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Hurt Locker File-Sharing Subpoenas Begin
In May we discussed news that producers of the film The Hurt Locker filed a lawsuit against 5,000 John Does, known only by their IP addresses at the time, for sharing the movie over peer-to-peer sites. Now, reader suraj.sun notes that subpoenas for the lawsuit are finally going out.
"Qwest Communications on Monday notified a customer in Denver that the Internet service provider has received a subpoena from lawyers representing Voltage Pictures, the production company that made The Hurt Locker. ... In legal documents, Voltage Pictures has blamed the movie's relatively poor domestic performance on illegal file sharing. As of March 21, the movie had grossed $16 million domestically, but took in $40 million overall. According to reports, the film's production budget was $15 million. The film leaked to the Web five months before the movie's US debut. ... For allegedly downloading The Hurt Locker, DGW told the Qwest customer from Denver that settling the case early would cost $2,900, according to documents reviewed by CNET."
The film leaked to the Web five months before the movie's US debut
Looking for a culprit ? The guy who decided to sit on the movie for months while the marketing campaign was already on. When people want to see something and it is available, albeit illegally, they will.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
When are they going to make extortion illegal?
Oh wait...
I hope I'm not one of the John Does.
So they want 5000 filesharers to pay the ENTIRE production cost of the movie (5000 * 3000) = 15m, then the 40m is clear profit ?
So, you payda money and maybya dont fall down da stairs ? Bunch of corrupt bastards. Sorry, bunch of government santioned bastards.
So they are not happy with their $25 million? Well i guess they have to sue someone, for that extra 2-3 million.
Clearly, no one can survive making that little profit, they need every last penny, dammit!
To be honest, I barely saw any advertisements for the movie, and from what I saw... it wasn't interesting enough to go to the movies to watch.
Maybe *that* is the cause for the "low" profits?
My Tor exit node is probably going to get DMCA takedown requests. I got one for "CSI: Miami Season 4" and CERT Malaysia said I was launching an attack against XXX.XXX.XXX but won't provide me an IP address or range to block. Silly DMCA folks!!!!
First I heard of this film was when it won it's Oscars, by which point it'd been out 6 - 9 months, and seeing as most cinemas drop films after a couple of months then there's no wonder it got poor showing.
Perhaps if people actually knew the film existed, it'd have done better at the box office. Not advertising the existence of a film whatsoever then wondering why the hell no one went to watch it, despite it being popular post-Oscars is the real reason this film did so miserably financially.
Blaming file sharers wont fix a marketing mistake, and by the time they've gone through the courts, dealt with the claims they're entirely unable to prove, it'll probably have cost them far more in man hours than they can expect to earn back through strong arming people with settlement threats.
They assume that the movie would have been a much bigger success were it not for file sharing. Maybe the movie didn't succeed because it sucked. I certainly didn't go see it because nobody I know that did recommended it. It would appear that the new business plan is 1. make a shit movie cheaply 2. leak the film while sitting on it for no reason 3. blame filesharing for the fact that no one liked your shit movie 4. sue file sharers for what you think you should have made 5. profit!
Look...I understand that piracy is wrong, and if something can be legally obtained it should be.
That being said, this is freakin' insane. All 5,000 Does rolled up into one case? A case filed in Washington, DC...where almost none (if any) of the Does live? Fining these people so much money that the entire movie's budget is literally payed for by SUING people?
If this isn't abusing the justice system, I don't know what is.
Living With a Nerd
Voltage Pictures has blamed the movie's relatively poor domestic performance on illegal file sharing.
...took in $40 million overall. According to reports, the film's production budget was $15 million.
They made $25 million and are blaming file sharing because it performed poorly? I think that possibly their standards are a bit skewed because they have been gluttonous bastards for so long. In the REAL WORLD, if a product's return is more than twice what it cost them, I'd say they are doing pretty good.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
I did buy the DVD, but shared it with 5 of my co-workers and let my parents watch it.
