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."

Comments

Culprit ?

[dargaud]

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.

Re:Culprit ?

[Sylak]

Agreed, that was more or less my reaction upon reading the entire film had been leaked five months in advance.

Re:Culprit ?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Devil's Advocate here, but does that mean they shouldn't be sued for their infringement?

I paid to see the film at the cinema. I feel ripped off twice over; I paid for something I could have received for free, and the film wasn't all that great anyway. I can't get a refund from the movie company or the cinema, but I can still be peeved at the folks who leaked it. IMHO, by the way, it's the leak who should be sued, not the consumers.

Re:Culprit ?

[MightyYar]

Looking for a culprit ?

I'd say it was the sweaty man fight.

Seriously, only in Hollywood would this thing get an award. Everyone I've talked to who was actually in Iraq said the movie was complete BS. Even Newsweek whacked it with a cluestick. Does no one on the entire Oscar committee know an actual veteran?

Re:Culprit ?

[garcia]

The culprit was that the movie sucked plain and simple. I mean it was quite possibly one of the worst movies I have seen in the last 5 years and I just watched Repo Men. The movie was slow, it was repetitive and the only possible redeeming quality it possessed was that it was rah rah US military and how could you possibly hate on the US military right unless you're a terrorist, right?

In addition to that, there is a recession. I haven't been to a movie in the theater in a long time because I simply do not have the money due to a new baby and a SAHM. Redbox's $1 rentals and Hulu's documentaries have filled the void. Why would I ever spend $20 (for two) to go to see a movie when I can spend $1 instead?

Enough of blaming file sharing this is plain and simple a shitty and overhyped movie which was better watched from the comfort of your own home for 1/20th the cost.

Re:Culprit ?

[Xest]

Saying filesharers caused the lacklustre sales makes no sense either, as other films are breaking records all the time- Avatar, Toy Story 3 etc. broke new records this year but also similarly suffer the piracy problem.

As you say, there was more to this films poor sales than simply filesharing, see my other post in this thread for one possible reason, your point is also a good reason.

Really this film had such a poor financial showing because of management mistakes, it's as simple as that. Sure piracy problem does take a chunk out of film profits, but nowhere near enough to cause too many problems else if it did the afformentioned films such as Avatar and Toy Story 3 would never have been able to break the box office records they did compared to previous all time record breakers like Titanic that came around before filesharing movie piracy was even a problem.

Let's be honest, the executives responsible for the management fuckups behind this films lacklustre profits know full well they fucked up, these lawsuits are just about ass-covering so that these execs can fool some other gullable film maker into running the business end of their production in future. "Oh, yeah, the Hurt Locker, it wasn't abysmal marketing that led to it's poor showing, it was the file sharers. Honest.".

Re:Culprit ?

[jdpars]

No, the culprit here is the guy on the production team who leaked it. That's who these people need to go after. This smells of lawyers trying to keep their clients from realizing how totally unnecessary they are. How much will 5000 trials cost the people paying for these lawyers, and how much will that cost the taxpayers? We ought to be in a riot that people are abusing our legal system like this.

Re:Culprit ?

[cHiphead]

I'm not military and even I saw the movie as complete bullshit. And I wanted to like it. Just too many little bs things added up to ruin it for me. Hey I'm a bomb tech and I'm gonna walk up and cowboy the shit out of every bomb I come across, not to save some children, but to just act like a badass. Quick, let's go outside our operating zone and SPLIT UP!

That and the fact that the Nesquik cereal he is looking at near the end of the movie is not distributed in the US anymore. That was the most significant portion of the movie for me.

Re:Culprit ?

[IndustrialComplex]

Devil's Advocate here, but does that mean they shouldn't be sued for their infringement?

If they can show that they caused damages even close to $2,900? Perhaps then.

The methods being employed and the shackles placed on technology means I'm not going to support the plaintiffs. A good start would be having my television not try to negotiate with my cable box to determine if I'm being a good boy.

Re:Culprit ?

[IndustrialComplex]

Why would I ever spend $20 (for two) to go to see a movie when I can spend $1 instead?

Around hear theaters are charging $12-14 per ticket. Interesting for a format that started in Nickelodeons. Now that they are approaching levels where I can STILL get tickets to see the Philadelphia Orchestra practice (Or perform.. I get a somewhat special deal).

Re:Culprit ?

[Nadaka]

I still go to the movies, but only at the cheap place on Tuesdays. $5 gets me a movie date with a drink and popcorn for the girl. I still skipped Hurt Locker. I won't even go for it from red box. Hell, I won't even waste the bandwidth to download the POS.

Re:Culprit ?

[L4t3r4lu5]

Mine doesn't. I show my lack of support by not using any product requiring HDCP.

Re:Culprit ?

[mlts]

The lawyers are not trying to get 5000 trials. They are trying to do one trial with 5000 defendants. And so far, they just might be successful at this.

Re:Culprit ?

[ginbot462]

Devil's Advocate was OK, almost not worth pirating, but certainly not worth buying.

Re:Culprit ?

[jdpars]

It looked to me like they were sending out individual "You owe us _____" letters. Obviously it's not worth it for someone without the cash to blow to get a lawyer to help them fight it, and that's the real crime. It's cheaper to pay them what they want and go away.

Re:Culprit ?

[hedwards]

Sued, probably, sued for the kind of money they're wanting for destroying the box office returns almost certainly not. And that's the problem, back when studios and such sued large scale operations, that made sense, there was a large number of copies being distributed and there was almost certainly a large negative impact on the studio. The problem is now that you're suing individuals it's somewhat questionable as to whether it's really appropriate in terms of punishment for being a small portion of the problem.

Beyond that, if they have their account with Qwest, they couldn't possibly be guilty of any infringement large enough to warrant those kinds of damages, Qwest doesn't deliver the service to actually make any kind of substantial contribution to the piracy of something as large as a movie.

Re:Culprit ?

[hedwards]

Well, to be fair, they may have a point. As soon as people started watching it, I'm sure that word of mouth started to circulate about the quality of the film. Personally, I haven't seen it, but I take it that it wasn't a very good movie. And in this day and age, a bad movie might only get one day before it's outed on the web for being a bad film. Which makes it very hard to make money if it sucks as people know better pretty quickly, unlike in the past where they might get a couple weeks.

Re:Culprit ?

[Mongoose Disciple]

In addition to that, there is a recession. I haven't been to a movie in the theater in a long time because I simply do not have the money due to a new baby and a SAHM. Redbox's $1 rentals and Hulu's documentaries have filled the void. Why would I ever spend $20 (for two) to go to see a movie when I can spend $1 instead?

Because it's easier to talk one of the baby's grandparents into babysitting while you take your wife on a "date" than it is if you're going home to watch a Redbox movie? At least, that's my answer.

I'm crazy about our baby, but once in a while a couple hours together as adults without interruptions or baby care for dinner and a movie is really nice, too.

Re:Culprit ?

[Amouth]

Sued for the act of infringeing - yea sure

Suing for lost, imagined profits? Eh no...

Re:Culprit ?

[adamanthaea]

I really enjoyed the movie. However, I didn't even know about it until I saw the director on the Colbert Report, when I decided I wanted to see it. I wound up seeing it as a double-feature with Inglorious Basterds at a drive-in. The Hurt Locker was premiered back in 2008 and didn't get wide release until the last weekend of July 2009. I think I saw them both the weekend Inglorious Basterds released, at which point The Hurt Locker had been premiered almost a year earlier. Seriously, why sit so long on a movie for release?

Re:Culprit ?

[Artifakt]

The film owners still have a legal right to sue for infringement, and there's some pretty good arguments for a moral right, BUT ...

The industry is claiming they need very high statutory damages to make up for the tremendous losses they say 'piracy' produces.
If those losses are really so high in part because of cases where the industry itself screws up, then the industry doesn't really deserve especially high statutory damages, AND giving those to the industry may encourage their incompetence rather than them reformulating their business models to make 'piracy' less attractive. Metaphorically, the punishment for auto theft should not be made so attractive to the victim that he or she deliberately doesn't lock his or her car in a known bad neighborhood. Running up demand when you are not prepared to meet it, and delaying consumer gratification while the product is hot, are simply bad business models.

The industry is also claiming they have a special need for taxpayers to foot more of the costs of them filing these lawsuits. If that same industry isn't bothering to do simple things they reasonably can to make those lawsuits unnecessary, then they themselves are the ones manufacturing that special need. That's one reason I qualified the part about moral rights, above - The industry has been claiming that the 'pirates' are solely responsible for creating that special need. If the industry itself is denying its own share of the responsibility, that undercuts their moral position. Going back to the metaphor I used, having your car stolen gives you no moral right to deliberately lie to the judge (and through him, the taxpayers paying the costs of a criminal prosecution) about whether you locked the doors or not.

Re:Culprit ?

[xtracto]

They wont get 5000 trials... if you read the summary they are offering to settle for $2,900.

Assuming that 80% of the people choose to "settle" soon... they will have gained $11,600,000 ... assuming EVERYBODY settle, they would have recouped more than the cost of the film.

So I definitely think this is their new business model.

Re:Culprit ?

[the_fat_kid]

devil this.
Who ever leaked this only caused "harm" to the box office take by letting people know just how bad this movie sucked.
That would seem to be the studio's problem with it. They wanted to FOOL people into thinking it was a good movie. Word of mouth sunk the movie first. Try again.
Save your peeve for the people who palmed off this turd on you.

Re:Culprit ?

[Manfred Maccx]

Mod this guy UP...too bad I don't have anymore point today :(

Re:Culprit ?

[Rogerborg]

Plus, if it were any good (and it weren't) then those sharers would have become evangelists for seeing it at the theatre.

FFS, studios actually give free screeners to generate buzz. 3000+ people saw Scott Pilgrim for nothing, said great things about it, and then it totally crashed and burned at the box office anyway before it even had a chance to leak online. So, what, it failed to make money because the screener audience stole all the potential gross, with their filthy thieving eyes?

Go after filesharers, fine with me, the law's on the books. But trying to blame the failure of your theatrical release on them? Grow up and admit that the FAGs giving out smug awards to each other in Hollywood aren't an indicator of what Joe Popcorn wants to watch, any more than us nerds are.

Re:Culprit ?

[Anonymous Coward]

wah wahhh

Re:Culprit ?

[TheLink]

Yep. The most likely reason the movie didn't do that well was because most people didn't want to watch it. Or they were told not to bother from those who watched it.

I wonder if those 5000 John Does are actually the total number of those who pirated the movie - which would be a rather embarrassingly small figure :). From what I hear, I wouldn't bother wasting my bandwidth downloading Hurt Locker, and I doubt I'd bother popping down the local pirate shop to get a copy.

If filmmakers wanted to make more money they should make movies that millions of people will want to watch, and make it easy for them to pay and watch it.

FWIW, I paid to watch Avatar in the cinema. And it was worth my money, nice graphics and all that. Even my mom paid to watch it with one of her friends and they both liked it too. Surprise surprise, my mom doesn't always like the same movies I like. My dad didn't want to watch it - he said it was too long. IIRC he watched LoTR, and I think that did well by most sane estimates.

But despite that, somehow LOTR allegedly didn't make enough money for some crooks to pay Peter Jackson his fair share, and apparently Return of the Jedi never made money ( http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6024677.ece). "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" lost money too: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml

So guess who I think are the real thieves and crooks in the movie and music industry? It's not those file sharers.

Makes you wonder how they stay in business. Perhaps the Government should shut them down and put them out of their misery.

Re:Culprit ?

[truthsearch]

If they can show that they caused damages even close to $2,900? Perhaps then.

I don't see how the damages can be more than the price of a movie ticket per person.

Re:Culprit ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reality is, every time people steal IP, the owners lose money.

If I download the item but never intended to purchase it then the owner can not lose money.

Re:Culprit ?

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

The problem now is that its not so obvious where one ends and the other begins. I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that the producers of the $1 knockoffs floating out of Asia should be nailed to the wall. On the other hand, modern technology has given p2p users the ability to mass reproduce films at the same rate as aforementioned Asian bootleggers.

Re:Culprit ?

[future assassin]

>Well, to be fair, they may have a point. As soon as people started watching it, I'm sure that word of mouth started to circulate about the quality of the film.

Isn't that better for the consumer, they didn't get ripped off by the film company trying to use advertising to make their product look better then it actually was.

Re:Culprit ?

[lgw]

Seconded. Maybe I'm strange among /.ers, since I don't feel any compelling need to buy the latest shiny toys, but I've given the whole "HD" thing a miss for now. I really should set up a MythTV or something so I could watch HD without the DRM, but lacking the energy for that I'm perfectly content to watch normal DVDs for a while longer.

I don't have some huge objection to DRM on principle (I like Steam), but for some reason the whole idea of DRM between my DVD player (or other source) and my TV just pisses me off.

Re:Culprit ?

[Lucidus]

Not a very good movie? Some people may not have liked it, but it won 6 Academy Awards and was on more Top Ten lists than any other movie in 2009. Whether or not it's your cup of tea, I think it deserves to be taken seriously - none of which is really relevant to the present discussion of piracy.

Re:Culprit ?

[garcia]

One set of grandparents lives in Cincinnati and the other in Pennsylvania. Kinda hard to make the financial decision to fly them in to Minneapolis to watch the kid for a night while we go out to a movie.

Re:Culprit ?

[Duradin]

So basically you feel ripped off whenever you purchase anything since you could have gotten it for free.

Re:Culprit ?

[ackthpt]

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.

MPAA & RIAA logic is the sort of stuff Lewis Carroll couldn't even make up.

Meanwhile, I didn't see it because I didn't wanna see movie about a gym locker.

Re:Culprit ?

[FatJuggles]

What about the cost of finding the person? The lawyers they had to hire, the IT guys to log IP addresses, the cost of legal documents and court fees etc. Also, let's not forget that the lawsuits are filed to act as a deterrence for future wanna be file sharers.

Re:Culprit ?

[_Sprocket_]

I paid to see the film at the cinema. I feel ripped off twice over; I paid for something I could have received for free, and the film wasn't all that great anyway. I can't get a refund from the movie company or the cinema, but I can still be peeved at the folks who leaked it. IMHO, by the way, it's the leak who should be sued, not the consumers.

Wait - you feel personally slighted because someone got a better deal than you? How upset are you with people who've never seen the film?

Re:Culprit ?

[wvmarle]

No trial yet, but OK not the point.

How can they do one trial for 5000 defendants? For starters I doubt there is a court room big enough. Secondly I may assume every individual will have to be judged separately, if only to determine liability.

Impressive how the US legal system lets you sue that many unrelated people in one go.

Re:Culprit ?

[Lurker2288]

In this case you've probably got it exactly backward. The movie didn't open widely at first, and it certainly didn't get much of an ad campaign until closer to award season. The early positive word of mouth from people in the select markets where it opened (and yes, from those who pirated it) are probably why it ended up going wide. I certainly wouldn't have gone to see it if I hadn't heard about it from someone else who (probably) saw it illegally.

Re:Culprit ?

[Supurcell]

Yeah. You should really see what some people have said about this movie on the internet. If you ask me, this movie really got what it deserved.

Re:Culprit ?

[osgeek]

Because on a peer-to-peer network, you're not only downloading it, you're also distributing it to others.

Re:Culprit ?

[N1AK]

The way they would argue it is that you're paying the price of a movie ticket per person: Each person who downloads the file from you.

I'm not agreeing with them. There is however a good reason why the cost of being caught has to be higher than the cost of the item. If the cost of being caught is equal to the cost of the 'thing' you avoid paying for, then unless you get caught 100% of the time it is more cost effective not to pay. It is this balance of risk and reward that discourages most pre-meditated crime.

Re:Culprit ?

[e4g4]

It won 6 academy awards, including best picture... Hard to say that it wasn't very good

Not hard to say at all. I watched it, and at the end wanted my 2 hours back. I'm not really sure how the academy selects best picture, but I'm certain that their standards and mine are not the same.

Re:Culprit ?

[loafula]

I was Army and when I watched it, I couldn't get past the fact it took place in 2004 and not only was someone playing an Xbox 360 on a 32" LCD TV, they were playing Gears of War (released 2007). That and the fact everybody was wearing the ACUs (Army Combat Uniform-the grey pixelly one) and not the DCUs (Desert Combat Uniform), which were not all that common until 2005. Didn't notice the cereal though!

Re:Culprit ?

[andymadigan]

The definition of copyright infringement as theft is completely contrived. If I steal your car, take it for a joy ride and return it, have I caused you harm? Yes, you lost the use of your car for some period of time, in addition to gas in the tank and wear and tear on the car. If I go to the library and borrow a book written by you, have I stolen? No, because the law says I haven't. Intellectual property is something created solely through law, it has no basis in nature. This by necessity means that it might be defined too broadly or too narrowly. You can make the argument that these people broke the law and ought to be punished. You cannot validly make the argument that they caused a measurable loss to the IP "owner" since the owner lacked natural right to the IP in the first place.

Note that I am not advocating the abolition of all IP law. I am simply stating the fact that the law does not define morality.

By the way, your claim that "making your own currency is stealing" is obviously false. Passing off the currency is fraud, not theft. Same goes for stock. However, sending someone a copy of a movie without making any claim that it is legally licensed for such distribution is not fraud. Making your own U.S. currency would certainly be illegal, but the definition of the crime and the reasoning behind it is nowhere near theft.

Re:Culprit ?

[IndustrialComplex]

Mine doesn't. I show my lack of support by not using any product requiring HDCP.

Can you point me to a television that doesn't support HDCP? My problem is that I don't have a choice in selecting my cable box.

(Not snarky, I'm curious if there are any 'good companies' out there)

Re:Culprit ?

[Tanktalus]

Personally, I find that winning academy awards is a better indicator that I won't like it than I will. Not a guarantee, of course, but a pretty good indicator.

Re:Culprit ?

[foobsr]

... Maybe I'm strange among /.ers, since I don't feel any compelling need to buy the latest shiny toys, but I've given the whole "HD" thing a miss for now.

Same with me.

... I really should set up a MythTV or something ...

So do I, but anticipating the crap that is produced I feel not very compelled.

CC.

Re:Culprit ?

[GooberToo]

The culprit was that the movie sucked plain and simple.

Most movies do suck, plain and simple, but they still make money hands of fist. The majority of movies completely debunk your theory.

Re:Culprit ?

[xigxag]

Can you sue your landlord for 100x penalties for not providing necessary repairs?
Can you sue your cable company for 100x for cable outages?
Can you sue your job for 100x for unpaid overtime?
So why should some media company be allowed to collect 100x damages on a movie?
It's that sort of inequity, where corporate losses are given a higher value than deprivations suffered by human beings, that causes people to lose respect for the law.

Re:Culprit ?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

that is the theory of criminal laws; but civil lawsuits are supposed to be to recover damage done, not to deter.

Re:Culprit ?

[MightyMartian]

Quite frankly I thought the film was dull anyways. I know it was a huge hit with the critics, but I never saw what all the fuss was about.

Re:Culprit ?

[modecx]

All that means is that artsy-filmy people liked it, and as everyone knows these types tend to live in a reality distortion field--so their opinion on the qualities of a good movie is quite often disconnected from everyone else's. And let's face it, the whole Academy Award thing basically amounts to a huge, televised circle jerk.

Re:Culprit ?

[thijsh]

Best... Car... Analogy... Ever!!!

Re:Culprit ?

[Maxo-Texas]

And if your "Share" ratio is 1:1, then how many copies did you share for the copy you got?

And if you are a "leecher" and your share ratio is .12:1 then how many copies did you share for the copy you got?

Almost no one runs a 2:1 ratio.

The lawyers need to pick up on that point.

Re:Culprit ?

[Fallingcow]

FFS, studios actually give free screeners to generate buzz. 3000+ people saw Scott Pilgrim for nothing, said great things about it, and then it totally crashed and burned at the box office anyway before it even had a chance to leak online. So, what, it failed to make money because the screener audience stole all the potential gross, with their filthy thieving eyes?

Oooh, really? I hadn't kept up with how it was doing; went to see it last week (on a friend's recommendation) and it was the most fun I've had with a movie in... well, I can't recall a more fun movie than it. Good flick, sucks if it's doing poorly.

Re:Culprit ?

[MonsterTrimble]

It won best picture over Avatar, although after watching them I felt the story was lacking in both. Avatar was Fern Gully set on another planet and Hurt Locker just didn't really progress characters anywhere and had a complete lack of a meaningful conclusion.

That being said, I find it hard to take many Oscar wins seriously after 'Shakespeare in Love' beat out 'Elizabeth' (as well as 'Saving Private Ryan', 'The Thin Red Line' and 'Life Is Beautiful' although I have not seen those last three movies to comment on their quality).

Re:Culprit ?

[hedwards]

Academy awards aren't necessarily tied to a quality film. There's a lot of politics involved and while most of the time winning awards means it's a superior film, not always.

I'm not personally convinced that Marrissa Tomei should've won her Oscar for her role in My Cousin Vinnie. Likewise there's a lot of legacy crap, which while amazing on technical grounds, just doesn't make for the sort of film that deserves to be making millions in box office returns. And then pop stuff like Star wars (The original trilogy, not the prequel crap) which isn't particularly good technically, but is poppy enough to succeed. Well the effects were genuinely amazing for the time, most of the rest of it was pretty terrible.

Re:Culprit ?

[bistromath007]

What marketing campaign? Hurt Locker was probably the least hyped movie of the year. They should blame the guy in charge of that.

Re:Culprit ?

[halowolf]

I went and saw the film in cinema's as it looked like something that I might like. However I did not end up liking it at all, there was nothing really that I could put my finger on as to why, it just didn't work for me.

Re:Culprit ?

[ultranova]

Maybe I'm strange among /.ers, since I don't feel any compelling need to buy the latest shiny toys, but I've given the whole "HD" thing a miss for now. I really should set up a MythTV or something so I could watch HD without the DRM, but lacking the energy for that I'm perfectly content to watch normal DVDs for a while longer.

Do you know what the funniest part is? The Pirate Bay is full of HD rips. And the DRM makes them a more attractive choice than the Blu-Ray discs or HD cable, thus achieving the exact opposite of its intended effect.

LUL irony.

Re:Culprit ?

[Myopic]

You can start to understand by looking up "punitive damages". Here I'll start you off with the wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages. Good luck.

Re:Culprit ?

[Haffner]

There was some movie exec who talked about how the current model is unsustainable, mainly because it involves the film industry repeatedly lying to consumers by saying "This movie is gonna be good!" and having it be crap, and then doing it again and again and again. As a result, he said, people will stop trusting advertising and won't even go to see the good movies before they've been out for a while, which will kill sales. Honestly, I think the best thing for studies to do would be to have smaller budgets on films that don't need huge budgets, and if a film is going to suck, they should advertise it but portray it honestly (not "This movie sucks!" but more "Cheesy romantic comedy with subpar dialogue!").

Re:Culprit ?

[nametaken]

I agree with many - that these suits are absurd. Nobody caused them $2900 in damages by downloading the film. However, I don't think they should be blaming themselves for deciding not to release it as soon as it was finished. I think that's entirely their decision to make with their work.

I know it's not quite the same, but if I finish a desirable software project and decide not to release it for a few months (for whatever reason), I don't think that means it's my fault if someone manages to wrest a copy from me and distribute it online for free. When it's all said-and-done, I'd say it's the person who took the software [movie] and willfully distributed it. The people who download and use it illegally are complicit, but any suit against an individual downloader should have to be for a rational amount.

As has been brought up a million times before, I think part of the issue is the method of distribution - in that most swarm nodes are both a downloader and a distributor. There's really no arguing against the technological merits of this method, but it seems like it's a more precarious position when it comes to future legal action.

Re:Culprit ?

[Myopic]

Sure, yes, of course you can. The only thing standing in the way would be an existing contract stipulating damages. In the cases of your landlord or cable company you probably have such a contract, limiting damages to actual damages.

In other situations, such as perhaps with your employer, the "contract" is the law, and you get to sue for whatever amount the law affords. I don't know what that is for overtime; it might just be actual damages.

But to answer your ignorant rhetorical questions: yes, you can seek punitive damages against someone who causes your harm, in addition to actual damages.

If you ask me, I think we should just change the law for copyright infringement; but until we do that, courts will treat this kind of lawsuit the same as all the others, some of which you mentioned. There is no difference; we all sue eachother under the laws.

Re:Culprit ?

[hedwards]

It depends upon ones point of view. I'll probably see it now that it's presumably out on DVD for quite some time, but my expectations are likely to be low. I just don't think that a movie about bomb disposal that features any characters performing that work with a cowboy mentality is exemplary of a well written and conceived of film.

Sort of like how Speed was, ultimately it was a really, really bad film, where the lead character was coincidentally behaving in the cowboy bomb tech role as well. Didn't work out too well for that movie, and not even Dennis Hopper could save it.

Sure you can get people to suspend their disbelief, but you do still have to have some rationale for doing it and make wise choices about when to try.

Re:Culprit ?

