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New Revenue Model For Low Budget Films: Lawsuits
conspirator23 writes "A 64-year-old retired English teacher is being sued by a copyright troll for illegal BitTorrent downloading of a motion picture. Perhaps it's not all that shocking in the current era. That is, until we learn that rather than protecting something like Game of Thrones, the plaintiff is accusing Emily Orlando of Estacada, Oregon of downloading Maximum Conviction, a direct-to-video action flick released earlier this year starring Steven Segal and ex-WWE wrestler Steve Austin. Voltage Pictures is demanding $7500 from Emily and 370 other defendants. If all the defendants were to pay the demands, Voltage would gross over $2.75 million, minus legal fees. Who needs Kickstarter?"
As you might expect, Mrs. Orlando had never heard of BitTorrent before receiving the legal threat, and she lives in an area with dynamic IP assignments. This is the same company who has been going after file-sharers by the thousands since 2010.
EA is only the second worst company.
Get a lawyer. Countersue for $100,000 for the complainant filing false affidavits with the court. When they try to toss out the claims, say you will settle for $10,000 plus legal fees, otherwise it's off to fucking court.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Convince a good lawyer to take this as a class action. Sue for court costs, his own legal fees and emotional damages. I can't imagine jury anywhere on the planet that wouldn't give the win to the little old lady. Use this as a model for said trolls and when it becomes clear that we are hoisting these parasites on their own petards, perhaps they'll go away!
This company (from TFA) *is* the maker of The Hurt Locker.
Hurt locker was also a huge turd. It beggars belief how it could win anything at the oscars, perhaps excepting the oscar for the biggest piece of contrived shit of the year.
I thought that's what the Oscars(TM) are.
* Biggest piece of contrived shit of the year.
* Biggest leading male piece of contrived shit of the year.
* Biggest leading female piece of contrived shit of the year.
* Biggest piece of contrived shit costumes of the year.
And so on. All awarded at the biggest piece of contrived shit awards ceremony of the year. But maybe I'm thinking of some other awards show.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I was actually one of the first unlucky few who received notice from both my ISP and Voltage Pictures informing me that I was being sued for downloading "The Hurt Locker" via bittorrent. They sent me multiple demands of increasing value in-order to have my name removed from the suit.
I talked to others who have also received similar demands, and we all took the same action, which was to ignore them. We decided that what they were doing was really nothing more than a scare-tactic, and later-on we read that the case as thrown out by a judge because the law-firm failed to submit a full listing of names by their given due-date. I have not heard anything from them since.
Apparently, this is a common practice for Voltage Pictures (and similar companies) when their business begins to fail financially.