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How a Virginia Law Firm Outpaces the MPAA at Suing Over Movie Downloads
Jamie points out this Ars Technica piece on a series of suits brought by the Virginia law firm of Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver against users they accuse of illegally downloading movies. The firm has an interesting business model in these suits; sue enough users in a DC Federal court to be worth splitting the sum of many small settlement offers (generally $1,500-2,500 apiece) with the filmmakers, rather than rely on winning after trial a small number of larger judgments. Most people settle, and Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver has so far named more than 14,000 "Does" — as in John Doe — including, as mentioned a few days ago, 5,000 who downloaded The Hurt Locker.
In the case of The Hurt Locker, when you stand to make almost as much money suing 5,000 people for "stealing" your movie as it did at the box office, maybe you should have made a better movie.
Living With a Nerd
It seems as though they have found that splitting the file, whoops, lawsuit up into many pieces that can be individually downloaded, whoops dealt with in no particular order is a more efficient protocol, whoops, business model. What will they think of next?!
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Lets say I have a friend who downloaded this movie early this year through bit torrent, using Comcast. What do you suppose are the odds he'll get nailed with a lawsuit?
In other news today, a group of 14,000 bittorrent users who have downloaded movies are suing the studios who produced those movies. The downloaders say the movies were deceptively marketed as being good, and that they were duped into wasting their time and bandwidth by downloading and watching them. The downloaders are asking for a collective total of 38 years wasted time and 448 terabits of wasted bandwidth, plus an unspecified amount for mental and emotional damages.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Washington, D.C.-- Super Lawyers Duenlap, Grubb and Beaver declared today that they had been able to save the ailing film industry via a new, innovative IP-chasing strategy. "It's really simple," declared Duenlap. "You just put a really shitty film on the internet," said Grubb. "And then you wait for peoples' cousins dogs to come download five minutes from the honeypot, and SUE everyone in their zip code," said Ms. Beaver.
Due to this innovation, Hollywood stars will continue to be able to walk the red carpet with millions in diamonds and rubies, instead of being reduced to begging at soup kitchens, said Duenlap, Grubb and Beaver.
CNET news attempted to contact the IP addresses involved in this article but ping requests were not returned.
Someone want to get home addresses, phone #s, list of first-born children?
Somebody apparently already did that. Just enter one of their email addresses in Google. Includes home address/phone and a few relatives' names. I wonder if those are the real deal.
Let's just hope nobody does something illegal to this despicable, blood-sucking, worthless scum ... 'cause that would be ... well ... you know ... illegal ... not necessarily immoral ... just illegal.
Not only that, but in 2008 Barak Obama was elected president. I concede your point.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Someone want to get home addresses, phone #s, list of first-born children?
Why? What's the point? To be a childish dick? To threaten and intimidate?
No thank you. We're adults.