Hurt Locker creators sue thousands of BitTorrent users

"The makers of the Oscar-winning movie Hurt Locker have joined a very lucrative ‘pay up or else’ scheme that will target tens of thousands of U.S. BitTorrent users. The massive lawsuit is expected to be filed in the coming days and if ISPs cooperate, suspected downloaders will receive a settlement letter in the weeks to come."

Important points stolen from other websites:

•  Although U.S. Copyright Group say it is their intent to sue individuals who do not pay, in reality that eventuality is impossible to maintain on any scale. Their aim will be to scare as many people as possible into paying, perhaps backed up with legal action against a tiny minority to prove a point.
•  The ‘pay up or else’ scheme is not only lucrative for the rights holders, who get only 30 percent of the settlement money. The remaining 70 percent goes to the U.S Copyright Group and its anti-piracy partners.
•  In March the U.S. Copyright Group sued 20,000 alleged pirates for downloading Torrents of indy movies. A user called  'BustedPirate' claims that he was named in one of U.S. Copyright Group's lawsuits and eventually settled for $2,500. 
•  In the UK these schemes have been highly criticized by the public, consumer organizations and politicians because of the intimidating tactics and lack of solid evidence. In the UK House of Lords they have been labeled a scam, and the lawyers operating them accused of “harassment, bullying and intrusion” and “legal blackmail.” As such, all lawsuits are apparently only being issued in the US (??)

inb4 pirating apologists.  
 
it's a hard case to win but i wish them all the luck in the world to pull it off.

Whoa, heavy. I'm pretty sure it won't affect the average pirate but still this is the camel's-nose-in-the-tent kind of thing. It's just going to keep getting more and more strict. I think videogame pirates will almost certainly start suffering similar fates in a couple of years, tops. Pirating represents a LOT of lost income for those big ultra companies, and once they figure out how to crack down on it hard, they will.

ISPs that hand over customer details will be risking a huge loss to their current and potential customer base.

I once received a letter from some firm wanting £700 for something I downloaded, which I did not. 
 
I returned a letter saying "Fuck off I didn't do it" 
 
I haven't heard from them ever since. 
 
Never give them money because your scared, they can't win.

What if someone else was downloading the torrent through your tapped connection? Unless they come to your house and check your hard drive I doubt they could prove it was you who downloaded the content. I'm fairly sure that's why this kind of practice is not really done in the UK. If you live in a fairly packed housing estate or somewhere you could have dozens of people being potential tappers of your connection. That's ofcourse only if you're not protecting your connection. I do obviously but it's not hard to just flip open a laptop and see 1 or 2 unguarded connections floating about. Download a movie using their connection and bam they get sued for it.
 
Or maybe that's not at all how it works. I'm bound to get someone telling me I'm wrong. I always do with these things.

Woa, I totally downloaded that...  But then I bought it, so that takes me out of the equation?
 
Plus I live in Canada.
 
This is definitely a better way to stop piracy that DRMs though.  If it is a legitimate strategy at doing so I guess.  Is there any way to prove the person actually has it?  Sure they may attempt at downloading it or click the link and start but then change their mind.  But what if they never finished their download? Or just downloaded it then deleted it.  Or bought it, then downloaded it for the purpose of having a digital copy?
 
I feel like there are too many variables to sue that many people for having a certain torrent active.

I know somebody who got a warning from his ISP for pirating God of War 2.  He agreed to delete it, and he was never contacted again.

" Woa, I totally downloaded that...  But then I bought it, so that takes me out of the equation?  Plus I live in Canada.  This is definitely a better way to stop piracy that DRMs though.  If it is a legitimate strategy at doing so I guess.  Is there any way to prove the person actually has it?  Sure they may attempt at downloading it or click the link and start but then change their mind.  But what if they never finished their download? Or just downloaded it then deleted it.  Or bought it, then downloaded it for the purpose of having a digital copy? "

" ISPs that hand over customer details will be risking a huge loss to their current and potential customer base. "

I thought I read about this somewhere.  Something along the lines of you are allowed to make copies of your movies as long as they aren't being distributed in any form. 
 
Therefore seeding or selling or even giving away your copied movies is illegal but if it is just for you then it is fine.

ISPs that hand over customer details will be risking a huge loss to their current and potential customer base.

Yay for living in Canada.

Real men use Usenet.

The soldiers in that movie didn't have American Flags on their uniform. 
 
RANDOM ERROR NOTED.
 
But if someone stole something, that's illegal. Sooooooo.

I wish I had pirated this film. Wasted £13 on this piece of shit I thought it was fucking awful. But then i'm in the minority.

like others here i downloaded then bought it on blue ray the next day

" Woa, I totally downloaded that...  But then I bought it, so that takes me out of the equation?  Plus I live in Canada.  This is definitely a better way to stop piracy that DRMs though.  If it is a legitimate strategy at doing so I guess.  Is there any way to prove the person actually has it?  Sure they may attempt at downloading it or click the link and start but then change their mind.  But what if they never finished their download? Or just downloaded it then deleted it.  Or bought it, then downloaded it for the purpose of having a digital copy?  I feel like there are too many variables to sue that many people for having a certain torrent active. "

" @fwylo said:

" Woa, I totally downloaded that...  But then I bought it, so that takes me out of the equation?  Plus I live in Canada.  This is definitely a better way to stop piracy that DRMs though.  If it is a legitimate strategy at doing so I guess.  Is there any way to prove the person actually has it?  Sure they may attempt at downloading it or click the link and start but then change their mind.  But what if they never finished their download? Or just downloaded it then deleted it.  Or bought it, then downloaded it for the purpose of having a digital copy? "

I was under the impression that each DVD is not to be copied, backed up, or in any way duplicated or any shit like that. If you want two copies you need to buy two copies. Owning a Digital copy that you didn't buy from iTunes or something is still technically illegal. Even if you own the disk.    Don't quote me though. Can someone who knows about this please clarify? "

" like others here i downloaded then bought it on blue ray the next day "

Somebody is suing people?  OMG THIS IS CRAAAAAAZY!!!
 
