"Hurt Locker" Producers Sue 24,584 BitTorrent Users

“Hurt Locker” Producers Sue 24,584 BitTorrent Users

Break record for number of illegal downloaders sued in a single lawsuit. Previous record belonged to producers of “The Expendables.”

It’s been a just little over two weeks since I reported how the producers of “The Expendables” had targeted 23,322 individual BitTorrent users for illegally downloading copies of the movie online, and already it’s been dwarfed by the producers of “The Hurt Locker” with a lawsuit targeting a staggering 24,583.

Voltage Pictures, the makers of the Academy Award-winning movie, first began the effort last May with the help of the US Copyright Group, a DC-based venture “combining the efforts of technology companies and a conglomeration of intellectual property law firms.”

However, it will likely be some time before it’s able to identify the name of all the 24,583 IP addresses listed in the complaint. Of the major ISPs nearly have either refused to cooperate or have strict limits of between 60 and 100 per month.

The only major ISPs to capitulate are Charter and Verizon which agreed to 150 and 100 lookups per month respectively, but even they will have a tough time naming everyone in a timely manner.

Charter has an expected May 2013 completion date with a mere 2,699 IP addresses, but Verizon’s 5,239 would take almost 4.5 yrs.

Worse still is Comcast. With 10,532 IP addresses, even at a rather quick pace of 150 p/mo, it would still take nearly 6 yrs to identify them all!

None of this seems to matter to Voltage Pictures which claims it can “conclude its discovery and that it will name and serve any putative defendants…by the end of 2013.”

Stay tuned.

[email protected]

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See if your IP address is listed….

[Hat Tip]

Hurt Locker 1-24583 Addresses

Jared Moya
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus

This is the new business model thanks to the DMCA and is enforced by the Department of Homeland Security. Step 1) Create shitty products that no one wants to buy. Step 2) Find out who was smart enough to not buy your shitty product. Step 3) Extort the fuck out of them including innocent people. Step 4) Profit. Yep. Sounds like the DMCA and DHS are working exactly the way they were intended to work.

I rented this film... and my eyes are still bleeding from this piece of crap. I guess it's just easier to believe the reason you aren't making money is because people are stealing it rather than it sucking. Academy Award acknowledgment in no way makes your film good.

Aerik Teh

I'm safe! I don't download crap.

Aaron Walkhouse

By daring to plead that "on information and belief, each remaining Doe Defendant may be found in this District" they have committed perjury. Even the slightest attempt to gather information on these IP addresses quickly eliminates large numbers of as both outside the district and in possession and control of ISPs which had never done business or had customers within or anywhere near the D.C. area. They can never claim belief that all of the Does are in D.C. Easily available information proves otherwise. Whether they lied about the information or about their efforts to screen out improperly joined Does, it's perjury.

This publicity stunt is pretty ridiculous and is more likely to get a rebuke from the bench than previous suits. It took me only a few minutes to discover that many of these IP addresses and the ISPs that serve them are well outside D.C. jurisdiction.