The Hurt Locker BitTorrent lawsuit is dead, or at least it should be. Unfortunately someone forgot to tell the lawyers. or perhaps the lawyers conveniently forgot to tell the ISPs. That is, at least, according to TorrentFreak.
The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker was a huge critical hit, eventually winning the 2010 Oscar for ‘Best Picture’. Unfortunately it didn’t do quite as well at the box office, only taking $49 million worldwide. It’s taken more since thanks to DVD and Blu-ray sales, but not enough to warm the hearts of the studio behind it.
That studio is Voltage Pictures, which blamed piracy/file-sharing (depending on your point of view) for that poor box office performance. It may not have helped, but to blame it entirely was way over the top. The next step was to go after thousands of alleged pirates looking for compensation.
Dismissed, Continuing
Voltage, along with the U.S. Copyright Group AKA law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver, launched a lawsuit against almost 25,000 alleged pirates. The evidence to suggest they had illegally downloaded the movie being their IP addresses.
The case dragged on so long, thanks to ISPs only drip-feeding the personal details of the owners of these IP addresses that the case was eventually dismissed. However, TorrentFreak claims that wasn’t the end of the story.
Instead it alleges the law firm kept requesting personal details even after the IP addresses had been dismissed from the case. What’s more it’s alleged new defendants were being chased despite never having been a part of the lawsuit. Which, if true, is questionable behavior, to say the least.
Conclusions
There are obvious ethical and legal questions being asked in this case. Sadly it seems that when it comes to fighting what one side claim are nothing more than pirates stealing content, anything goes.
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