[Bonewalker]

How do we know piracy took a chunk of sales from this movie, or any movie, or any song or video game, for that matter? Intellectual property that has been pirated does not directly equal a lost sale. Often, the pirates were not going to pay either way. They were not going to go see this movie, nor buy the cd, nor buy the video game. Did they get to enjoy something for free? Yes. But that is not a direct correlation to lost profits.

Re:Culprit ?

[AHuxley]

Yes enjoyed Battle for Haditha much more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZl5w1nFYUE

Re:Culprit ?

[Haffner]

Like how Denzel got the Oscar for Training Day when they really wanted to give it to him for The Hurricane

Re:Culprit ?

[Dumnezeu]

No, they're not. They're hoping to get as many settlements as possible.

Re:Culprit ?

[Cylix]

Lets look at this for a moment...

Finding the person.

We can probably assume these were all taken from the same organization at relatively the same point in time. The organization hired would provide the time of the incident, the ISP to contact and serve to validate the file in question was being pirated. This organization filters out non-us residents and generally does the leg work. A few hundred thousand? Maybe a mil if you want to go on the high side and it's still a whole lot of automation.

Sending the letters...

This is pretty much what the law firm is supposed to do... ie, court things. Through a few interns or low level employees at filing the proper records. Maybe even throw out some odd balls numbers and focus on a few areas with high concentrations to simplify the process. I'm not going to pretend to guess at what it actually costs to file 5000 lawsuits, but it's simply more of what an organization already does.

Collect the revenue!

While they likely won't see 5000 payoffs it would certainly be a dream right? 5000 lawsuits with roughly $3000 in payoffs would certainly add up. In fact, at around 15 million it would really seem like a good way to make a quick buck.

However, the real costs would begin to rise for every instance in which they were challenged. This takes more time then simply collecting the "fine."

Now, on paper with lawyer hours in kaboodles I'm sure it costs far more, but really these bulk processes could be potentially streamlined fairly well.

Re:Culprit ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you point me to a television that doesn't support HDCP?

TVs that work with HDCP aren't a problem; you don't need to go shopping for non-HDCP-compatible TV. The problem is in devices that refuse to output to something which doesn't support HDCP, since you might not always want that to be a TV (e.g. you want to timeshift).

My problem is that I don't have a choice in selecting my cable box.

Of course you have a choice. Cancel your cable service and throw away the cable box. Abstain or pirate (same thing, from a market perspective) until they either offer decent cable boxes or until they use standards for the cable transmission (so that you can use any tuner and don't need a cable box).

Re:Culprit ?

[DriedClexler]

Do you see why shoplifters should be required to give back more than (the price of) the item they stole?

Okay -- start from there.

Re:Culprit ?

[sixteenbitsamurai]

And the DRM makes them a more attractive choice than the Blu-Ray discs or HD cable

What makes them more attractive is that they don't cost $30 a pop. Having no DRM is a bonus, for sure, but really it comes down to HD movies being a horrible value. Most people outside the slashdot crew don't know what DRM is. Hell, most of them don't even know what a browser is. The bottom line is most people don't want to spend that kind of money on a Blu-ray when you can get two or three DVD's for the same price or just download them for free.

Re:Culprit ?

[Wyatt Earp]

The trailers came out and then it was never in a damned theatre.

So a good six months after I saw a trailer I asked at Blockbuster if it was on DVD yet and their reply was, "its still in theaters". And yet until the Oscars I never saw it playing anywhere.

Maybe a lack of release is why it bombed at the boxoffice.

Re:Culprit ?

[Reziac]

This is why on average, fines for very similar petty crimes, like shoplifting or writing bad checks, amount to 3 times the original value. Enough to discourage most folks and to penalize those who get caught.

So the fine for ducking out of a movie ticket should be about 3 times the price of a ticket -- not several hundred to several thousand times the price of a ticket, as per the DMCA. Oh, but *theoretically* you made a whole bunch of OTHER people not buy tickets too -- well, make each one of them pay 3x the cost of a ticket. As it is, they're expecting to make EACH ONE pay 100x the price of a ticket, so they're multiple-dipping all the way down the chain of downloaders.

Re:Culprit ?

[Mongoose Disciple]

Ouch. My parents are the furthest away at ~100 miles out, and getting them to drive up for the day to see their grandchild is an easy sell. Even still I'm wishing they lived closer for more family support, so best of luck to you having to manage without either set of grandparents.

Re:Culprit ?

[dougmc]

From your referenced wikipedia page --

"Because they are usually paid the plaintiff in excess of the plaintiff's provable injuries, punitive damages are awarded only in special cases, usually under tort law, where the defendant's conduct was egregiously insidious." ... is simply downloading (and uploading, which is part of using bittorrent) a movie "egregiously insidious" ?

Either way, $2900 is not a court judgment -- it's a proposed settlement, to keep things from going to court. They could ask any figure they wanted -- but if it's too low, they don't get as much money as they could, and if it's too high then people will fight them and they likely don't want that either.

And copyright law does allow for large damages, so they'll ask for whatever the largest damage is that they can. I'm not sure it's called "punitive damages" in that case, however, though the idea is likely the same.

Re:Culprit ?

[Score Whore]

I disagree. The price is an unlimited distribution license of the movie, not a copy of the movie or a trip to the movie. The damages should be about $5,000,000 for that license. Oh wait, an Oscar-winning, critically acclaimed film? $25,000,000. So $2,900 doesn't seem too bad really.

You know what you should do if you don't like copyright? You should create content and give it away for free and if you're right and copyright is a blight on society and only holds back the advancement of the arts and science, then you'll become very successful in your model. Then you might have a case for advocating for the elimination or major reform of existing copyright law. But as long as the people bitching about copyright are 99.99% non-creators, all anybody hears is "gimme gimme gimme... i want free shit..."

Re:Culprit ?

[WitnessForTheOffense]

With torrents, the act of downloading is simultaneous with uploading, and unavoidable. It's the same act. The company is double dipping if they try to hold you accountable for both downloading and uploading, because they're also suing the guy who downloaded from you.

Re:Culprit ?

[IndustrialComplex]

Of course you have a choice. Cancel your cable service and throw away the cable box.

That isn't a choice. It simply isn't possible to convince enough people to cancel cable based on that reason. If every single person that was noticably impacted cancelled PLUS 10% on top of that due to word of mouth, you might see 50 people cancel per cable company.

I AGREE with you in general, but I'd much rather not bash my head against a concrete wall in order to build a tunnel. I file FTC and FCC complaints once per billing cycle.

Don't bother trying to convince me to cancel, for a variety of reasons canceling is not an acceptable option for me. And believe me, I'm the type of person who will go through a lot of hardship to stand up for what I believe in. I was pissed at my mortgage company so I pulled together $65k and paid off my mortgage in full just so they wouldn't get any additional interest from me.

I put my money where my mouth is if it's an option. Cancelling just isn't an option when the requirement is "Shall include cable television service".

Re:Culprit ?

[mwigmani]

Or when Russell Crowe won for Gladiator when they really wanted to give it to him for The Insider.

Re:Culprit ?

[nabsltd]

But to answer your ignorant rhetorical questions: yes, you can seek punitive damages against someone who causes your harm, in addition to actual damages.

The difference is that copyright damage awards permitted by the law are not considered "punitive". In other words, they are not intended to be a punishment, but rather a recovery of either actual or reasonable theoretical losses.

So, using high damages to "punish" file sharers is an incorrect application of the law.

Re:Culprit ?

[stealth_finger]

"Oh, yeah, the Hurt Locker, it wasn't abysmal marketing that led to it's poor showing, it was the file sharers. Honest.".

It wasn't abysmal marketing that was the problem. I saw plenty or marketing for it. It's just the film was abysmal. I dl'd it and would've felt jipped if I went to the cinema or bought the dvd, at least with jarhead nothing was supposed to happen so the nothing was something. No letter on my front door though so whatever.

Re:Culprit ?

[Score Whore]

Which is why the argument about them losing money is kind of dumb. It's true that they lose money, it's just very hard to quantify how much. The better argument is that people are getting some benefit without adhering to the agreed upon terms -- terms that society established to encourage the creation of artistic works. It's kind of like going to work for two weeks and expecting to receive a paycheck after two months. Or putting your money into a savings account and actually expecting to receive the agreed interest.

Re:Culprit ?

[Pteraspidomorphi]

They're good.

Re:Culprit ?

[orgelspieler]

You know what you should do if you don't like copyright? You should create content and give it away for free and if you're right and copyright is a blight on society and only holds back the advancement of the arts and science, then you'll become very successful in your model. Then you might have a case for advocating for the elimination or major reform of existing copyright law. But as long as the people bitching about copyright are 99.99% non-creators, all anybody hears is "gimme gimme gimme... i want free shit..."

We're all "content creators" now. You just created content. I just "consumed" it for free. So your argument that 99.99% of the complainers are non-contributors is not quite viable. By making a complaint on a blog or the like, they are actually creating content.

I'll go one further: I am an engineer who happens to compose music on the side. I give my music away for free to anybody who wants to perform it. I don't make a dime off of it, yet I still make about one piece a year. I also have quite a few pictures on flickr that are CC-BY-SA. These photos have been used on several blogs, including some big professional ones. I have no beef with that. I've even had people offer to pay me a nominal fee for the use even though they don't have to. You'll find several e-book authors who give away their stuff, too. Granted it's mostly crap (no doubt my music and photos are as well), but so is most of the stuff we pay for.

Re:Culprit ?

[unr3a1]

I 100% agree with you, but unfortunately Component is going away come Dec 31st. http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/02/19/1936209/2010-mdash-the-Year-AACS-and-HDMI-Kill-Off-HD-Component-Video

Re:Culprit ?

[uniquename72]

I happily obey a copyright term of 7 years in order to reward innovation, creativity, and production of things I enjoy. Anything older than that is fair game.

Re:Culprit ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you that LOTR lost money because of how they do the bookkeeping. In a nut shell, the movie industry raises money selling the eventual sell of the movie. LOTR would have garnered $300+ million for making the movie. Company producing it puts forward the rest, say another $100 million for a total of $400 to make the movie. A seperate company who acts an intimidate writes an invoice saying the movie cost $1,400 million to make produce, market, and whatever else they want to put on there.

The accounting people use that $1,400+ million dollar invoice when deciding if the company made money. So even tho the movie's budget was already paid for and the actually cost to the production company very small(~$100 million), the original company gets to say the movie made no money. They get tax write offs for losing money and everyone who was on contract to recieve a percentage of sales ends up getting nothing. Welcome to modern day Hollywood.

Re:Culprit ?

[uniquename72]

The majority of movies completely debunk your theory.

The majority of movies don't make money, so that doesn't debunk anything. But if you'd like to argue that the majority of money-making movies suck, that would be something else altogether.

Re:Culprit ?

[uniquename72]

That being said, I find it hard to take many Oscar wins seriously after 'Shakespeare in Love' beat out 'Elizabeth'

Dances With Wolves beat out Goodfellas. Nuff said about the Academy.

Re:Culprit ?

[Vortran]

The original poster is entitled to their opinion, even though it is the wrong one. I create a lot of content, and I give it away too. These are HD videos that I shoot with a Sony HDR-AX2000 ($3500 camera) and stills that I shoot with a Canon EOS-7D (another pricey piece of photographic equipment). Because my material gets exposure from me giving it away, I have gotten more paid work offers than I can possibly manage. I've done magazine covers, full portfolios, and just fun (pro-bono) stuff. People who see my work often times ask to buy prints. I give them a CD with their prints. They can copy it all they want. If there is video of the event, I put that on the CD too.

Re:Culprit ?

[Cwix]

I deployed in 05. I wore ACU's. We were one of the first units to receive ACUs.

On a side note IDK who they bought that first gen of ACUs from but the damn things fell the fuck apart.. I ended up sewing my damn crotch up on the pants back together with fishing line, because for some reason I could never get resupplied with new uniforms. My old BDUs/DCUs were damn near indestructible though.

Re:Culprit ?

[Score Whore]

First, I draw the line one what is "content" a little higher than conversation.

Second, you're doing exactly as I suggest: create content, give it away for free. If your model is better than the current model, then you'll thrive while the current model withers. We all will benefit. But after a couple of decades of the internet being a mechanism for inexpensive distribution, the old model still beats out every competition that comes along.

I do have my personal beliefs and make my own choices on how I mainly consume and occasionally produce content. I don't get out and proselytize my position. But I'm not a moron and I can see that it's far better to have some tangible instantiation of a new model than to merely rant and cry and complain that the existing model is a failure. When most of our movies, books, paintings, photographs, sculptures and other pieces of art are available for free and we still have a broad range content available, then someone can say "see, free is better." But until then, it's just entitlement driven non-producers demanding free stuff.

I suppose I could summarize that as "put your money where your mouth is."

Re:Culprit ?

