Indie Filmmakers Sue Thousands of BitTorrent Users

[The Straight Story]

Indie Filmmakers Sue Thousands of BitTorrent Users

Warning to pirates: you’re no longer safe downloading movies that nobody ever heard of.

A consortium of independent filmmakers has launched an RIAA-style mass-litigation campaign, suing thousands of individual BitTorrent users whose IP addresses were detected feeding and seeding films like Steam Experiment, Far Cry, Uncross the Stars, Gray Man and Call of the Wild 3D.

“There’s two-way liability here with BitTorrrent,” said Thomas Dunlap, the lawyer who brought the cases for the U.S. Copyright Group. ”Everybody with BitTorrent is an uploader and a downloader.”

The cases seek to unmask about 10,000 users, and Dunlap said lawsuits against another 30,000 torrenters are in the pipeline. That means the independent filmmakers are officially more litigious than the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued about 30,000 people in the entire life of its six-year litigation campaign.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/bittorrent-legal-attack/

[flamingdem]

1. Someone has to teach a generation that you cannot get someone's work product for free nt

[Oregone]

2. Unless you are powerful

Or too big to fail.

[Toucano]

3. Well said! n/t

[Therellas]

8. and there you go......

teachers too.

[neobeetle]

4. Hope this works

[anigbrowl]

13. I hope it fails. I am an indie filmmaker and want no part of this BS.

It's a fucking fraud - a bunch of lawyers who signed a few people up by telling them they could get money for signing a complaint form and are trying to collect damages so they can pay themselves $$$ and throw a few pennies to the rubes who signed up in just enough numbers to constitute a class.

Nothing but scamartistry - take a look at their website: http://www.savecinema.org/index-1.html

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. The RIAA surveillance and forensic company was not allowed into some of the cases

and with it some of what they collected. Be interesting to see what comes out of this one.

I know some people who have been notified over this. None have actually been served. Most of them are waiting to see how real it is. Some are students who had an open wireless router, which is a viable defense.

This is not a good thing...

[MattBaggins]

6. "Everybody with BitTorrent is an uploader and a downloader."

Bzzzzzt Wrong answer. Not everyone is an uploader.

[walldude]

9. Depending on the client you use...

Some BT clients don't let you shut off the upload... That said, the people who use Bit Torrent aren't "pirates" they are kids in mommy's basement downloading crap. Real pirates don't use peer to peer services.

[Therellas]

7. isnt it crazy that NOT sharing is OK.

funny.
but not haha funny.

[smalll]

10. LOL - "indie filmakers" vs. "BitTorrent users" --

Hipsters with trust funds versus computer geeks. Is there some way this could play out so that BOTH sides lose? That's what I'd like to see!
:evilgrin:

[Ramulux]

11. These filmmakers are dumbasses

I know that if I want people to watch my movies, the smartest thing to do would be to sue all the people who try to watch it. These guys are independent filmmakers releasing movies few people have heard of, let alone bought, and the best possible way to get people to see these movies is for them to be available on torrent sites. No one is going to spend money on some underground movie they dont know anything about and have to buy online, they will however download it and if it turns out it was decent they might buy it. This is the exact same situation the music industry had to go through and it took them a long time to learn their lesson. If fledgling filmmakers want their work to be seen, they have to offer it for free, otherwise no one is going to take a chance on it. There are so many movies I have bought only because I was able to watch it for free once, if I couldn't do that the filmmaker would get no money from me.

We can talk about whether or not pirating is right or wrong but the reality is that the practice is here to stay and is never going to go away, as long as one person owns a movie that movie can be shared with everyone else in the world and no amount of lawsuits or internet regulation will change that. The way we recieve and view media has permanently changed and the film and music industry need to understand that people are not going to spend money on a risk. If you want people to spend money on your product you need to show them that that product is something they would enjoy using, you do that by letting the consumer watch or listen to what it is they are going to buy. The point is that people are going to be making less and less blind purchases and unless you allow the consumer to see and understand exactly what it is your selling, they wont buy it.

[JCMach1]

14. People should seriously consider boycotting their work for such idiocy!

[LostInAnomie]

12. If I promise to give all of them the $40 their movies would have made...

... will they promise to drop the suit?