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The Hurt Locker Producers Sue First 5,000 File-Sharers
Voltage Pictures, the production company behind 2008's Oscar-winning Iraq war film The Hurt Locker, today sued 5,000 people who illegally downloaded the movie over BitTorrent. Quoting CNET:
"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 prevent those who downloaded the movie without paying for it from downloading its movies ever again, and order them to destroy all copies of The Hurt Locker from their computers and any other electronic devices they may have transferred the film to. As for monetary damages, the movie's producers want those found to have pilfered the movie to pay actual or statutory damages and cover the costs that went into filing the suits."
According to the complaint (PDF), the 5,000 infringers are known only by their IP addresses at this time.
Well, I don't know what the alternative is.
I just don't like the idea of the justice system being subverted in such a way that a corporation can sue someone anonymously, and I don't like the idea of a family being destroyed financially because their kid downloaded a movie, when otherwise shoplifting the movie would be a petty theft charge.
I would rather see them out of business if this is the only way they can make money. I'm a model mpaa customer. I have over 200 bluray movies purchased, but they would still label me a criminal because I have taken (at considerable effort) the evil step of digitizing all my movies (ripped and encoded to my fileserver in mkv). I have a live copy, and a backup, and the physical copy sits in a closet. They have never been shared. If I lived in America, they would undoubtedly sue me if they discovered what I have done.
Allowing me to rip movies harms their business plan of reselling the same movie every format change.
Fuck them.
Essentially, broke teenage kids want free stuff.
That, too, but once these kids grow up, they are already accustomed to being able to get movies quickly, conveniently, and in a format that gives them full control over how they watch them and what they do with them. A large fraction of these kids will probably gladly pay a small price for each download in a similar service, but will stick to BitTorrent if you try to take their freedom, convenience and inexpensive cost away from them.
The main problem is that even court costs can be enough to destroy somebody's life. The odds are if you're downloading you're probably not among the wealthy elite in the world. They're probably more like me, in their 20's and only a few missed paychecks from being homeless. I simply don't think that a few hundred megabytes is worth the real human misery that you would cause. Legally they are in the right, but that doesn't make it right.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Who says? How many of the sued saw it in the theater and just wanted a copy on their HD? How many were, will be, or would have been paying customers of other movies of the same creators or studio?
I, for one, spend a lot of money on CDs. And yes, sometimes I'll also illegally (depending on jurisdiction) download stuff, because there is an upper limit to what I can afford to spend, and there is much more fantastic music around. Nobody gets hurt by this, because I would not have spent any more money anyway, The only effect of not downloading would be that I wouldn't have listened to this music. And I've often bought CDs after a download if I liked the stuff. So yes, it would be wise to consider me a customer or potential customer even if I haven't paid for a particular mp3. Suing me would be a damn stupid business move.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Indeed. I decided to get a TV after all, and figured that the HDTV via IP package of the largest German ISP would be a good companion. This comes with a so-called online video rental shop which they currently advertise heavily, and I'd be fully willing to pay reasonable money for its supposed conveniences. Well, guess what, it sucks:
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns