The Hurt Locker” shared and are probably using a sniffer of some type to track the people who are unlucky enough to pull a part of their ‘seed’.
One can certainly make an argument in favor of property rights.What really fries my cookies is that...in the case of record companies,at least....they seek hundreds or even thousands of dollars in damages for each "illegally" downloaded song.I can see damages like that for a case where the downloader is making a profit but not when it's just for his/her personal use.Shoplifting a particular CD/DVD would get you a month probation and 10 hours of community service.The severity of the penalties are grossly unequal and therefore,IMO,unfair.
agree
I also find it ironic that these people are “share the wealth” liberals until someone shares *their* music or movie.
So we are dealing with a “feed” and “send” situation all identified by the packets themselves from various locations?
Very interesting.
>>This is why some trackers don’t allow mainstream films
***
true...BUT more than 90% of them do if we are talking about BT DL’s. They dont care and work for over the info. You are a complete fool if u are not able to change your IP address, use Peer Guardian and update the ban lists..umm, that’s what I heard from my neighbor’s kid.
It is the router’s address that is at issue, not a node on your LAN.
Your IP is a smokescreen.
Comcast has already an infamous rep for throttling downloads (they were found guilty) anyways so they could bend over. ATT unlikely. Use Utorrent as your client, heh good luck on Voltage on that one. Azureus/Vuze which is located in Socal, likely..
I thought there were logs to trace all that stuff.
I’ve always wondered about how that works, tho, given that non-static IP addresses get recycled every 8 hours or so. That’s gotta make it way more difficult to track it down.
“The existence of a router (secured or unsecured) make it impossible to track the download”
Why do you say that?
If there is a router in your house, they just assume that the traffic went to a computer in your residence, anyway.
I was a warez guy back in the day but that got risky.
But that just gets you to a CPE (Customer Premises Equipment). Which may or may not be a wireless router, and if it is, may or may not be secured.
Do a war drive and look for 'linksys' as wireless router names. There are LOTS of unsecured wireless routers out there.
Stand everything on it's head and be a bad guy. You want to get X off of the internet, and you don't want it tracked back to you.
Get a laptop without a Broadcom wifi card. Tinker with the MAC on the card to make it not yours. Software only, so if checked after turning it off, it shows up as your normal MAC.
Then, go trolling for 5 or 10 unsecured wireless networks nearby. When you find them, write a script to share them in the time domain.
You have to make sure you don't drop state for the protocol and application, but it's very doable.
The only people that get cold busted are the idiots, or the truly malevolent that require megabucks to track. Everybody in between, not so much.
/johnny
Just like Torrentz and Warez, they used to host the torrents themselves. A year ago, they now use an aggregating algorithm..the same way anilinkz or animefreak shows free anime: they become the 3rd party braodcaster and NEVER host the animes themselves, even though they are copyrighted, complete with disclaimer in case they get sued.
Ever heard of mininova? They were forced by the Euro arm of the RIAA to stop hosting the tors, and same thing is happening to isohunt. Isohunt doesn;t now list the torrents BUT only for US IP’s. BUT if u use an anonimizer like anonymouse.org, you will see it’s the original database of torrents listed.
..that’s what I heard from the neighbor’s kid (cough)
I live in an apartment complex and have an unsecured wireless router.
I leave mine open and watch it for traffic... I don't get much, but I do get it from time to time ...
This is why some trackers don’t allow mainstream films.
Heck! There are torrents of movies just opening at the theatres, within one day of its first release at the theatre.
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