Hurt Locker Producers Will Sue 24,500 People for Torrent Downloads

IndieBudget

IndieBudget

The producers of “The Expendables” were probably aiming for a Guinness Book of Records when they launched a lawsuit against 23,000 file-sharers. However, now the filmmakers of “The Hurt Locker” are on the first place. The producers of the award-winning picture are now breaking all records for the most people sued by a filmmaker.

Producers of “The Hurt Locker” have a very simple plan of action: sue everyone who ever downloaded the film. Currently, the number of targeted people has reached 24,500 BitTorrent users.

The MPAA confirmed that the Voltage Pictures is planning to make millions out of the file-sharers in order to somehow make up for the profits they lost to pirates. It seems that the filmmakers are sure that Oscar means that their movie must have been seen illegally, because legitimate box office was only $17 million. So, the filmmakers are now targeting over 24,000 people.

Although the overall number of the accused file-sharers is the largest in history, it is still too low for making up any serious amount of money. For example, if the producers are planning to make up $24 million, they will have to demand $1,000 from each BitTorrent user.

Initially, the movie makers sued 5,000 BitTorrent users, saying that this number was just the start. Indeed, now they have sued 20,000 more, thus making “The Hurt Locker” the largest BitTorrent lawsuit ever.

However, the producers will have to wait long to see the case ready. ISPs are rejecting to look up more than a hundred IP-addresses a month for all ongoing BitTorrent lawsuits. So, it would have taken over 10 years for them to process all the accused IP-addresses, if not the fact that after a certain amount of time the necessary information is destroyed.
 
I hope they find a more efficient way to go after pirating than this. I'm sure there's a reason, but one would think BitTorrent would be getting slammed, too.
 
CamVader said:
I hope they find a more efficient way to go after pirating than this. I'm sure there's a reason, but one would think BitTorrent would be getting slammed, too.
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I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean the company BitTorrent? They merely provide a technology that allows people to share files. Their tech has many legitimate uses. Should you go after companies that manufacture DVD burners because people use them to make illegal copies of films?
 
First off-the comment that (the way I read it) says that "this is an oscar film because of how many people have watched it, yet we only made 17 million". Now I'm eager to learn about this sort of thing, but since when has Oscar nomination collaborated with number of people who have viewed it? Seems in my experience the MAJORITY of Oscar winners tend to have low to average box office take-am I missing something here?

That aside, I can certainly appreciate what the producers are doing-interesting how the ISP search was rejected because of "ongoing Bit Torrent lawsuits" (I shudder to think how many there are)(I'm understanding that as not lawsuits against bit torrent itself, but against bit torrent related activites)

It just seems we can't find a better way to combat piracy. I just wonder how long it is before all ISP start charging a "Piracy" tax/fee-to use an analogy, the way up in Canada (and US?) there's an extra fee on blank DVD's, CD's, Tapes, ect as a way of "giving back" to creators. Maybe ISP's start charging an extra 10 dollars a month on all internet billing, this money would go to or be divvied up to Music Studios, Film Studios, ect.
 
Funny thing is I regularly download movies w/ torrents...I think as filmmakers we need to make our content as easily available to the masses as file-sharing does. I would happily pay for any movie if I could easily get it. Netflix does not have everything I want nor does Hulu. There are ways to profit from films besides the old way of doing things... We as filmmakers have to adapt w/ self promotion or forget about making $$.
 
Just a ignorant thought, but how long is it going to take the film industry & IT folks to establish a special copyrighted material format vs. DIY material?
One that cannot be overcome with transferrence or conversion between FLV/MOV/AVI/MP4/etc. ?

Yeah, if they try it it's going to be a big PITA.
Just wondering.

If emergency services can reserve a certain bandwidth is there a IT/IS reason why copyrighted material can't have a dedicated coding disabling piracy attempts that current coding allows?
EX: Every bittorrent with a code beginning with 9 cannot be downloaded without payment. Every one that begins with 0 - 8 can be freely distributed.

I'm a notorious CTRL+PrintScreen image swiper. But I can't do that with DVDs, so I know there's a half-a$$ed capability to defeat copying.
However, I can download and convert FLVs to MP4 and copy an screen image in my NLE, but I figure with the right nerdware that capability could be denied.

Just exposing the depth of my computer ignorance.
Forgive, please.
 
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IndieBudget said:
Funny thing is I regularly download movies w/ torrents...I think as filmmakers we need to make our content as easily available to the masses as file-sharing does. I would happily pay for any movie if I could easily get it. Netflix does not have everything I want nor does Hulu. There are ways to profit from films besides the old way of doing things... We as filmmakers have to adapt w/ self promotion or forget about making $$.
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You can easily legally pay for and download almost any movie that's been released on DVD/ Netflix and Hulu are cheaper because they're subscription services, but iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Playstaion Network, and many many more offer legal downloads and rentals on your computer or home TV. Most are generally faster too, because the big companies use big servers.

They aren't free, but everyone invested and owing rights to the material get their cut from it, so it's fair.
 
My belief is that no matter the copy protection they invent there will always be people that find a way to break the copy protection sooner or later. What the film industry should really be concerned with is internet speeds increasing by large amounts in the future. Where downloading a film could take as long as downloading mp3s does today. When that happens the film industry will really be hurting.
 
IndieBudget said:
Funny thing is I regularly download movies w/ torrents...I think as filmmakers we need to make our content as easily available to the masses as file-sharing does. I would happily pay for any movie if I could easily get it. Netflix does not have everything I want nor does Hulu. There are ways to profit from films besides the old way of doing things... We as filmmakers have to adapt w/ self promotion or forget about making $$.
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Unfortunately, though, it's all about the money. The investors really don't care about the film beyond what their return is and it's just not efficient to file suit for a quarter of your profits.

I think something like this will eventually happen: ISP's will get involved (with kick-backs from the entertainment conglomerates) with billing and if you download a watermarked file you automatically get billed. This would work much in the same way as the phone company billing you for calling a 900 number.
 
rayw said:
I'm a notorious CTRL+PrintScreen image swiper.
Forgive, please.
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Even w/ rental downloads there are screen capture programs that will make a video file w/ audio of anything on your display......... Im sure bigger and better minds than mine have worked on this issue, but the same tools we use to edit and watch videos allow one to easily reproduce and share.

Im guessing that one might drive enough traffic to a website w/ the movie shown for free along w/ advertising breaks and include behind the scenesfootage, extras, sell dvds, and place ads on the site along w/ product placement to generate income. Main thing is to generate interest and get enough visitors to the site
 
IndieBudget said:
Even w/ rental downloads there are screen capture programs that will make a video file w/ audio of anything on your display......... Im sure bigger and better minds than mine have worked on this issue, but the same tools we use to edit and watch videos allow one to easily reproduce and share.

Im guessing that one might drive enough traffic to a website w/ the movie shown for free along w/ advertising breaks and include behind the scenesfootage, extras, sell dvds, and place ads on the site along w/ product placement to generate income. Main thing is to generate interest and get enough visitors to the site
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That's a pretty good idea-it would convincing the studios, but it would be something that gets them money, we are going to, as you say, have to change our ideas of how we get the money.


One thing I've wondered though, and it relates(particularly to the "filmed in the theatre" brand of piracy)-what type of viewer watches a film that has bad sound and bad pic? Do they watch it just so they can say they did? Has film become THAT "consume and dispose" commodity? Interesting note-a couple of younger family relations (10 and 12) were excited when I rented "Tangled". Why? Not because they hadn't seen it, but rather because they HAD, at a friends house, and it was "filmed in theatre" quality, and the complained the sound was bad the picture looked "weird'

10 and 12 are complaining about the quality! They were absolutely thrilled to watch it on DVD, with good sound and picture.

Just goes to show how discerning (and how YOUNG) our future movie watchers are. ANd perhaps it's at that young, The Y/Milllenium generation-get them on something like your suggested system when they're YOUNG.
 
The"Cam" bootlegs vary in quality. I have seen good ones and bad ones. Iam internet based exclusively for entertainment. I watch everything at home on computer, so I want what I want and I want it now.

I see there is a huge audience that the major studios are forgetting about that will never see a movie in a theater. My mother for one is 82 and on oxygen, she watches Netflix, but the first run movies are not an option, yes she "could" go, but it is too much for her at her age. I think the studios need to work on expanding distribution. They are missing out on many who are willing to pay, just gotta figger out how to monetize it
 
Interesting what sort of $ figure they would come up with for each torrent user. Personally if they are going after anyone I think it should be the people who copy the film and put it up for use on the torrent sites. I guess they stand to make more money from sueing the 24,500 dowloaders than the couple of uploaders.
 