[jvin248]

"If you buy it right, you can always sell it right"

Or spend too much making the movie then you'll never make it back.
I think they must have spent too much on the front end - and trying to find messy ways to generate revenue since.
.

Re:Culprit ?

[Myopic]

is simply downloading (and uploading, which is part of using bittorrent) a movie "egregiously insidious" ?

I'm not sure because I'm not a federal judge highly educated in terms of the legal arts. Are you? If not, the only obvious mistake that you could make would be to interpret that phrase in common language.

The rest of your post I agree with: they can ask for whatever they want; but they won't get it; because the amounts will be based on law; but the law still allows for ridiculous damages; and you and I agree those are fucking stupid laws.

Re:Culprit ?

[Myopic]

Thanks for the clarification.

To be clear, you agree with my point that lawsuits are often brought for damages which far exceed actual damages? Which somehow user xigxag thinks is not true?

Re:Culprit ?

[jvin248]

The only reason this is getting headway is the people behind this movie are family of the Avatar movie people.

The solution to the whole Pirate thing is making a lot of good content for low cost.

Movies normally have a great showing the opening weekend, that peaks, and then dwindles rapidly off. Wider distributed movies have bigger peaks (due to more screens), and better movies have longer tails.

Good movies get released on more screens and have a naturally longer tail. That's the market. The costs are what the studio can do it for. Profit is between that gap.

How many screens did Hurt Locker get put up on the release weekend? How fast did theaters curb screens afterward to make room for other competing movies?

What does the consumer demographics look like now compared to five or ten years ago? There are a lot of movie goers in the 'dating ages', and fewer for those with kids, so what does the crop of movie goer population look like now? More or Less?

But no, the problems must be those pesky Pirates .. 'cause they are more interesting to blame.

.

Re:Culprit ?

[truthsearch]

No, I don't see why. The store owner should only get their item back. The state may then follow through with criminal charges.

But copyright infringement is not theft. There's no loss of bits to the owner.

Re:Culprit ?

[GooberToo]

The majority of movies don't make money

Actually, once again you're completely wrong. What a surprise!

Most movies do make money otherwise everyone would be out of business. You're confusing accounting with profit. A fact which is often pointed out in threads such as these.

To suggestion that the movie couldn't have made more is declare yourself a complete idiot. But frankly, when it comes to discussions of piracy, the vast, vast, vast majority seem more than willing to prove they are complete idiots. The pro-pirate mantra is sickeningly stupid and completely irrational and without fail, any credible counter argument which paints them the thieves they are, is immediately moderated to death.

Needless to say, its not the least be surprising the counter argument to my post is complete bullshit.

Re:Culprit ?

[rwyoder]

The culprit was that the movie sucked plain and simple.

Absolutely true.
It was nothing but a rehash of what we have seen in previous war movies, with no originality at all.
And the fact this turkey beat Avatar for "best film", has totally destroyed any credibility of the Academy Awards for me.

Re:Culprit ?

[PinkyGigglebrain]

SOP for the media industry lawyers.

File a John Doe 1-500 suit to get the info on as many of the Doe's as they can from the ISPs, then extort^Wsettle with the people they can track down. Sue the ones who don't settle.

The original Doe's 1-500 suit gets dropped.

Re:Culprit ?

[boxwood]

I'm glad the Asian bootleggers exist. Now if the movie studios started making region free dvds then I wouldn't have any need of them.

If I legally purchase a dvd in North America and want to play it on a dvd player in asia, how exactly is it wrong for me to go buy a bootleg copy of it?

Re:Culprit ?

[Score Whore]

I'm curious as to what exactly you think my opinion is and in what ways it's wrong. Because I don't think your post actually disagrees with mine. They're almost entirely at right angles to each other.

However, if I was going to analogize your situation to the situation at hand in this discussion, you're giving away free content is like the movie studio giving away 120 second previews of the film for the purpose of generating interest. And to further the analogy, a certain percentage of your paid work would end up being free because the people who agreed to pay you for it, after getting a hold of the photographs/videos would decide not to pay. And what's more a certain portion of those would, after having gotten whatever benefit from the work they were expecting to get, then turn around and say that your work was shitty and not worth a dime anyway.

Re:Culprit ?

[mcgrew]

Sure piracy problem does take a chunk out of film profits

I don't know of any studies about movie piracy, but studies I've read about concerning music piracy that weren't paid for by the major music labels show that music pirates spend more money on music than non-pirates.

With books, it takes 2-3 weeks after a book hits the shelves for copies to show up on the internet. One publisher commissioned a study to see how badly the piracy impacted sales, and was astounded to find that after the initial sales spike when it went on sale, there was a second sales spike when the book hit the internet.

From what I've seen, piracy only affects sales in a positive way. That's why Cory Doctorow posts his books on his website for free download.

There's a dangerous group of anti-copyright activists out there who pose a clear and present danger to the future of authors and publishing. They have no respect for property or laws. What's more, they're powerful and organized, and have the ears of lawmakers and the press.

I'm speaking, of course, of the legal departments at ebook publishers.

These people don't believe in copyright law. Copyright law says that when you buy a book, you own it. You can give it away, you can lend it, you can pass it on to your descendants or donate it to the local homeless shelter. Owning books has been around for longer than publishing books has. Copyright law has always recognized your right to own your books. When copyright laws are made -- by elected officials, acting for the public good -- they always safeguard this right.

But ebook publishers don't respect copyright law, and they don't believe in your right to own property. Instead, they say that when you "buy" an ebook, you're really only licensing that book, and that copyright law is superseded by the thousands of farcical, abusive words in the license agreement you click through on the way to sealing the deal. (Of course, the button on their website says, "Buy this book" and they talk about "Ebook sales" at conferences -- no one says, "License this book for your Kindle" or "Total licenses of ebooks are up from 0.00001% of all publishing to 0.0001% of all publishing, a 100-fold increase!")

I say to hell with them. You bought it, you own it. I believe in copyright law's guarantee of ownership in your books.

So you own this ebook. The license agreement (see below), is from Creative Commons and it gives you even more rights than you get to a regular book. Every word of it is a gift, not a confiscation. Enjoy.

What do I want from you in return? Read the book. Tell your friends. Review it on Amazon or at your local bookseller. Bring it to your bookclub. Assign it to your students (older students, please -- that sex scene is a scorcher) (now I've got your attention, don't I?). As Woody Guthrie wrote:

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

Oh yeah. Also: if you like it, buy it or donate a copy to a worthy, cash-strapped institution.

Why am I doing this? Because my problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity (thanks, @timoreilly for this awesome aphorism). Because free ebooks sell print books. Because I copied my ass off when I was 17 and grew up to spend practically every discretionary cent I have on books when I became an adult. Because I can't stop you from sharing it (zeroes and ones aren't ever going to get harder to copy); and because readers have shared the books they loved forever; so I might as well enlist you to the cause.

I have always dreamt of writing sf novels, since I was six years old. Now I do it. It is a goddamned dream come true, like growing up to be a cowboy or an astronaut, except that you don't get oppressed by ranchers or

Re:Culprit ?

[mr exploiter]

They can sue anyone that they have a case against. Tip: don't pirate and you won't be sued (or you will gain money if you are).

Re:Culprit ?

[Runaway1956]

Strange, perhaps, but certainly not unique. There's nothing on television that I consider worth watching - so I simply don't pay for any of it. I DID buy that stupid digital antenna, put it on the roof, and I get the same free broadcast television that I got ten years ago. 90% drivel, and 10% advertising, so I don't watch. The wife watches her soaps, and she's happy. Win/win. Or, maybe win/win/lose. The idiots who market the trash isn't making any money off of us.

Re:Culprit ?

[BitterOak]

Devil's Advocate here, but does that mean they shouldn't be sued for their infringement? I paid to see the film at the cinema. I feel ripped off twice over; I paid for something I could have received for free, and the film wasn't all that great anyway. I can't get a refund from the movie company or the cinema, but I can still be peeved at the folks who leaked it. IMHO, by the way, it's the leak who should be sued, not the consumers.

I'll play Devil's advocate as well. Are you sure "consumers" is the right word here?

Re:Culprit ?

[mcgrew]

It's actually even worse. The content creator doesn't own the content; "we, the people" do. The copyright holder (not "owner") only has a "limited time" monopoly on its publication, NOT ownership.

Going after your car analogy, they don't own the work, they rent it more or less. It's more like Hertz renting you a car and one of its employees takes it back -- and doesn't charge you for the rental.

Not theft at all. Anyone equating IP infringement with theft is either ignorant or lying.

If copyright laws were reasonable (20 year span like with patents, noncommercial use == noninfringing use) there would be very, very little piracy.

Re:Culprit ?

[Aoet_325]

Word of mouth sunk the movie first.

Reviews of the movie were good. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hurt_locker/
I'm guessing that maybe many others (like myself) were well past starting to get sick of war in general and the war in iraq in particular. There has been a huge number of war movies set in the middle east over the last several years and maybe people who still bothered to go to a theater wanted something a little different.

Re:Culprit ?

[kurokame]

For that matter, the definition of bittorrent use as copyright infringement is a little contrived itself. Are you making a copy, or receiving one after consenting to have one be made? And is it really a copy at all? If I duplicate the data from the completed download on my own hard drive 100 times...how many copies do I really have? And why is it substantially different from loaning a DVD to your buddy, or showing it while you're throwing a party?

The ethics are a bit ambiguous because we're a bit new to the potential scenarios enabled by modern technology. The law is likewise ambiguous (except where lobbying over the last ten years or so has changed it). The big IP owners (mostly not creators) have been taking advantage of this to set ethics through propaganda and to set law through lobbying and one-sided big corp vs. individual legal maneuvers. Well, I'm all for the right of someone who worked hard on a creative work to make a living off of it. But I only see one side here which is clearly behaving unethically. Downloading content you could have paid for is at least a bit grey...downloading content you couldn't have, probably less so, especially if you make a habit of purchasing your favorites once you have the opportunity. (This additionally makes the policy of rewarding good content and abstaining from rewarding the mediocre tripe which makes up the bulk of today's market...)

Likewise, the only clear lawbreaking going on is in the sense that one side is exploiting it for things it was never intended to be used for. C'mon, mass lawsuits against more-or-less defenseless individuals whose only choice is how much of a mess you're going to make of their life and finances and for how long? That's really supposed to be within the scope of the law? Really? I grok the whole anti-download thing, even if I don't think it's practically going to work that way in the end. Models are going to have to change. You have to adapt when the fundamental situation has changed or you will eventually have to face the consequences. But it's really, really hard to empathize with people complaining about individuals doing something questionably ethical when the accuser is doing something wildly unethical, immoral, and abusive of the very legal system which they're using to prop up their extortionist policy.

Re:Culprit ?

[SudoGhost]

Here in metro Atlanta there's a place called movie tavern. It's kind of like a movie theatre / restaurant. They serve booze. Tickets are $5.

I think that's the only way I would have ever watched that movie (from what I've heard of it)...drunk as shit.

Re:Culprit ?

[0111 1110]

Have you ever tried to get an actual bluray disc to play on your computer? The copy protection makes it nearly impossible. At the very least it is a lengthy ordeal. It was actually easier for me to demux it and place it in an mkv container. Although that also takes hours. So for me the cost is the lesser of the evils. When I want to watch a movie I want to watch it. Not wrestle with bypassing the copy protection for an hour first. Quite a few blurays are available for $15 or less, which I don't consider excessive. Admittedly The Hurt Locker costs more than $20 at the moment. It is one of my favorite war movies, but I will wait until the price drops to around $15 before buying a copy. SWIM has a 10 gig 1080p version from TPB. That will hold me over until the price drops and I can rip the bluray to an mkv file without recompressing.

Re:Culprit ?

[penguinchris]

I liked the movie for a variety of reasons. I thought it was overhyped and some of it was certainly silly/ridiculous, but overall I thought it was good, and very effective as an anti-war movie for the times. I don't really understand all the hate most in here so far have expressed for it. It's popular to say you dislike it, I guess, especially since it won so many awards (I don't think it deserved most of the Academy Awards it won, but it deserved the nominations at least).

And some are saying Avatar should have won Best Picture over this... you have got to be kidding me! Personally I thought Up, Up in the Air, or Inglorious Basterds would have been excellent choices from the nominees (I liked District 9, too, but wouldn't say it was best picture material considering the competition).

Anyway, the real reason I'm replying is because of Repo Men. I thought you meant Repo Man, the 1984 classic, and didn't realize there was a new movie actually called Repo Men.

What I'm ultimately saying is, watch Repo Man - you'll like it.

Re:Culprit ?

[0111 1110]

Hey I'm a bomb tech and I'm gonna walk up and cowboy the shit out of every bomb I come across, not to save some children, but to just act like a badass.

Actually, if you had bothered to finish the movie you would have seen that his reason was because he didn't care about anything anymore. He wasn't trying to kill himself, but if it happened it wouldn't be a big deal. And it was an adrenaline rush. Lots of people do dangerous things that they don't have to do for that rush. You are welcome to try again however. In what ways was the movie unrealistic? I have never been to war. So I don't know. Nothing in the film seemed implausible to me.

Re:Culprit ?

[Kjella]

I disagree. The price is an unlimited distribution license of the movie, not a copy of the movie or a trip to the movie. The damages should be about $5,000,000 for that license. Oh wait, an Oscar-winning, critically acclaimed film? $25,000,000. So $2,900 doesn't seem too bad really.

On P2P one person's upload is another person's download, so on average each upload one copy. Across 5000 users you can be fairly sure to have a good mix of seeders and leechers with the total working out very close to 5000 copies. Any other way you count it you are double-counting uploads and downloads or even counting generations several times. So let's be kind and say they make $20 profit on each copy, their losses are maybe ~$100,000. Hell, even if you include indirect damages to make it ten times that, it only lowers the value from $25M to $24M. I do hope you realize that they could only practically sell one unlimited distribution license so the value is $25M total and not 5000 times that?

They're asking for almost 3000$ just to forget you made an illegal copy for yourself. Do the math and you'd see that for $5000 each they could buy this $25M unlimited license you speak of, and legally make as many copies as they want and give to everyone. Compared to that $3000 for almost nothing is crazy expensive. Yes, I know being in a P2P network involves both up- and downloading but if I take 5 GB bandwidth from the swarm and give 5 GB back then my net contribution is zero, the swarm is no better or worse off than if I hadn't participated. To try pretending this somehow means I have caused them thousands of dollars in losses falls on its own absurdity. But clearly they have managed to confuse people like you into thinking it makes sense.

Re:Culprit ?

[RajivSLK]

If you are relying on advertising to learn how good a movie is you are an idiot. Any sane rational person becomes aware of the movie via advertising and if interested checks what the critics or IMDB say. You know that whole industry whose entire business model is giving you an honest review of a movie?

Re:Culprit ?

[Skillet5151]

If it had been something people wanted to see like Avatar or Harry Potter, the early leak would not have mattered.

Shh, I don't think the studios need any further encouragement to continue pumping out movies with more "Ooh" and less "Hmm."
I saw The Hurt Locker in theaters and while it wasn't my favorite of all time, I was certainly pleased that it didn't treat me like a complete moron (as opposed to, say, Iron Man 2).

Re:Culprit ?

[the-matt-mobile]

For the rare two hour getaway from the kids, I suggest face time instead of screen time. If you spend those two hours looking at each other, your marriage will be better off. Save the movies for the couch.

Re:Culprit ?

[toddestan]

Actually, it's not that unusual. Most of the geeks I know are like myself and still have their CRT TVs and standard DVD players, if they have a TV at all. It's Joe Public that is running out to get the latest flat screen TVs, blu-rays, and stuff like that. I really don't care since that stuff as it really doesn't interest me. I just wish that the HDTV world and their lousy resolutions would stop dominating the computer monitor market.

Re:Culprit ?

[nabsltd]

To be clear, you agree with my point that lawsuits are often brought for damages which far exceed actual damages?

Yes, but again the difference is that with the damage amounts codified into copyright law, juries are more likely to award the requested values (and also because they aren't described as "punitive").

For a regular lawsuit, the reasons for the damages above "actual" (which can be fuzzy) need to be listed (like "emotional distress") to allow the jury reason to grant those damages. For copyright lawsuits, you just need to say "that's what the law says I'm allowed to get".

Re:Culprit ?

[Myopic]

Great point. I think copyright law allows damages "up to" a maximum, is that right? Can you comment on how damages are determined "up to" the maximum? I imagine those are things that 'need to be listed' in the court record.

Extortion

[theskunkmonkey]

When are they going to make extortion illegal?

Oh wait...

Re:Extortion

[Haedrian]

When it stops being so profitable.

Re:Extortion

[Haedrian]

Seriously, if someone proposed "Lets update our copyright/piracy laws so that skimping out on a less than 10 dollar cinema ticket isn't worth a few thousand in lawsuit" the law would die in congress so quickly that you'd smell the rot from Europe. Probably the media will go on a "Would you like your property to be protected? The GOVERNMENT wants to take that away from us" smear campaign, and the backfire would be negligable.

Re:Extortion

[TooMuchToDo]

You know the crazy folks who put abortion doctors' names up on a website, and gray them out when those doctors are injured by someone (and they strike them out when they're killed)? Wait till that starts happening to law firms who are copyright sue happy because it's an easy buck due to how the system is rigged. I'm sure one of these law firms is going to go after the wrong person who gets financially broken by ~$3000.

Maths ?

[daveime]

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.

Re:Maths ?

[Joce640k]

This will be the new Hollywood business model.

a) Make movie
b) Hype it
c) Release it on P2P
d) Wait six moths, release in theaters
e) When it bombs, sue 10,000 John Does because you know they can't afford to defend themselves.
f) Profit!

Anybody see a flaw?

Re:Maths ?

[Joce640k]

'months', not 'moths'...duh!

Re:Maths ?

[captainpanic]

The fine therefore is about $ 8000 per person, if they want to make the 40 million back (or less - I admit I didn't read the article).

Anyway... in a next case, what happens if they manage to track down 1 million people? I bet that some really popular movies got shared that much. Do the movie companies get $ 8,000,000,000 from suing and winning a case??
I mean - with such profits possible, why even put the movie in the cinema, or DVD? Just make it really, really good, and totally unavailable in mainstream movie places, then leak it onto internet, and sue everyone who do downloads and shares it. Brilliant.

Re:Maths ?

[gyaku_zuki]

To be honest - I can totally see someone sitting down at a desk and thinking this as a viable plan...

Re:Maths ?

[Grimbleton]

You didn't even read the summary. They spent $15m on the movie, grossed $16m in the US, made $40m total.

Re:Maths ?

[The Moof]

then the 40m is clear profit?

You're neglecting Hollywood accounting when you think about this. On paper, I'm sure this movie lost the studio billions somehow.

Re:Maths ?

[Erikderzweite]

That was the only flaw in that business model.

Re:Maths ?

[Haedrian]

Its a very viable plan, the only thing you lose is some public respect.

But as the past has shown, the 'general public' is a bunch of morons who don't mind if you put rootkits in their cds or bankrupt college students for a few songs.

Re:Maths ?

[Miseph]

More importantly, you can just keep making up new company names forever with little or no repercussion. Who the hell are voltage Pictures? I've never heard of them before, and I suspect I'll never hear of them again. The next project funded by the same people could be released by Amperage Pictures instead, and nobody would be the wiser.

Re:Maths ?

[osgeek]

Sorry, bunch of government santioned bastards.

That's the key here.

I usually vote for third parties, but when I do vote for dems, I don't vote for the ones too cozy with Hollywood.

Re:Maths ?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

no, the moths were the only hole.

Ha! haha! Boom! Boom!

Re:Maths ?

[shawn(at)fsu]

A sad part to all this is had it not been leaked and shared all over the p2p services the film company would have no one to blame but themselves. File sharers are just making it easy for the big companies to use them as scapegoats.

Re:Maths ?

[ukemike]

a) Make movie b) Hype it c) Release it on P2P d) Wait six moths, release in theaters e) When it bombs, sue 10,000 John Does because you know they can't afford to defend themselves. f) Profit!

Anybody see a flaw?

Yeah I see a flaw. The basic template of this trope requires at least one line that contains only "..."

e) When it bombs, sue 10,000 John Does because you know they can't afford to defend themselves.
f) ...
g) Profit!

Re:Maths ?

[Sibko]

This will be the new Hollywood business model.

a) e) When it bombs, sue 10,000 John Does because you know they can't afford to defend themselves.

Anybody see a flaw?

Yes, actually. You've made the mistake in assuming they're only going to go after people if the movie bombs. They're obviously trying to cover the costs of this movie. [5000 people, each sued for $2900 = $14.5 million, movie cost $15 million] So it's not going to matter if the movie bombs or not, they're going to sue people just because it means covering some of their costs and increasing their overall profit.

Re:Maths ?

[bemasher]

And after that: Ohmage Pictures.

Re:Maths ?

[daveime]

Surely the first one to blame is the person employed by the company who actually leaked the film ?

Don't these people have to sign NDAs ?

Re:Maths ?

[toddestan]

How so? Releasing 6 moths into the theatre makes about as much sense as anything else Hollywood does.

$25 million

[Nuskrad]

Clearly, no one can survive making that little profit, they need every last penny, dammit!

Re:$25 million

[Jarkov]

Yeah, this is like a warning to independent film-makers everywhere: WATCH OUT or else YOU TOO could have your movie leaked to the web and still only make more than double your production budget back in sales worldwide!

Re:$25 million

[betterunixthanunix]

Which profit would you be referring too? Movies rarely turn profits:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Re:$25 million

[Shompol]

1. Make a dumb movie. No plot or script required.
2. Leak it to the internet
3. Profit.

Great

[rshxd]

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!!!!

Re:Great

[ZirconCode]

Sorry bout that one =p But seriously, I respect you for that, not many people would fight for a TOR node.

Marketing fail.

[Xest]

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.

Re:Marketing fail.

[frozentier]

Agreed. I honestly had never heard of the movie until this article. I don't remember seeing any advertising of any kind.

Re:Marketing fail.

[PolyDwarf]

[quote]Blaming file sharers wont fix a marketing mistake[/quote]

True.. However, suing file sharers will fix a revenue mistake.

[quote]... prove ...[/quote]

hahahahahahaha

Re:Marketing fail.

[Nadaka]

The pre-release file sharing was the marketing campaign. Its ok though, because its cheaper than real advertising and you can always sue the people you gave the film to if you don't make enough money.

Re:Marketing fail.

[dhermann]

dealt with the claims they're entirely unable to prove

I was going to comment about the nature of independent films and low-budget studios like Voltage, but this statement interests me so much more. How, exactly, will they be unable to prove copyright infringement after matching the 5,000 IPs to people?

Re:Marketing fail.

[WillgasM]

agree totally. I barely heard about this movie before it hit the cinema, and It didn't really sound that appealing at the time (at least not enough to see it in theaters). After the Oscar buzz, I gave it more consideration; but by that point the most they were going to get out of me was $1 from Redbox. In the end, I still haven't seen the movie. If I've ever really wanted to see a movie, I went to the theater or at least rented it. If I really liked it, I bought it. The only movies I really download are ones that I wouldn't care to spend money on otherwise. And on rare occasion, I've DLd a movie and liked it so much that I wound up buying it on DVD (just to show my support). Long story short: if their motivation for this lawsuit is poor sales domestically, they're suing the wrong people

Re:Marketing fail.

[morari]

And I honestly had never heard of it until this article. Looking it up on IMDB and Wikipedia however, it sounds like a bore. See? My preemptive filtering of media works like a charm.

Re:Marketing fail.

[Xest]

Precisely because, unless you're sat witnessing the individual carrying out the file sharing or have some equally damning evidence, then you can't actually match 5,000 IPs to people. You can at best match them to an internet connection which may or may not be shared amongst multiple people, and where the subscriber to the connection may or may not be victim of a trojan horse, wifi hijacking, or other unauthorised use of his/her system(s). There's also the question as to whether ISP logs are reliable and valid too, and whether the people checking those logs are supportive enough of the sentiment and care about their jobs enough to pass the right data along.

It is your assertion that they are matching IPs to people, rather than connections that is causing you confusion in understanding why they cannot prove this (at least in the vast majority of cases). Thus far these sorts of lawsuits have also relied on coercing people into admitting guilty, sometimes if they are guilty, sometimes if not, because even if not guilty defending yourself can be prohibitively expensive and is no guarantee of success when certain cowboy courts and jurys are allowed to pass sentencing without understanding why someone could very well not be guilty.

I have no problem with companies defending their film with legal action, providing it's actually done in a manner where justice can be decidedly served. The method being used, whether acceptable to the courts in the US or not is not justice- this is probably also why this method is only used in a select few countries, because even those companies doing this type of mass suing know that many jurisdictions simply wouldn't entertain such abysmal standards of "evidence", and might in fact punish them for even trying to extort money from the innocent in some cases. Even the RIAA in the US in the end accepted this was the wrong method of enforcement because it was both ineffective, costly, and could often go very wrong.

Re:Marketing fail.

[neoform]

You're also missing the obvious reason as to why it had poor sales: the movie sucked. I don't know a single person that liked it. The acting was weak, story was uninteresting and the dialog was droning and uninteresting, characters were completely unrealistic.