Anyways, the opening explosion in that movie was total shit.  There is no way it would have killed that guy. 
 

 The ‘pay up or else’ scheme is not only lucrative for the rights holders, who get only 30 percent of the settlement money. The remaining 70 percent goes to the U.S Copyright Group and its anti-piracy partners.    

I totally downloaded it as well, but I'm on a private tracker mother fuckers. Eat a dick.

Yeah, because that's going to work.

By the way, I wonder how people were supposed to see legally if it had a limited release in the US and it's not even anywhere in Europe.

This is why I only use private trackers or Usenet.

I've never pirated a movie, i've pirated more roms than I could probably guess and some music here and there. 
 
In any case, the whole "I pirated X then bought X" always sounded like the biggest "covering my ass" type of thing anyone could possibly say - that being said I feel like, whatever measures anti-piracy people take, pirates - real pirates, not your casual elementary school kid with limewire - will find ways to get around them

I can't see myself pirating that movie to watch it again.

Say I know a guy that downloaded this movie a while back from isohunt.  if he gets a letter about a lawsuit he should just ignore it right?

" like others here i downloaded then bought it on blue ray the next day "

" Say I know a guy that downloaded this movie a while back from isohunt.  if he gets a letter about a lawsuit he should just ignore it right? "

ISPs will never give the user IPs to anyone. You know what a bad image that gives your company? If Verizon does it first, Time Warner's motto from that point on will be "We respect your privacy". 
 
This will never happen.

As was mentioned, I don't understand how they can charge anyone without solid evidence. Even if they get the IPs, how can they prove that any individual person committed the act? They could always blame it on neighbor, family, friend, virus etc, which are all actually fairly plausible (e.g. on a WiFi network). 

ISPs will never give the user IPs to anyone.

Billions of people pirate content worldwide yet only a few thousand folks in the USA alone are being intimidated to pay up what they owe or be taken to court? Something tells me this is nothing more than a publicity stunt.

" Someone's being butthurt.  Piracy is shitty, but this isn't the way to go about solving it. Make movies and games and music more available and easier to purchase, and piracy will drop to a minimum. "

I'm not particularly interested in engaging in a debate over what piracy is or isn't. Inevitably, this will be something for you to decide whether or not taking advantage of someone else's work without compensating them for their time is right or wrong.  
 
I do however want to state that there is *not* a direct correlation between the number of copies of something downloaded and lost sales. You cannot state, with any certainty, that someone WOULD buy product X were they not able to download it for free. There is a distinct difference in someone thinking nothing of getting a product in a couple of clicks at no charge, and someone putting money down on a product. The money is the barrier to entry, and for many people will be the primary deterrent for not making the purchase. Removing the ability to get something for free will not suddenly cause a sharp increase in sales; it will just stop people from getting it for free (were such a thing even possible).  
 
The only thing that you can really take from this data is that as you decrease the price of a product, you increase the number of people who use that product. There is current data available that goes even further to suggest this.  
 
(Again... this statement is not an advocation for or against piracy. It is just a statement that there are certain metrics these lobbying groups like to use that are--actually--not of much use at all) 
 
Edit: I forgot to include a statement regarding that there certainly *are* people who would, and can afford to purchase a product that decide to pirate them. It is the direct 1 to 1 equation that is incorrect as they do not possess any real data to suggest who would and would not have actually purchased the product.

For everyone saying that ISPs won't hand over details:

"ISPs will then be subpoenaed to hand over the names and addresses of alleged downloaders"

" A subpoena (pronounced /səbˈpiːnə/ or /səˈpiːnə/) is a writ issued by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. "

Oh guys, don't worry about this. Want something to fear? Check this out.

Good?

Just another way to keep this piece of crap film in the news.
 
In my opinion.

A bunch of hub bub.  What makes the Hurt Locker so special?  I guess they dug a can of "pirate-be-gone" out their ass that makes them immune to piracy.  If it was so easy to sue the hundreds of thousands of people that pirate through torrents in the US, don't you think a large corporation would have done it already?.  It's not like the internet was invented two years ago and all of a sudden people are mad that films aren't making any money.  I mean really, the producers of fucking Hurt Locker?    That's like Koko the guerrilla finding the cure for cancer. 
 
Oh, and it seems they are pissed it didn't do shit in theaters.  How about you advertise the fucking film and put it out in more areas.  I didn't know what the movie was until after it won that Oscar. 
 
Edit:  There are two things to come of this.
 
1. It's a bunch of smoke and mirrors because after they won an Oscar, they got pissed no one watched the stupid thing (most likely)  
2. They file, win, 10's of thousands of people pay up, and shortly after every single company that has ever made a movie, video game, music, or software  sues millions of Americans and the internet blows up. 

How did they find them?

This is kind of the metallica getting their music pirated argument. They made plenty of money, how about they just be happy that so many people enjoyed what they created.