First of all I want to say that I am agains piracy in all of it's forms. Nevetheless I could be seen as a hypocrite as I have downloaded a couple of movies via torrent or other services.
There are reasons to do this. As many of you might know I'm not from the US. This meaning that most of the time, movies will be released there, and if they are hits, they are bought, rented, or whatever, by cinemas here and released to the masses.
This means that most of the time, movies will not be released in any format. Zombieland, an excellent movie BTW, was available here months after its original release. If I want to catch a movie, I might have to wait months for it to be available in Blu-Ray, or I can pirate it and watch it as soon as is avialable online. In HD. And in the confort of my own home.

How can the producers be sure that they lost money. As with games, I know people both online and IRL that would just skip he movie if it wasn't avialable for free download.
 
Michael Allen said:
Interesting what sort of $ figure they would come up with for each torrent user. Personally if they are going after anyone I think it should be the people who copy the film and put it up for use on the torrent sites. I guess they stand to make more money from sueing the 24,500 dowloaders than the couple of uploaders.
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That's a fact. It's also interesting how some are justifying (no one in particular) illegal downloads. IMO, it's undefendable, at least from a legal standpoint. It's fairly cut and dry. "Did you attain goods or services that you did not pay for?" Yes, but.... The "buts" would be equivalent to a defense that hinges on the premise that millions of people shop lift, but very few are caught. It's just a question of damages awarded by a reasonable judge.
 
What if the torrent was download from a wifi signal? Couldn't a defendant plausible argue that their connection was illegally hacked and that evildoer downloaded the torrent?
 
Pretty bad to be sueing potential fans for new movies. I guess they don't care about that. My thought is if the moive was good people probably would buy it sooner or later when they upgrade to Blueray or some other better format in the future. Then agian I guess they got the right to try to scare people into not down loading just like the music industry did when they sued people for downloading trying to make examples out of them. They may think everyone that downloaded would have bought a dvd I think they are over estimating they may have rented.

A lot of the downloaders are probably kids that would not have bought the DVD anyways because they don't have the money. I wonder how many kids will get sued and their parents have to pay.
 
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It's in big part the culture, the culture of entitlement, and our culture has gotten so used to jumping on the net and grabbing the latest movie/ebook/music without even thinking about it. I think the comparison to the shoplifting is an interesting one, and has validity-but with stores you have the electronic sensors, and it's ingrained in most of our culture: you walk into a store, you automatically know that you have to "buy" the product that's on the shelf, a physical item you can hold, and has a price tag. CD's/DVD's/Books/Video games-they come in "solid" formats.

Yet the computer domain, there isn't that "sense"-everything is digial, and literally just mouse clicks away-we don't seem to have that inherent "I must BUY this" on the computer that we have with brick and motar stores-it hasn't "clicked-plus aforementioned entitlement mindset.

I'm going throw this out there too: Payment. Now things ARE getting better with payment options now, but again: I don't use credit cards for much of anything-I won't use them online, and for the longest time that was the only way you could buy things. In brick and motar, I could put 20 bucks out of the bank and go buy an object-I can't do that on the net. Now we are FINALLY getting more and more "debit" cards and of course paypa.-I use Visa Prepaid Gift cards which is basically the same as using a credit card online-but again, that payment accessablity that, until recently, was limited to "No credit card? You're outta luck, sorry".
 
I don't see torrents as part of culture of entitlement, I think it because most people are paying for the internet and think THAT should cover its use. That's been the internets tradition, you pay to get on, but once you're in, everything is free. And let's not forget, the internet is merely a series of tubes.
 
brianluce said:
I don't see torrents as part of culture of entitlement, I think it because most people are paying for the internet and think THAT should cover its use. That's been the internets tradition, you pay to get on, but once you're in, everything is free. And let's not forget, the internet is merely a series of tubes.
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Respectfully, everything on the internets is not free. People know exactly what they are doing when when they illegally download content. Granted, they don't want to think about it much because "everyone" is doing it, but it doesn't change the fact that it is illegal. None of us are entitled to free movies, bottom line. We all have the ability to rob a bank, but that doesn't mean we should do it just because we can.

As potential license granters making independent films, it boggles my mind why some feel this is no big deal.

Anyhow, off my soap box. ;)
 
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