Hurt Locker Goes to War

The Oscar winning war drama “Hurt Locker” is going to war against piracy. The producers of the movie are taking action against thousands of users who took part in actively pirating the movie. The movie’s fancier, Voltage Pictures, has signed up with a group that is actively pursuing a case that targets peer-to-peer BitTorrent users.

The U.S. Copyright Group, which is based in Washington D.C., has already started the ball rolling with regards to several other movies. However, “Hurt Locker” is the only high profile movie on the list. “Call of the Wild 3D” “Far Cry” by German filmmaker Uwe Boll and “Uncross the Stars” are some of the others on the list. So far the group was not taken very seriously by many due to the low profiles of the ten movies that were on the list before “Hurt Locker”. The addition of the Oscar winner has sent ripples through the piracy circles and arrests are one of the options that could be pursued, following a favorable result in the lawsuit.

When the lawsuit is filed, the ISP’s will be subpoenaed for records. These records will then attempt to match IP addresses with unlawful activities on the BitTorrent network. So far the ISP’s have not co-operated fully in handing out the records, but this is mostly because it involves a lot of work for them to do so. The U.S. Copyright Group sends a settlement offer to individuals who are identified. From previous cases, they have a 40% success rate on the offers. Those who did not respond have been sent new offers. The Group said that if they fail to respond to that, lawsuits and arrests will follow. The same procedure is expected to be enacted for the “Hurt Locker” pirates as well.