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How a Virginia Law Firm Outpaces the MPAA at Suing Over Movie Downloads

Posted by timothy on from the shame-if-anything-was-t'-happen dept.

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.

2 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Attorney Emails by theNAM666 · · Score: 4, Informative

    * Dunlap, Thomas M - tdunlap@dglegal.com vcard
            * Dureska, Geoffrey M. - gdureska@dglegal.com
            * Grubb, Daniel L. - dgrubb@dglegal.com
            * Ludwig, David - dludwig@dglegal.comvcard
            * Kurtz, Nicholas A. - nkurtz@dglegal.com
            * Novel, Sur - snovel@dglegal.com
            * Policasti, Eugene - epolicasti@dglegal.com
            * Tate, Christopher F. - ctate@dglegal.com
            * Weaver, Jeffrey William - jweaver@dglegal.com
            * Whitticar, Michael C. - mwhitticar@dglegal.com
            * Gurganous, Tom - tgurganous@dglegal.com

    Someone want to get home addresses, phone #s, list of first-born children?

  2. Re:This makes no sense... by thijsh · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't be a smartass without looking up the numbers:
    - Hurt locker box office: $ 16,4 million domestic (box office numbers)
    - Hurt locker extortion: $ 12,5 million (2500 × 5000 and counting...)

    I'd say that's a fairly significant amount of money, and should not be discarded as motive for this scam. If they are true artists they would not participate in this witch-hunt-for-pay against their own biggest fans.