I'm not sure why it won Best Picture. Avatar was 10 times better. I would rate the Hurt Locker a 4 out of 10. There are only 2 scenes I remember from it.
That sounds reasonable.
On the other hand defending a lawsuit would probably cost more irrelevant of how innocent you are. It's still legal extortion.
...maybe the film didn't do all that well because not that many people were interested in it. I know I had absolutely no interest in watching it.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Does anyone know whether users of private torrent sites being targeted as well? A friend of a friend of a friend of mine said she downloaded this movie from a private torrent site, and she is concerned.
The Avatar DVD is currently #51 in the Amazon sales charts despite being released in April. I bet it was way more pirated than The Hurt Locker will ever be.
#6 in the Amazon sales charts is a movie made in the 1960s that has been available for piracy for many years.
Occam's Razor: The movie isn't as good as they think it is.
No sig today...
Regardless of whether or not someone leaked out a copy of the movie months before its release, the *real* problem seems to be that they're spending WAY too much to make a movie, and then complaining when their return on investment isn't what they hoped for!
The average motion picture is roughly 2 hours long, right? (Often shorter, and sometimes a few minutes longer, but let's just say 2 hours for the sake of picking a number.) That appears to be about $125,000 per MINUTE they spent to make it, given a $15 million budget!
I haven't even watched Hurt Locker yet, but as I understand it, it's a contemporary movie about the war we're STILL fighting right now! It's definitely not a film that required a lot of painstaking effort to accurately re-create events of the distant past. All the costuming, props, etc. should have been readily available. So WHY can't this type of story be told for FAR less money?
Personally, if I was producing a movie in Hollywood today, I'd pass on any of the "big name" actors and actresses that demand huge salaries, and concentrate instead on having a really good script. Then I'd find some talented but under-appreciated/utilized actors/actresses and see what I could do with them instead. In the last 5 years or so, I've seen much more "in depth" and interesting stories coming out of foreign films with exponentially lower production budgets than the garbage we keep cranking out here in the USA. It's time for Hollywood to rethink how they do business ... not to blame file-sharers for their problems and try to continue the status-quo!
The worst part, in my opinion, is that this isn't even a good movie to pirate. I mean, it was okay to watch on Netflix, but there's no excuse for pirating such a mediocre film. Yea, it won an Oscar, but it was basically just a re-packaged Jarhead.
If this had been over Inception or another really great film, I could understand better. This? Please.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
The Oscar was guilt award provided by the academy to show their support for the troops. The movie, even if it never hit the p2p networks, would have never grossed more.
The movie wasn't a public hit because it didn't appeal to a broad range of movie goers. If they feel they need to sue for this - then so be it, but 5,000 cases in one DC court? What the fuck was this judge thinking?
I'm curious to see just how much of a waste of time this will be.
"Where's this one?"
"Umm, we traced it to an ISP in Alert Bay, Canada."
"Tell him we'll go after all of his assets in the State of California!"
I've never heard of this movie before now. Maybe they need to consider doing some marketing rather than suing people.
They should pay all the poor sap's $2,900 each for having to sit through this garbage movie. WHERE"S MY CHECK?
Movies never make a profit due to the famous Hollywood accounting.
...and now I'll never rent it or buy it! Congrats on the lost sale!
What I find funniest about this is that the settlements are currently equal to the production costs. What we're witnessing is the point when the MPAA members can actually stay profitable without releasing their movies!
Academy masturbation aside "zomg, a WOMAN made a WAR movie about IRAQ!!!", the real reason it had a poor box office showing was that the movie, frankly, sucked.
The people who downloaded it were the lucky ones.
Regardless if the film sucker or not, no matter how much it cost to make or how much it made, the fact is that no one has a right to simply take the work of an artist and distribute it as they please. The producers of this film made this film under the agreement that it would be protected by copyright. It is protected and now those who took it will be made to pay a price.
There is no excuse to taking this film.