Re:Marketing fail.

[jeffmeden]

They are hoping to cash in on people who just cut a check as soon as they see the subpoena letter. Who knows if they will even aggressively pursue anyone who doesn't come forward without a fight. At 47 cents a letter (plus a few cents for paper and an envelope and paying someone to machine them all) they are probably not spending more than $5000 plus the time it took in front of the DC judge. If they get only a 5% response rate they are already way ahead.

Re:Marketing fail.

[Anonymous Cowpat]

how would writing it into the contract between the user and the ISP create provable liability in a lawsuit between the user and a movie studio?

The ISP can have an agreement that they will consider the account holder responsible for all goings-on on the connection, but that doesn't force the courts to see it the same way (and they shouldn't either - courts are normally pretty picky about making sure that someone sues the right person).

Re:Marketing fail.

[Reziac]

If filesharing is why films do badly, then what was Iron Man's problem? Probably the most seeds I've ever seen for *anything*, yet it did well enough at the box office that here comes a sequel already!!

Re:Marketing fail.

[Jason Levine]

Blaming file sharers wont fix a marketing mistake

Back when I worked for a popular magazine, we were all called in for an impromtu meeting (never a good sign). Marketing told us how great of a product we had, what a wonderful staff we were and what excellent writing we were doing. Then they said that they had no clue how to sell our magazine so it was being discontinued and most of the magazine staff was fired. (Marketing was safe because they were in the parent company.)

Somehow, after that experience, I'm never surprised when some marketing guy says "This was a tremendous failure despite being such a great product... Must be the fault of someone other than marketing."

Re:Marketing fail.

[Xest]

So you agree that if someone steals your car, and runs someone over for it, you're liable for manslaughter right?

Just because it's more difficult to prove the connection, doesn't mean we throw justice out the window and just say, yeah, fuck it, there's a possibility their guilty so let's class them as the victim.

Just becomes someone owns something doesn't mean they should be held responsible for criminal use of it, particularly if they have know knowledge that it's being used in that manner (i.e. a car stolen whilst they're asleep).

I like the part where

[kick6]

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!

Re:I like the part where

[Pojut]

It was actually pretty decent. Certainly not Oscar worthy, but at the very least rental/Netflix worthy. If you like war movies that focus more on human psyche rather than combat (although there are a couple of good combat scenes in it), you should watch it at least once.

Re:I like the part where

[Java Pimp]

Maybe the movie didn't succeed because it sucked.

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.

Re:I like the part where

[cHiphead]

What 'good' combat scenes? The sniper scene was 'cool' but it felt completely out of place for a bomb disposal unit SOLO out in the desert (WTF?). The bomb defuse scenes were all cowboy, edge of the seat but viewers simply don't get the foreboding terror involved, felt like something was really missed. The whole presentation and marketing of this movie was about the realism it portrayed, the premise from the directors and producers was realism. This simply wasn't a good movie. Let's split up so we can get shot alone. Really?

Re:I like the part where

[Pojut]

I personally had found it randomly while browsing through Comcast On-Demand while spending a weekend at my Wife's Uncle's house. I hadn't heard of it, nor had I heard of the realism they were pushing in their limited marketing, so I went into it blind.

As a war movie, it was pretty entertaining. Realism is quite commonly thrown out the window in war movies, so when I watch war movies, I don't expect it. I think a combination of no knowledge about the film and my low expectations regarding realism is why I think it's worth watching.

Ugh.

[Pojut]

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.

Re:Ugh.

[Kjella]

Well hopefully it will get broken up into separate actions. I mean, the alleged wrongdoing and the alleged proof may be similar, but the defenses will vary wildly from plain denial to family, tenants, guests, open wifi, trojans and so on. I don't see how one judge could possibly make the decision they're all guilty or not guilty, and so it doesn't fit as a class action the way I think of it. But I imagine for most it's about the fear and collecting settlements, if everyone simply said no and asked for their day in court this would stop. Even if you just showed up yourself and gave your layman "I have no idea what they're talking about" defense. If you just keep the spending at an absolute minimum and assume you'll lose, I doubt you'll be out more than $2500 anyway. The statutory minimum is $750, and if you don't piss off the judge or jury you'll likely to get that.

Re:Ugh.

[dhermann]

All 5,000 Does rolled up into one case? A case filed in Washington, DC...where almost none (if any) of the Does live?

They just filed the case against the ISPs. After they find out where the Does live, they will file in their individual, respective states. You can't file a reverse class action suit.

Fining these people so much money that the entire movie's budget is literally payed for by SUING people?

So, wait... they should be suing for less because their film is low production value?

If this isn't abusing the justice system, I don't know what is.

I'm pretty sure you don't know what abusing the justice system is. That's what it sounds like.

Re:Ugh.

[betterunixthanunix]

Look...I understand that piracy is wrong, and if something can be legally obtained it should be.

Basing a moral argument on what the law says is probably not the best strategy, especially considering that the relevant law in this case constantly changes (usually to subvert the interests of commoners and to favor the interests of corporations).

Re:Ugh.

[Pojut]

I'm pretty sure you don't know what abusing the justice system is. That's what it sounds like.

Let me get this straight. 5,000 people who don't even know each other were lumped into a single lawsuit, filed in a district where NONE of them live, and each person was sued for about the same amount of money (or for even less) than court costs would be if they went to court and defended themselves...meaning that fighting the lawsuit would potentially cost them more money than taking the settlement.

You don't think that's an abuse of the system? Really?

Re:Ugh.

[Pojut]

I put that in there as a disclaimer, because if I didn't I would get the rabid "you support piracy" trolls on me.

It's happend many times before around here.

Re:Ugh.

[Sockatume]

Bear in mind that if you're called upon to be at a hearing, you better be there, even if the case is in Washington and you're in Texas. You could rack up well over $2500 in airfare, or $2500 in fines for failing to turn up, before you even submit your reply to the case. And then there's the interminable Discovery phase, where you can be legally obligated to assemble and hand over evidence to the plaintiffs. You'd be lucky to make it out having spent less than $10K if you win.

Re:Ugh.

[Jason Levine]

I see a new way of movie studios deciding on film budgets.

Executive #1: "Next up is Marmaduke 2. They've requested a budget of $575 million."
Executive #2: "$575 million? For what?"
Executive #1: "Well, it's going to have incredible CGI backgrounds and every thirty seconds, Marmaduke will start dancing in 3D."
Executive #3: "Sounds fantastic. Green light it! How are we paying for it, by the way."
Executive #1: "Well, we figure that the box office will provide enough money to cover catering, but most will be made by suing a hundred thousand or so file sharers."
Executive #3: "Better make it a hundred and fifty thousand. We still need to recoup some money from Alvin and the Chipmunks 9: The Chipmunks Visit and Old Folk's Home. That tanked at the box office."
Executive #2: "Rotten Internet pirates. They keep hurting all of our great movies!"

Re:Ugh.

[city]

$750 x 5,000 = $3.75 Million. Not too bad still. That'll re-coup a quarter of the production costs.

I would like to perform poorly

[pspahn]

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.

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[rotide]

No, that's not how it works. If you're awesome enough to make something copyrightable, you must be paid millions upon millions in perpetuity. It's only fair. So what if it only cost you $5.29 to make. You deserve $250,000,000,000,000 for it and if you don't get it, there must be rampant piracy and the witch hunt is on!

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[Sockatume]

Hollywood accounting. Y'see, after the upfront production costs, there's still a bunch of ancillary companies to be paid for their services, for marketing, PR, the DVD, Oscar promotion... Those companies belong to the production company itself, sure, but that all drains away money.

You'd be amazed at how few movies actually make a profit. It's incredible that Hollywood stays in business.

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[dhermann]

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.

You would be wrong. It is remarkably poor performance for a film that won the Best Picture, regardless of its production value.

• 2008 Slumdog Millionaire FoxS $141,319,928
• 2007 No Country for Old Men Mira. $74,283,625
• 2006 The Departed WB $132,384,315
• 2005 Crash Lions $54,580,300
• 2004 Million Dollar Baby WB $100,492,203
• 2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King NL $377,027,325
• 2002 Chicago Mira. $170,687,518
• 2001 A Beautiful Mind Uni. $170,742,341
• 2000 Gladiator DW $187,705,427
• 1999 American Beauty DW $130,096,601
• 1998 Shakespeare in Love Mira. $100,317,794
• 1997 Titanic Par. $600,788,188
• 1996 The English Patient Mira. $78,676,425
• 1995 Braveheart Par. $75,609,945
• 1994 Forrest Gump Par. $329,694,499
• 1993 Schindler's List Uni. $96,065,768
• 1992 Unforgiven WB $101,157,447
• 1991 The Silence of the Lambs Orion $130,742,922
• 1990 Dances with Wolves Orion $184,208,848
• 1989 Driving Miss Daisy WB $106,593,296
• 1988 Rain Man MGM $172,825,435
• 1987 The Last Emperor Col. $43,984,230
• 1986 Platoon Orion $138,530,565
• 1985 Out of Africa Uni. $87,071,205
• 1984 Amadeus Orion $51,564,280
• 1983 Terms of Endearment Par. $108,423,489
• 1982 Gandhi Col. $52,767,889
• 1981 Chariots of Fire Col. $58,972,904
• 1980 Ordinary People Par. $54,766,923
• 1979 Kramer Vs. Kramer Col. $106,260,000
• 1978 The Deer Hunter Uni. $48,979,328

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[betterunixthanunix]

What is amazing is that turning a profit that is greater than what most people make in their entire lifetime is considered "relatively poor performance." The fact that those other movies turned even greater profits means that they did well too, not that this one did poorly.

Talk about being "out of touch."

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[bsDaemon]

The profit earned by a movie isn't analogous to the personal income of an individual. How many people worked on a the film? They all needed to be paid. Equipment costs, travel expenses, etc. It seems to me that A movie is basically a short-lived, one-time-use corporation (although that sounds disturbingly similar to some sort of RICO thing). Compare the earnings to what you would expect a corporation employing that many people (Say, a few hundred) to earn over a 10-20 year period and its friggin' pathetic.

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[betterunixthanunix]

Here I was, thinking that all those expenses were rolled into the production costs -- which we subtracted from the revenue to compute the profit.

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[jeffmeden]

You failed to list these in terms of revenue as a multiple of production value. With the exception of Slumdog Millionaire they are all in the 2-4x range. Not to mention that Hurt Locker was no Slumdog Millionaire...

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[bsDaemon]

No, that's real economics. We're dealing with Hollywood Economics. All these movies lose money on purpose anyway so that they don't have to pay out profit sharing deals.

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[wvmarle]

Hollywood accounting not withstanding, I still wonder how this really translates in profits.

They're talking about "gross takings", I assume that is full income from ticket sales. And of that I may assume a large part goes to the cinemas: pay for rent, equipment, staff, etc. just to run the theatre itself. That also costs money.

And production budget was $15m, but how about marketing budgets, is that included already? Probably not as that's the easiest to inflate so at least your movie won't run the risk of actually booking a profit.

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[pspahn]

Remarkably poor indeed. Though I was speaking of things other than films.

Maybe this should have been a lesson to the production. Don't allow your film to be released via torrent months before you decide it's okay to release it to the theater. Hell, maybe they were simply conducting an experiment to show how torrents will affect the bottom line. Or maybe this reflects the overall state of the economy. Or maybe this reflects how poor of a job the have done with promotion. And on... and on...

Re:I would like to perform poorly

[jafiwam]

Your list of numbers proves nothing.

First, comparing a movie from the 80's that has had 20 years to make money with one that has been out for 2 is a fallacy.

Second, ticket prices, fees, number of theaters are all different the farther you go back.

Three, they fucked up on the distribution (as stated many times in this discussion already), how many of the movies had a limited release on limited theaters? I see maybe ONE like that. So they missed a huge hump of ticket sales they could have had. Either they failed somehow during distribution, or some master plan went wrong somewhere.

FURTHERMORE, a lot of those movies are STILL being traded hand over fist in P2P even now. Yet they are record-breakers. By your dumb fuck standards, they should be losses.

Either way, you list means shit.

So no, YOU would be wrong about the reasons for the remarkably poor performance.

Their profit sucked because something the guys that made the movie sucked. Plot, distribution, timing, something...

Re:Barely heard of it...

[sabs]

The Hurt Locker was an amazingly good movie.
Intense, interesting.

2900?

[BlueCoder]

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.

Re:2900?

[betterunixthanunix]

$2900 sounds reasonable to you? Last I checked, that was over 100 times the cost of a DVD.

Re:2900?

[ScentCone]

$2900 sounds reasonable to you? Last I checked, that was over 100 times the cost of a DVD.

Ah. So, the penalty for ripping things off should only ever be what you would have paid anyway? All that would be is incentive to rip off everything you consume, and figure that you'll just pay for stuff when you happen to get caught.

The whole point is that most people pay for their goods and for their entertainment. Some people think they are entitled to free stuff just because they know a way to rip it off. A fine that costs more than what an honest person actually pays for goods and services is entirely appropriate, because it's meant as a punishment for being a leech, a thief, etc.

Of course, you know all of that, and you're just being a troll.

Re:2900?

[Myopic]

What does the cost of the DVD have to do with it?

Re:2900?

[Andorin]

Ladies and gentlemen, time to play Let's Count The Fallacies.

1. I do not believe that noncommercial copyright infringement should be illegal. However, if there is to be a fine, it should be proportional to the damages caused. Your sarcastic question of "the penalty for ripping things off should only ever be what you would have paid anyway?" is a false dilemma. It's also a strawman argument: Nobody said at any point that the punishment should just be the cost of the media.
2. You refer to illegal downloading being a "ripoff." As has already been pointed out to you in this thread, would a given download translate to a lost sale (and therefore an actual ripoff)? No. Does a given download cause financial harm? Not necessarily. Does it therefore make sense to characterize a given download as a lost sale to the copyright holder? Nope.
3. If most people pay for their goods and their entertainment, as you claim, then why is there a problem with regards to file sharing? If most people pay for their goods and entertainment then there's no possibility that those comparative few who use p2p without paying (as some people who download are huge customers) are going to sink the industries or even cause substantial financial harm. If most people pay for their goods and entertainment, then it would seem that those who target file sharers only do so as an extreme money and power grab. Do you wish to defend such people? Do you believe that an industry can repeatedly sue its customers and survive?
4. You state that large fines are okay because they're meant to be punitive. Would you therefore agree that fines for copyright infringement should not be statutory? This would seem to contradict your assertion that large fines for copyright infringement are acceptable.
4. It's ironic that you call the parent a troll when you refer to file sharers as leeches and thieves.

Occam's Razor says...

[Angst Badger]

...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.

Avatar

[Joce640k]

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.

Re:Avatar

[Java Pimp]

See, now that's insightful... but I've already posted and cannot mod as such...

Re:Avatar

[rotide]

I _highly_ doubt they don't realize the truth. Suing everyone and basically having your own "war on piracy" probably provides far better revenue and/or chances to grab power than just sitting there collecting sales revenue. People aren't stopping buying their movies (well, I have, but I'm sure I'm in a minority) but they sure as hell stand to make _thousands_ of dollars off each person they can pin down on a piracy charge. "Oh we see you were probably never going to buy our movie, well, you owe us $2k+ now, thanks for "purchasing" our non-DRM version of [movie]!"

Re:Avatar

[Anonymous Coward]

"#6 in the Amazon sales charts is a movie made in the 1960s that has been available for piracy for many years."

I had to look -- it's "The Man with No Name Trilogy" in Blu-ray. Go Clint!

Re:Avatar

[Niris]

Those are also incredibly good movies. I just ordered them on Amazon after seeing it as a trilogy pack >.>

Re:Avatar

[Joce640k]

Yep...and to be honest I'd rather watch those again than sit through The Hurt Locker.

In fact I might just go and dig out the DVDs...

Re:Avatar

[Joce640k]

Heh, I just noticed it's not even released yet...those are pre-orders...

Re:Avatar

[Myopic]

I haven't stopped buying DVDs. I never bought DVDs in the first place! I have literally never bought even one DVD. Mostly, however, that is because I don't like movies -- especially not well enough to watch more than once. I still deal with DVDs often, from Netflix or from friends, then rip and return them, then later watch the video files (mostly TV shows, which I tend to like better than movies). So, I endure DVDs, but won't spend money to "own" them.

Re:Barely heard of it...

[Jaysyn]

The Hurt Locker was an amazingly good movie.
Intense, interesting.

Well, this vet says it's crap.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/23/when-cin-ma-v-rit-isn-t.html

I'll go with the vet.

Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[King_TJ]

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!

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[kevinNCSU]

Not that I disagree with your ridiculous budgets point but I would like to point out that accurately depicting events of the present is often much harder then the distant past because there's way more people who have the knowledge and credentials to call BS on any cut corners. I believe there's a whole thread in these comments about vetrans complaining about all the mistakes they made failing to accurate portray the reality of combat and life in Iraq. You generally won't find tens of thousands of people with the credentials to comment on the mistakes in the formations and accurate soldier life of medieval battles for example, and even if there were people simply wouldn't care because there's no chance of disrespecting anyone living.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[Sockatume]

For comparison, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo cost almost the same amount of money, and didn't include any military hardware (where $10k probably gets you a spork and some beans, never mind a bomb suit) or internationally known talent. The Hurt Locker is a low-budget movie by international standards.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[Kjella]

What you said would have made sense if it was a box office and download flop. You can keeping talking about low-budget films and foreign films and whatnot all day long, but the fact that people download the big flashy Hollywood productions prove that's what they want. They just don't like to pay for it. Exactly what people say here about the hurt locker is what other people would say of star trek and star wars and firefly and battlestar galactica if we could look at ourselves from a distance.

How long has it for example been easy to promote your own music online? The monopoly radio had is long dead and gone, yet almost all the top artists come from the big record companies and pretty much all statistics show most people aren't interested in the long tail. It's not just evil scheming from the MAFIAA that is the cause of that. Their greatest issue is that copyright is broken. The probability of being caught times the impact it'll have works out to a risk so low most people would chance it. And they were slightly paranoid, they'd find a slightly more obscure place than the Pirate Bay, though many enough seem happy being there too. I don't think they can reinvent themselves past that, it's more like how the buggy whip manufacturers went out of business when the car took over. Maybe some found other work but it'd essentially be to start a completely new business.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[DreadPiratePizz]

You still need to pay people, and rent equipment. Making a professionally done film requires both proper gear, and crew, both of which you have to pay for!

You need to pay for:
The camera package.
Lighting package.
Grip package.
Costumes and makeup.
Props.
Crew which consists of grips, gaffers, the DP, an AD, and the director at LEAST. Often times you need hair and makeup, as well as stunt and visual effect co-ordinators.
You need to pay the producers, the editor and assistant editor, the sound editor, as well as whoever writes the score.
Filming permits and possibly travel arrangements for your crew.
Making a professional looking film is just not cheap to do. While it's possible to make a good film with just your DV camcorder and your spare time, if you want it to look good you have to spend some money. As for your point on props and costumes, you still have to buy and fit these costumes to your actors!

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[Sockatume]

For an example, look at Doctor Who. It's hardly rolling in special effects or big-name talent and is produced by a state-owned company with a serious focus on economy, but even it costs the best part of a million dollars per episode these days.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[wvmarle]

Yes you are very right. Hollywood budgets are crazy.

Have a look at Hong Kong cinema. Admittedly what comes out of this city these days is mostly crap (they're on par with Hollywood on that matter), though quite some good movies as well. And budgets that are way smaller than in Hollywood, like a factor 10 or more.

The biggest differences:

• much less use of special effects (especially much less CG effects, that seems to be very expensive still, big fireball explosions are also almost non-existent),
• less exorbitant salaries for the actors,
• often simply shot on the street instead of in a studio (always interesting to try and figure out where exactly they shot a scene - once I came home and right outside the village where I live they were busy shooting some movie scenes, and I have witnessed movie making in progress at various locations where I happened to walk by) - that saves a lot of budget on studios and even on extras, as the accidental passers-by are the extras in the movie. Can look quite funny.

Hollywood movies do in general look more polished, but whether that's a good thing or not is a matter of taste/style.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[phantomfive]

Then I'd find some talented but under-appreciated/utilized actors/actresses and see what I could do with them instead.

And then you'll end up with actors like Joey from friends. Seriously, there's a reason top actors get paid a lot, they really are better. A good director is worth his money, too.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[Angst Badger]

In all fairness, the actors in this movie were all relative unknowns. I'd imagine a substantial chunk of the cost came from shooting it in the middle east. Hauling a large number of people and a lot of equipment to the other side of the planet and keeping them there for a couple of months is expensive.

But other than that, point taken.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[Reziac]

Use non-union grips, cameramen, etc. and your costs fall by about 75% right there, with no loss of quality. This is exactly why so much television production moved from Hollywood to Vancouver.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[Bo'Bob'O]

Why is this insightful? You have clearly never worked on or tried to make a film. Besides the fact that this is not a movie that rely on big names or mega effects beyond what helped to further the story. $15M is cheap for a movie that will meet what modern audiences expect for production values. Every minute of a film is hours of production time. When you consider how many people go into a shoot, the cost of decent cinema quality equipment, travel and shipping costs, costume (you still have to buy it), location scouting and logistics, insurance, etc etc.

I'm not trying to defend the actions of this producer, I think this is all very unfortunate, but you are really foolish if you think that every movie can be made for a few thousand dollars.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[ratboy666]

To quote http://www.sfi.se/PageFiles/8729/SwedishFilm2_2009.pdf which is a Filmgate propaganda piece. It's hard to know the exact amounts.

"Film versions: The feature
version of The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo was released in Sweden,
Norway, Denmark and Finland
earlier this year and has become
an enormous success, seen by
over 2.5 million people to date.
Two follow-ups were originally
filmed for television in 2x90-
minute episodes, as was the
feature film."

Now, the follow-ups have also been released as a feature film, but made money AS TV PRODUCTIONS. Are you telling me that this cost $15M * 3? No way it ran into 15 million. Look, 2.5 million viewers is considered "an enormous success" here.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[slashqwerty]

My recollection is that about two thirds of most movie budgets go to marketing. That leaves about $5 million for the movie. If you look at IMDB you will see the movie gets a fairly good rating, but if you read the written reviews you will see almost everyone hates it*. No doubt a part of the marketing budget went towards getting a good IMDB rating. Another chunk of the budget probably went towards getting some OSCARs as well.

Other people are commenting on the cost of filming. Having seen this movie I can say all but the last 30 seconds of the movie were filmed with a shaky, hand-held camera (which literally made me sick). There was a poor script, with poor directing. There were no big-name actors to garner a huge paycheck. The movie was not in the least bit realistic. The movie catered towards people's sense of patriotism which is the only reason anyone gives it a good review.

*That was the case a month before these lawsuits were filed. Since this was pointed out some positive reviews have moved up on the list gushing with accolades for Kathryn Bigelow's masterful work.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[Bo'Bob'O]

When you make your film around your budget, sure you can make it cheap.. and sometimes even the film that the producers wanted to make. Usually though, you end up with something like those made for SyFy movies.

Personally I'd rather have film makers make what they think is going to be GOOD. And that is not always cheap.

Hey, if you think that you can consistently make great movies comparable to even the mid-rate movies out today for $15k, please, get off Slashdot and go do it, I'll gladly give you my $10.

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[ratboy666]

You are running a FILM BUSINESS. Wouldn't it be wise to have cameras, lighting, grip, costumes, makeup and props at hand? Now, I don't have those things at hand, because it's not my business. Still, if I get into the business, and I wanted to increase profits, I would certainly invest that way.

I work as a staff engineer -- my company does a lot of contract placements, but retains me on staff. Why would they do that, when they could pay twice as much to get a contractor to do my job?

However, "Hollywood accounting" pulls through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Why not create a company to make the movie, and then rent it cameras, lighting, and the rest from other companies that you own? Begin pulling money out of it from the beginning. Then, to finance the movie, lend the filmmaker money (which you get back right away -- remember, you are the one renting the stuff TO the filmmaker). Charge interest on the money being lent as well. Of course, this has a couple of effects -- first, it inflates the cost of making the movie (on paper). Second, you get to collect the interest, and third, you get your money right away. Which reduces the studios risk. Next, the costs of those necessary support services are inflated, because each of the "shells" has to turn a profit. But all the profit goes into the profit of the movie. Early. It doesn't matter whether the movie "makes money" in the end...

To quote the wikipedia link:

"Winston Groom's price for the screenplay rights to his novel Forrest Gump included a share of the profits; however, due to Hollywood accounting, the film's commercial success was converted into a net loss, and Groom received nothing.[7] That being so, he has refused to sell the screenplay rights to the novel's sequel, stating that he "cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure"."

Re:Seems to me, they're spending too much!

[yarbo]

Christopher Nolan made Following for way less than 15k, and I think that was one of the best movies I've ever seen.

Re:I bought the DVD, then shared it

[plumby]

Avatar was 10 times better? Hurt Locker must have been truly awful then.

Re:Barely heard of it...

