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Hurt Locker File-Sharing Subpoenas Begin
In May we discussed news that producers of the film The Hurt Locker filed a lawsuit against 5,000 John Does, known only by their IP addresses at the time, for sharing the movie over peer-to-peer sites. Now, reader suraj.sun notes that subpoenas for the lawsuit are finally going out.
"Qwest Communications on Monday notified a customer in Denver that the Internet service provider has received a subpoena from lawyers representing Voltage Pictures, the production company that made The Hurt Locker. ... In legal documents, Voltage Pictures has blamed the movie's relatively poor domestic performance on illegal file sharing. As of March 21, the movie had grossed $16 million domestically, but took in $40 million overall. According to reports, the film's production budget was $15 million. The film leaked to the Web five months before the movie's US debut. ... For allegedly downloading The Hurt Locker, DGW told the Qwest customer from Denver that settling the case early would cost $2,900, according to documents reviewed by CNET."
The film leaked to the Web five months before the movie's US debut
Looking for a culprit ? The guy who decided to sit on the movie for months while the marketing campaign was already on. When people want to see something and it is available, albeit illegally, they will.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
When are they going to make extortion illegal?
Oh wait...
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.
My Tor exit node is probably going to get DMCA takedown requests. I got one for "CSI: Miami Season 4" and CERT Malaysia said I was launching an attack against XXX.XXX.XXX but won't provide me an IP address or range to block. Silly DMCA folks!!!!
First I heard of this film was when it won it's Oscars, by which point it'd been out 6 - 9 months, and seeing as most cinemas drop films after a couple of months then there's no wonder it got poor showing.
Perhaps if people actually knew the film existed, it'd have done better at the box office. Not advertising the existence of a film whatsoever then wondering why the hell no one went to watch it, despite it being popular post-Oscars is the real reason this film did so miserably financially.
Blaming file sharers wont fix a marketing mistake, and by the time they've gone through the courts, dealt with the claims they're entirely unable to prove, it'll probably have cost them far more in man hours than they can expect to earn back through strong arming people with settlement threats.
They assume that the movie would have been a much bigger success were it not for file sharing. Maybe the movie didn't succeed because it sucked. I certainly didn't go see it because nobody I know that did recommended it. It would appear that the new business plan is 1. make a shit movie cheaply 2. leak the film while sitting on it for no reason 3. blame filesharing for the fact that no one liked your shit movie 4. sue file sharers for what you think you should have made 5. profit!
Look...I understand that piracy is wrong, and if something can be legally obtained it should be.
That being said, this is freakin' insane. All 5,000 Does rolled up into one case? A case filed in Washington, DC...where almost none (if any) of the Does live? Fining these people so much money that the entire movie's budget is literally payed for by SUING people?
If this isn't abusing the justice system, I don't know what is.
Living With a Nerd
Voltage Pictures has blamed the movie's relatively poor domestic performance on illegal file sharing.
...took in $40 million overall. According to reports, the film's production budget was $15 million.
They made $25 million and are blaming file sharing because it performed poorly? I think that possibly their standards are a bit skewed because they have been gluttonous bastards for so long. In the REAL WORLD, if a product's return is more than twice what it cost them, I'd say they are doing pretty good.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
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!
...maybe the film didn't do all that well because not that many people were interested in it. I know I had absolutely no interest in watching it.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The Avatar DVD is currently #51 in the Amazon sales charts despite being released in April. I bet it was way more pirated than The Hurt Locker will ever be.
#6 in the Amazon sales charts is a movie made in the 1960s that has been available for piracy for many years.
Occam's Razor: The movie isn't as good as they think it is.
No sig today...
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.
There is a war going on for your mind.
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!
Avatar was 10 times better? Hurt Locker must have been truly awful then.
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.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The worst part, in my opinion, is that this isn't even a good movie to pirate. I mean, it was okay to watch on Netflix, but there's no excuse for pirating such a mediocre film. Yea, it won an Oscar, but it was basically just a re-packaged Jarhead.
If this had been over Inception or another really great film, I could understand better. This? Please.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
The 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.
**/****
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
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.
...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.
This seems like the most equitable form of extortion I've ever seen come out of the entertainment industry, so at least I'll have to give the producers credit for not being complete pie-in-the-sky assholes ("We lost potential billions for the rest of time!")
I'd love to see this the other way around. Before a film begins shooting, I pay them $2, just me Joe-Blow consumer. I can pick whatever project I want to give cash to, though I have no input on the content. In exchange for the $2, I get a license. I can copy and past the movie wherever I want to after it goes through the initial theatrical release. I also get to keep the license for an indefinite period, as it is MY license for a movie I invested in with my money (the average consumer isn't going to throw it out on to torrents, because dammit, they already own a copy). If done right, you could create an environment where movies are pure profit.
I bought the movie when it came out on DVD because I'd wanted to see it in theatres but missed it and heard it was worth the money.
I really enjoyed the movie and was happy to see it earn some Oscar recognition.
Now that they are backing this sort of action against people, I regret giving them any of my money. I will no longer recommend this movie. I regret supporting this movie if they are so willing to participate in a legal action that I find offensive. The copyright laws, as they exist, were designed to combat _commercial_ piracy and that's a battle I support. Suing individuals for the same monetary damages that are designed to discourage commercial infringement is abusive.
Fuck them.
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.