Anyone ever heard of "marketing". I didn't even know this damn movie existed until way late in the game. It was actually in theatres? I don't consider myself living under a rock, but maybe the underperformance of the film should be blamed on the tools who were supposed to be marketing it.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
...from a movie that only opened in "art houses"? At least where I live (largish metropolitan area), the movie opened in *two* indie theaters. I don't exactly know how this works, whether the movie producers steer their movie towards indie or mainstream theaters, or if the theaters can pick and choose the movies they show. At any rate, it's no big surprise that a movie that opened in a city of 2 million+ in only two movie theaters would have been short-lived, over-hyped (as these types of movies often are), and revenue-deficient.
Actually, illegal file sharing had a huge part in the movie not making any money. People could see just how bad it sucked for free before shelling out the cash to see it suck in a theater.
My thoughts exactly.
Sounds to me like it would generally be cheaper to settle than to even bother hiring a lawyer. I think they've got the price point right for a very high settlement to sued ratio.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Perhaps, just perhaps, it is simply a movie nobody wanted to see. I wonder, reaaallly wonder why anyone who isn't an American would want to watch a self agrandising piece of American rhetoric?
I haven't even heard of this movie. Maybe it did bad because it wasn't marketed well enough, or that it was just a crappy movie? There's a LOT of duds out there.
Production costs are $15M. 5000 downloaders @ $2900 a head is £14.5M. Leaking the movie 5 months prior to its official release almost guarantees that at least 5000 people is going to download it (which might not be the case after it hit the cinemas). If worst comes to worst, the investors break even. Whoever came up with the idea deserves an award!
I'm Not Antisocial, I'm Just Not User Friendly
From reading the information provided in the summary, it seems that Hurt Locker sold so well locally that the domestic gross profit alone was enough to completely repay the cost of production and even leave them with an additional million dollars in the bank. The international sales were somewhat less impressive - $24mil from the rest of the world combined, compared to $16mil domestic. If filesharing had an effect on sales, then it appears to be mainly an offshore problem. But at this point it's all pure profit, so we shouldn't complain too much.
Ultimately the film resulted in a 167% return on investment, and provided enough capital to almost completely fund two more projects of similar magnitude.
That being said, this is the first time I've ever heard of Hurt Locker. I guess their marketing could have been better. Is the movie it any good?
This seems like the most equitable form of extortion I've ever seen come out of the entertainment industry, so at least I'll have to give the producers credit for not being complete pie-in-the-sky assholes ("We lost potential billions for the rest of time!")
I'd love to see this the other way around. Before a film begins shooting, I pay them $2, just me Joe-Blow consumer. I can pick whatever project I want to give cash to, though I have no input on the content. In exchange for the $2, I get a license. I can copy and past the movie wherever I want to after it goes through the initial theatrical release. I also get to keep the license for an indefinite period, as it is MY license for a movie I invested in with my money (the average consumer isn't going to throw it out on to torrents, because dammit, they already own a copy). If done right, you could create an environment where movies are pure profit.
I bought the movie when it came out on DVD because I'd wanted to see it in theatres but missed it and heard it was worth the money.
I really enjoyed the movie and was happy to see it earn some Oscar recognition.
Now that they are backing this sort of action against people, I regret giving them any of my money. I will no longer recommend this movie. I regret supporting this movie if they are so willing to participate in a legal action that I find offensive. The copyright laws, as they exist, were designed to combat _commercial_ piracy and that's a battle I support. Suing individuals for the same monetary damages that are designed to discourage commercial infringement is abusive.
Fuck them.
and didn't feel like lining the pockets of a movie studio profiteering from the war in Iraq when we have friends grieving for their brothers who died disarming bombs there.
RIP S/Sgt Edmond Lo.
I almost purchased this yesterday, but I picked up Shooter instead. I'll make sure I don't reward them; I'll buy a different movie DVD. Perhaps "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
Perhaps they should examine the prices they charge in the theaters. When we (family of four) could go watch a movie and eat dinner for a few dollars more than the cost of eating in a sit down restaurant, we went several times a month. $3 for a pair of recycled glasses?
Did they take into consideration that no movie about Iraq has been a big hit in the United States? It's taboo because Americans are a little too close to the subject matter - nobody wants to see "entertainment" about a war when sons & daughters are current involved in the theater of operations.
What happens if an ISP says... "We don't have the logs."?
Don't download shitty movies.
...I just have to say, fuck them to hell with extreme prejudice if they're suing anyone currently serving in the Middle East, or any veterans who have.
The last few movies that I have seen (not including Avatar), had very little in the way of story. Sure they had great special effects and looks great but give me a story I can sink my teeth into (I am not a "vampire movie fan", except maybe ones with Béla Lugosi). The motion picture industry seems to have forgotten that a movie is about TELLING A STORY! If you ain't got no story, no matter how good it looks the movie will suck $H!T. Now take Shawshank Redemption for instance, I don't remember the movie having any special effects. It also looked like day to day life in prison but the movie had a story that drew you in and captivated you. You kept watching not to see the next special effect but to see how the story is unfolding. Movies are a modern version of story-telling and if you don't have a story, you don't have a movie (worth seeing).
Another problem with the movie industry is prices!! Most families I know wait for the movie to come out on dvd. Why? PRICE! A family of 4 will have to spend about $75 for admission, popcorn and a soda to go see a movie. In this economy, they would rather wait a few months and spend $3 to see the movie and use the other $72 to put food on the table or to pay the electricity bill.
Ouch.
Still, cheaper than taking the wife to see it in the theater and buying some popcorn and drinks; sounds like a deal!
Any jury or judges involved in this case must sit thru ONE complete showing for each of the 5000 people sued.
That should take care of the problem very nicely.
despite the reaction they got when they won over avatar in the oscars because of the politically charged, patriotism-exploiting script they had. on one side, avatar, an universal story with excellent implementation regardless of borrowing a lot from world literature, on the other side a script that capitalizes on a particular nation's political views from a certain spectrum.
and then these morons go out and sue people who actually distribute their move for more people to watch !
disgusting.
Read radical news here
Hey, they barely made more than the movie cost to produce - but even so there were enough noobs without Internet access that paid to cover the cost.
What has to happen is for a whole year nobody pays money for movis. Everything downloaded for free - it is all there for the taking, so why not? This will put the people grabbing for all the cash in their place. We don't have to pay.
They aren't going to get many people to pay $2900 for downloading because most of them can easily point to the five computers connected to the same IP address and say "ok, prove who did it" They can't prosecute everyone in the house and there is no way to tell which compute behind a router downloaded anything.
Sure, blame the "pirates"[sic]. It couldn't possibly be due to a lousy title, shitty writing, and mostly-unknown actors could it? I just had to google it (the only thing I've heard about Hurt Locker is that the idiots who put out a probably-crappy B-movie are suing anonymous people) and I see it's about Iraq. People are probably just sick and tired of hearing about Iraq and probably don't care to watch a movie about it
When I hear the title "the hurt locker" I think it's a movie I don't care to ever see. I do like some action flicks - some I go see just to see how bad the writing (and acting) is/are (see: Judge Dredd, Robocop, Expendables). I haven't gone to see The Expendables yet but I really want to, because if you get that many actors from so-called action films the flick has got to be so bad it's fun to watch, kind of like watching a hurricane or a train wreck. You can't just help but to check it out. But, a title like "The hurt locker?" I don't care to check it out.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Voltage Pictures has blamed the movie's relatively poor domestic performance on illegal file sharing.
Well, there's a shock.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Take the number of lawsuits filed against file sharers,
- multiply by the average amount of money that you get from each lawsuit
- subtract the total amount of money spent for lawyers to file the papers, etc...
- assuming that anyone that you successfully sue will never buy a product that you make again, ever, in the future...subtract the expected future value of any sales of movie media for at least 40 years for each person that you successfully sue.
Now the numbers:
- 5000 file sharers sued successfully for about $1500-$2000 each. @$8,000,000
- Lawyer and court costs of about $400-$500 for each successful suit. -@$ 2,500,000
Each file sharer not buying product. Assume each file sharer would have bought three media products (DVD, BlueRay, download streams...) per year at $15 per product unit. Since file sharers are young, assume that $45/year for 40 years. 45*40*5000 - @$9,000,000
short term gain $8,000,000 long term loss @ $11,500,000
In American corporate logic, short term gain ALWAYS wins over greater long term loss.
Therefore, expect file sharing lawsuits to continue for the next ten years as they are today.
Don't forget this piece of turd of a film won BEST F'IN PICTURE!!! How in the hell did they do that?! It was an awful War movie, hands down. And the fact that these awful movies keep winning the highest awards just makes me thing they are just buying these awards.
But at any rate I think the leakers are heroes! They get the word of mouth going that these movies are awful and I can end up seeing them for free... from my local library! HAHAHAHA No piracy needed, the library carries all the films that are newly released anyways. Why pay a $1 with red box when you can see it for free! Which is what i did with The Crap Locker, saw it for free and was thankful that i didn't waste the money in the theaters!
Man I'd like to make a product, get nearly a 300% return on said product, and then get to sue because of losses over said product.
I personally don't think these people live on planet earth anymore. (BTW the movie was good. It was worth a watch maybe two at the most.)
I rented it from one of those kiosks, and it sucked. I'm glad I didn't pay for a movie ticket to see it. From the commercials I could tell this was not a movie good enough for me to go see (granted most aren't). But after renting on the kiosk, I can also say with 100% certainty, that this is not a movie that I would ever be interested in buying on DVD. End of story....
I can't speak for everyone. But even some people who loved war films like Saving Private Ryan, etc. were not into this one. I know this never occurred to them, but could it be because the movie sucks. A lot of other movies were pirated but still did very well in the theatre. The hurt locker is a bit of a niche movie. Traditionally war movies (unless they are really good) are not always mainstream. Something like Avatar is more mainstream (not that it is the greatest movie ever). Or sappy love movies that girlfriends/wives drag their boyfriends/husbands to.
But seriously this movie didn't really have a plot/story or anything. It was basically just like a reality TV show set in IRAQ disarming bombs. Also in the real army a guy who doesn't follow orders from his superiors would probably be punished/executed. Anyway you are probably better off watching a documentary on history/discovery than seeing this movie anyway.
If you recall, that movie was also leaked via torrent before it actually came out in theaters ( a good quality version too). X Men : Origins took in about 373 Million Worldwide . According to the same site, Hurt Locker made a total of 48 million. The only difference here was that hurt locker was released significantly earlier (5 months prior to release date) than X Men Origins (about a month or so, don't quote me on that). But I'm sure it had nothing to do with being a crappy movie and everything to do with being leaked online!
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Funny that it happened with this movie, when the producers of this movie ripped off the real-life story from this guy:
http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/hurt-locker-sued-over-stolen-identity-14850
He was never credited or compensated. How hypocritical can the movie studios get?
"Great name for T's V."
/Adam Carolla
You make a bad movie and then you blame somebody else (file sharers in this case) for it. Pathetic.
They were going for a "gritty, realistic," movie but couldn't be bothered to do the actual work to make it so. Well that might wow critics, it would seem the movie was loved by the critical press, but it is going to fall flat for people who are actually in to that sort of thing. You can have an action packed, special effects thriller type that has little to no connection with reality and it'll do fine. People go to watch those for the spectacle, not for reality. However if you make a movie that is slowly paced and is supposed to connect with people because it feels so real... well then you'd better get the fucking details right. You'd better spend the time to make sure it does indeed feel real, and not half ass it.
Perhaps if they made it in 3D it would've been a blockbuster.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Well I didn't see the movie. I didn't download it. I was considering renting it. Now i think i won't because they are douchebags.
If your suing people for NOT buying tickets since they downloaded the movie. Could you follow this logic and sue people for telling other people to NOT see it? The legal system is a bit jacked and it's not much of a stretch to imagine that...
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
I have not seen "The Hurt Locker," and probably never will; this mode of profit generation makes me not to even rent the damn thing, so they can suck it. Every person I know who saw this movie said the EXACT same thing: it sucked balls. I believe them, because everyone I read online says the same thing. This is why I haven't seen this movie, nor have I pirated it just out of some form of curiosity. It was not advertised where I live, and if it was at the theater, it was there less than 5 days. That's why this movie made no damn money! I go to the movies all the freakin' time, and this one was NEVER there at my local 12-plex...or at the 8-plex across town. No ads=no revenue. There you go. I don't give a shit if it won an award or not, that's meaningless. I've seen plenty of movies with "Best Picture" awards and thought they sucked ass through a pipe. Plus, they're going after IP Addresses. Wow. What a shitty way to tell if someone grabbed your crappy flick. IPs change all the time, it's a DHCP lease. So all you know is that someone with that IP at that time was in the swarm. Ok, so that means it was them at that time, right? Not on your life, IP spoofing is common. So are Proxies. You cannot trust IPs one iota when you're in a swarm. Not at all. And these chumps think that is the smoking gun for their lawsuit? Wow, they don't understand how shit works, do they? Also, keep in mind that these lawyers signed a contract with the movie studio: they keep 70% of all the money they get from the lawsuit. See a flaw there? Yeah, the big one you can drive a truck through? Yeah, that one.... gimme a break. They won't see a dime in money from a lawsuit like this (nobody ever has); and what's more it's nothing more than extortion along the lines of "Hey, give us money or we break your stuff!" Not cool.
I follow a set of rules that, while they don't make me completely immune to prosecution, keeps me well under the radar of most.
1. Don't download and share major Hollywood titles less than 5 years old. ... just don't use Windows media player to play it. It's vulnerable.
2. Don't download and share major label music... age is almost irrelevant... the best stuff is the older stuff.
3. Always use the peer guardian block list and keep it updated.
4. Don't SHARE unless it is from a trusted and EXCLUSIVE torrent site and only internal torrents.
5. Porn is not much of a worry
6. Foreign films are not much of a worry, but watch out for those that Disney has an interest in.
If there's something I have missed, I can't think of what it is. The most important thing is to watch what you share and what connects to you.
And seriously, if a movie is THAT good, I'll wait for it and I may even see it in theaters. I still like going to the movies. I still have a huge DVD collection... so it's not like I don't buy. But sometimes the convenience of downloading is too much especially when it is just to see it once or to catch a reference or snag a clip from it.
Hollywood? Are you listening? Set up your OWN damned torrent sites and don't use DRM. People WILL pay for it if it's cheap enough.
Can we please stop giving these guys mindshare? It only makes them stronger.
Stopping giving them money is only half of the solution. Until everyone does it.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Damages are supposed to be punitive based on potential losses times a factor. So in a grab off a shelf the damage is one for one. In file-sharing it is supposed to me tens or hundreds of thousands to one because of the nature of peering.
But, if you consider that every person who shares and uploads a portion of the file is guilty, then the potential damages are either going to be millions of times more than the actual commercial harm or just that same one for one.
I understand that that's not how the law works but, if you're going to work out how much you lost because of peering, shouldn't you take into account the fact that the infringement was also peered? If a million people upload a film, the actual potential loss should be shared between them, BECAUSE for every case brought to court, and as the per cent of cases brought to court approaches 100%, the actual loss, if all parties bought the film instead of downloading it, can be tallied. And ultimately, you would have a million people being sued for the cost of the movie. What we have right now is unrepresentative.
I don't think the studio understands what it means when their movie fails after being leaked.
I knew I could get it for free, *but I still didn't want it*! How much trouble would a fortune 500 company be in if they couldn't even *give away* their product?
Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and I can say without hyperbole that this movie was a million times worse than all of them put together.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
I loved this movie. So I will eventually have to buy the bluray, but after this I think I will buy a used copy. I can't live with increasing their sales even by a penny.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.