Slashdot Mirror
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.
Yadda yadda, outrageous, MAFFIIIIIAAAA, etc. etc., but what's their alternative? The most common solution offered on slashdot for the people who make these movies is basically to just allow piracy.
I assume this means they're suing for an a full and immediate apology, right?
Are there already good alternatives for bittorrents?
1. See it in the theater.
2. Buy the DVD/Blu-Ray
3. Rent the DVD/Blu-Ray
4. Watch on Pay Per View Cable/DBS
5. Watch on HBO/Showtime pay cable
6. Wait until it's rerun on basic cable.
The issue is they can sue you and make sure it costs $10,000+ to even go to court then offer to settle for $1,000. This means even an innocent man will be forced to pay if he cannot spare $10,000.
I suggest they sue for reasonable amounts and do it more often.
it's called the library.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the people who make record years at the box offices happen... year after year after year.
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
There seems to be a bit of post hoc rationalisation going on here regarding the quality of this movie
Now this is just my observation and as such anecdotal evidence, but, I noticed that ever since Hurt Locker was released it was praised by everybody I spoke to. I hang out a lot on both movie forums and filesharing forums, and that opinion was nearly universally shared well after it won a bunch of Oscars and the hype naturally faded. There's an argument to be made that the sucess of the movie, and word of mouth was greatly helped by filesharing, but I'm not making that argument here. Its almost certain that a huge amount of people who liked the movie and spread the word, pirated it. However, almost every opinion I read was that it was an excellent film, until news came out that people were getting sued.
So I look at the file sharing forums, and torrent news blogs, etc and as expected, near universal derision for the producers, but, strangely, suddenly an awful lot of people seem to think "Well it wasn't that good anyway".
What's interesting to me is not just that there are suddenly a lot more negative comments about it than I've seen before, but they're automatically linked to this news story, like its justification. Obviously, the quality of the movie has nothing to do with the rights holders to sue for copyright infringement, so its strange that
Does it feel like a rationalisation to anyone else or just me? Could it be a form of cognitive dissonance, specifically Postdecision dissonance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Postdecision_dissonance
1. "This is a good movie." 2. "Uh oh, this filmmaker has done something abhorrent to my beliefs." 3. This guy is an asshole. 4. Well maybe it wasn't that good a movie
The movie is done, and hasn't changed since released, but if I was to look at the various forums around the internet right now, the universal feeling seems to be it wasn't that great a movie after. The idea that the quality of
Taking something without paying is stealing.
Then hollywood and all the other publishers are the biggest thieves in the world.
Why? Because of retroactive copyright extensions.
Because of those extensions the publishers have stolen millions of works from the public domain.
Works that were created and released under very specific copyright terms that guaranteed their release into the public domain.
If they didn't agree to those terms, they should never have published in the first place.
But instead, they hired lobbyists to steal all of those works from every single citizen.
That is theft on a scale hundreds of thousands of times greater than 'internet piracy' could ever achieve, even if every single citizen pirated everything they ever watched.
So if you want to talk about stealing you should be focusing on the biggest thieves in the world bar none not these piddly little downloaders.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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
If you own the disc, DRM has an (negative) impact on you.
If you don't own the disc, DRM does not prevent you from using BitTorrent, since there is no DRM on thepiratebay.org..
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
Are you being intentionally ignorant?
DRM hasn't ever made a difference in piracy, the only people that are ever impeded by it are the ones that actually legitimately purchased the product.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I'm pretty sure most people saying the movie sucked are simply action movie buffs who felt the movie was slow and boring, and just forgot about it. You've also got people who've avoided criticizing the film for social reasons, like patriotism or the awards, but who'll now honestly say they disliked the film. In fact, I'm suspicious the films support largely comes from cognitive dissonance around patriotism and the awards in the first place.
I watched the beginning of the film, but I got bored fairly early and quit. And yes I've never told anyone that before, well I felt the movie was lame before. I mostly just never cared enough, but yeah I was reluctant to contradict the academy when I'd not even seen the film. I've only rarely admitted that I've never finished Foucault's Pendulum either.
That said, these producers are trying to ruin people's lives for watching their movie. So yes erasing the film from our cultural consciousness sounds like an appropriate response. In fact, one easy move would be helping thin down the wikipedia article.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Agreed. Had I paid to see it, I would have asked for my money back.
So if you like a movie, does that mean you pay afterwards? You are a thief. You take the product of someone's labors against their will and offer nothing in return. That has nothing to do with whether what you steal meets your personal standards.
Yes. And every time you fastforward through a TV commercial or get up to go the bathroom during them, you too are a thief.
Or do you watch all the commercials to satisfy your morality? Do you listen to all the commercials on the radio in between songs? Do you read all the banner ads on every webpage you load?
Welcome to 2010. You can't lock media down as easily anymore and you can't charge exorbitant prices for shit and expect everyone to happily pay it. And using your political influence to sway the FBI and the judicial system in your favor is not going to change the popular opinion.
If the movie industry doesn't like it, they can always stop making movies...