[cHiphead]

No, it fucking wasn't. And I watch a LOT of movies. A LOT. Especially crappy movies. And it was definitely in the nonsense bullshit category. Black Hawk Down was a good military movie. The Hurt Locker was ruined by DUMB fucking plot line twists. And I mean REALLY REALLY FUCKING DUMB.

Men Who Stare At Goats was more accurate portrayal of military life than Hurt Locker.

Worst Part

[O('_')O_Bush]

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.

Re:Worst Part

[Anonymous Coward]

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 Minesweeper: The Movie.

If this had been over Inception or another really great film, I could understand better. This? Please.

FTFM.

Re:Worst Part

[xtracto]

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 Minesweeper: The Movie.

If this had been over Inception or another really great film, I could understand better. This? Please.

FTFM.

Mhmmm... I saw that trailer.

Unfortunately as it is now common, after watching the Hurt Locker I realized the only good scenes were the ones in the trailer...

Re:Worst Part

[ScentCone]

The worst part, in my opinion, is that this isn't even a good movie to pirate.

Really? You evaluate the ethics of ripping something off as a function of its quality? What's it like to have no moral compass whatsoever?

Re:Worst Part

[jafiwam]

Sorry, your antagonism against "ripping someone off" falls false when you consider that 85% of the downloaders when given the choice between not seeing the movie, and paying full price, would not see the movie. The availability of the download does not affect the sale because it never was going to happen in the first place.

Fuck, a lot of people couldn't see it because it wasn't ever released in their area for fucks sake. How does that download from bumfuck Oklahoma from some guy who can't possibly see the movie equal a "rip off"?

So shave a few more percent off that number for those dumb OKies.

Until you hollywood cock-gobblers start making analysis on something other than puffed up numbers, you have no moral leg to stand on . FUCKING NONE.

The only difference between most downloads of movies and waiting around to happen to catch it on HBO or something is the timing. That's it. No extra dollars go anywhere, no missing dollars not there that would have come in other situations.

You just can't stand to see someone get something for nothing when the other side of the equation means "no sale" at all. NEITHER side of that equation equals a sale.

Re:Worst Part

[0111 1110]

Inception = Mission Impossible II meets The Matrix Reloaded but with more explosions and CGI and some implausible pseudo-tech about dream machines.

Re:Worst Part

[ScentCone]

you have no moral leg to stand on

Of course I do. The morality of ripping off the movie has absolutely nothing to do with how good it is, or how well it does in normal sales. Are you saying that shoplifting a donut from a 7-11 is OK, as long as you say that it's stale?

The only difference between most downloads of movies and waiting around to happen to catch it on HBO or something is the timing.

Except that most people do not subscribe to HBO. Only a minority of cable subscribers pay for premium services. Are you suggesting that all of the people who pirate movies also pay for subscription access to HBO, SHO, etc? You know that's BS. Quit embarassing yourself.

You just can't stand to see someone get something for nothing when the other side of the equation means "no sale" at all.

I have no problem with people getting stuff for free. As long as they're getting it according to the wishes of the person who creates it. Plenty of artists and the publishers they work with go to all sorts of trouble to provide entertainment at no cost to their audiences. You're suggesting that everyone should be able to dictate to the artists and their partners when and how that should happen. What you want is pet entertainment slaves who will do your bidding. You're staking out an elastic moral ground where your whim rules, but nobody else gets to have the same power, especially the people who create the stuff you want and demand for free. Fantastic hypocrisy there. Typical. Only the leaches can dictate morality, right? I'll be I know how you vote, too.

14.5M if everyone settles

[binaryspiral]

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?

Re:Barely heard of it...

[Colonel Korn]

The Hurt Locker was an amazingly good movie.
Intense, interesting.

I found the characters to be contrived caricatures. The film almost seemed like a parody of itself, filled with the kind of overly stylized, cliched, and rather shallow scenes South Park would show to make fun of an overblown director.

**/****

Re:Barely heard of it...

[ginbot462]

I'm not sure why you got modded funny. That was insightful/informative. That link/review is worth reading. The vet points to alternatives:

The War Tapes

Taking Chance

Marketing By Lawsuit

[lunatic1969]

I've never heard of this movie before now. Maybe they need to consider doing some marketing rather than suing people.

There is no profit

[Quila]

Movies never make a profit due to the famous Hollywood accounting.

Re:Barely heard of it...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding, right? It just an even more boring version of Jarheads. There was fuck all innovative or memorable about it - apart from how lame it was.

I never downloaded Hurt Locker...

[greg_barton]

...and now I'll never rent it or buy it! Congrats on the lost sale!

Re:I never downloaded Hurt Locker...

[Ksevio]

Lost sale? You are so sued.

Re:I never downloaded Hurt Locker...

[greg_barton]

Note that I never said there was a justification for piracy.

A historic moment

[grimJester]

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!

The real reason ...

[tgd]

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.

Re:The real reason ...

[OzPeter]

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.

I'm going to disagree about who is lucky. I haven't seen the movie so it sounds like I am even luckier!

Anyone ever heard of...

[mldi]

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.

Re:Anyone ever heard of...

[Reziac]

I don't exactly follow films, but I never heard of it til today myself, right here and now. Nearly all of the other films mentioned in various comments, I'd at least heard of (tho I've seen very few of them).

What do you expect...

[pongo000]

...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.

Re:I bought the DVD, then shared it

[timepilot]

Meh, one person's poo is another person's poi.

$2900 Price Point

[TheNinjaroach]

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.

Re:$2900 Price Point

[Antisyzygy]

Unfortunately most people who resort to pirating movies cant afford 2900 in this economy.

Haven't even heard of it

[Niris]

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.

Re:Haven't even heard of it

[penguinchris]

This movie won six academy awards, including best picture. If you haven't heard of it, you're not in the target audience (i.e.: people who actually see movies).

It didn't really have a traditional marketing blitz where every other commercial on TV is for it, like it was this past week for Machete and The American. But it was the kind of movie that all the critics raved about, and when that happens word tends to get out fairly quickly through various sources.

If the only movies you see are the ones that you see advertisements for, you never see any movie reviews, you never go to IMDB.com or other movie websites, and you never see what a movie you haven't heard of is about when you read the title in the listings, etc. etc., then yeah, you wouldn't have heard of this movie. But then I would argue that you don't care that much about movies anyway (at least not new ones - I watch mostly older movies myself but still pay attention to what's new in case there's anything good).

Re:Haven't even heard of it

[Niris]

Eh, I try to avoid the award shows and news. I do tend to frequent the independent movie theater here though, and the one that serves beer and pizza and plays old sci fi movies more than traditional theaters though >.>

Brilliant business model!

[chomsky68]

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!

Interesting

[Steauengeglase]

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.

Re:Interesting

[Steauengeglase]

Yes, I know that is ridiculously low, I just pulled a random number. It should probably be something like $500 from $500,000 with the maker given completely rights to sue the idiots who buy into such a system.

Regret

[whisper_jeff]

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.

Re:Barely heard of it...

[kieran]

Or you could, y'know, watch it and decide for yourself.

I mean Jesus, it's not as if you have to pay with torrents all over... erm.. *cough* never mind.

Thanks for the heads-up

[RancidPickle]

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".

Re:I bought the DVD, then shared it

[jrmcc]

Good thing you posted anonymously!!! The lawyers would be knocking on your door right now if they knew you were "sharing".

A better explanation of the movie's performance

[joeflies]

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.

Re:A better explanation of the movie's performance

[penguinchris]

It's an anti-war movie. It's not like "The Green Berets", ostensibly a gung-ho pro-war WWII style movie but about Vietnam, coming out while the Vietnam war was still going on.

True, most of the great anti-war Vietnam movies came out well after it ended, but there isn't really an end in sight to conflict in the middle east. If you're going to make an anti-war movie about Iraq, at least partly with the intention of swaying public opinion against the war, then while the war is still going on is a good time to do it.

Heck, Jarhead, another anti-war movie, is set in the Gulf War. For all intents and purposes, though, in the minds of most who see it it's an Iraq/Afghanistan movie, because the middle east setting looks the same. I'm sure the producers realized that would be the case, and it's entirely intentional.

Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that it's a bit of a stretch to make an anti-war movie now that's set in a historical war like Vietnam, Korea, or World War 2. It is sometimes done, but mostly those are traditional war films about honoring the soldiers and rousing adventure and so on. If you are trying to make a statement, which the producers of The Hurt Locker certainly were, you do it with a film about a recent or ongoing war.

Furnishing logs.

[CherniyVolk]

What happens if an ISP says... "We don't have the logs."?

Re:Furnishing logs.

[ZorinLynx]

Exactly.

If I were an ISP I would only keep logs long enough to use them to resolve cases of network abuse. Legal action takes a nice long time, so even purging them after a month would be sufficient to protect my users against legal problems.

"I'm sorry sir but we purge our logs after two weeks. We don't have those logs available."

I'm sure they'd try to get legislation passed that would require ISPs to keep logs for a certain amount of time eventually. But for now, ISPs should purge their logs after a few weeks.

$2,900 for a download?

[demonbug]

Ouch.

Still, cheaper than taking the wife to see it in the theater and buying some popcorn and drinks; sounds like a deal!

Re:$2,900 for a download?

[Myopic]

Dude, that is total hyperbole. Taking your wife to the movies, with popcorn and a soda, should only cost about a thousand dollars. The only way it would cost $2900 is if you bring a couple children along.

Crappy movie sues people actually watching it

[unity100]

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.

Re:Barely heard of it...

[geogob]

I tend to go with "hey, it's a movie, not a documentary"...

sure, blame "pirates"

[kimvette]

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.

Re:sure, blame "pirates"

[penguinchris]

I don't like the title either, but it's not an action movie along the lines of the films you list, *at all*.

I'm not saying I like the title either - I thought it was pretty stupid and I don't even remember what it refers to in the film (which I did see).

ORLY?

[The Wild Norseman]

Voltage Pictures has blamed the movie's relatively poor domestic performance on illegal file sharing.

Well, there's a shock.

How to figure file sharing costs

[Simonetta]

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.

How about the movie sucks?

[cervo]

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.

Re:Barely heard of it...

[stealth_finger]

atleast with jarhead nothing interesting was supposed to happen

Lets compare this to X Men origins

[Beerdood]

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!

The story ITSELF is stolen

[bigmattana]

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?

Re:The story ITSELF is stolen

[0111 1110]

Yep. The producer of this movie is one of the biggest scum bags in Hollywood and that is saying a lot. It's too bad because I loved the movie itself. I think there is even a slight likeness between Jeremy Renner and Jeffrey Sarver. This movie was clearly based on him. The whole idea for the movie and certainly for the main character was basically stolen from Mark Boal's experiences embedded with Sarver and his team. Pot meet kettle.

The scumbag producer had this to say when asked about his uncredited ripoff of Sgt Sarver (real life call sign "Blaster One"):

Everyone says it's one of the best movies of the year, did he just not like the popcorn when he watched the movie?' Chartier wrote. 'I haven't taken any grossly unfair action against him. I've never heard of him. Did I steal his girlfriend? Never heard of him.'

The Hurt Locker (oblig)

[ThatsNotPudding]

"Great name for T's V."
/Adam Carolla

That's right...

[linuxhansl]

You make a bad movie and then you blame somebody else (file sharers in this case) for it. Pathetic.

Re:Barely heard of it...

[blind biker]

Men Who Stare At Goats was more accurate portrayal of military life than Hurt Locker.

I can't comment on accuracy, but I can say that Men who stare at goats was a good movie, whereas The Hurt Locker was really sycky, and I will never understand how it got all those Oscars!? When I heard about those wins for Hurt Locker, I didn't know whether to be pissed or laugh MFAO. Same reaction when I heard of Obama getting a Nobel prize.

Sounds like they were just lazy

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Take a tip from James Cameron

[Chewbacon]

Perhaps if they made it in 3D it would've been a blockbuster.

Lost Profits?

[seeker_1us]

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.

all the suing going on.

[AnAdventurer]

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...

Re:Barely heard of it...

[AnAdventurer]

Man who stare at Goats had elements of truth to the main story line of psyops in SF Groups.

Re:I bought the DVD, then shared it

[timepilot]

C'mon. It has some merit. For example, it isn't "Eat, Pray, Love."

I'm going to be honest here

[fudgefactor7]

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.

Rules for good file sharing

[erroneus]

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.
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 ... just don't use Windows media player to play it. It's vulnerable.
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.

Who pirates this stuff?

[Trogre]

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.

There's a flaw in this damges thingy

[dadioflex]

I'm pretty sure someone will have realised this before but it's new to me.

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.

Oblig

[Beerdood]

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.

If you must buy the bluray get a used copy

[0111 1110]

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.