Saturday, May 28, 2011

Hurt Locker lawsuit targets a record-breaking 24,583 IP addresses

Thanks Domi,

Sent to you by Dominic via Google Reader:

via Engadget by Jesse Hicks on 5/27/11

It's been almost a year since the producers of The Hurt Locker filed a lawsuit against 5,000 alleged pirates suspected of distributing the film via BitTorrent. Now Voltage Pictures has updated its complaint, adding almost 20,000 IP addresses to the list of defendants. That makes it the largest file-sharing lawsuit of all time -- a crown previously held by the company behind The Expendables, according to Wired. The plaintiff has already reached agreements with Charter and Verizon to identify individual users, but no such deal with Comcast, who owns nearly half the supposedly infringing addresses. Linking those addresses with user accounts would let Voltage manage individual settlements -- probably somewhere between $1,000-$2,000 -- rather than continue legal action. All of this eerily echoes the Oscar-winning film's plot, about an adrenaline junkie who couldn't resist downloading just one more movie. Or defusing one more bomb. We're a little fuzzy on the details, but venture into TorrentFreak to scan for familiar IP addresses.

No comments: