Low-Budget Movie Companies Using BitTorrent Lawsuits As Business Strategy

April 2, 2011

David Kravets writes in Wired:

On March 7, Camelot Distribution Group, an obscure film company in Los Angeles, unveiled its latest and potentially most profitable release: a federal lawsuit against BitTorrent users who allegedly downloaded the company’s 2010 B-movie revenge flick Nude Nuns With Big Guns between January and March of this year. The single lawsuit targets 5,865 downloaders, making it theoretically worth as much as $879,750,000 — more money than the U.S. box-office gross for Avatar.

At the moment, the targets of the litigation are unknown, even to Camelot. The mass lawsuit lists the internet IP addresses of the downloaders (.pdf), and asks a federal judge to order ISPs around the country to dig into their records for each customer’s name.

It’s the first step in a process that could lead to each defendant getting a personalized letter in the mail from Camelot’s attorneys suggesting they settle the case, lest they wind up named in a public lawsuit as having downloaded Nude Nuns With Big Guns.

A hearing on that request is set for April 13. In all probability none of the alleged downloaders know it’s happening.

Welcome to the future of Hollywood, or at least the less glittery outskirts of Tinsel Town that produce art films, exploitation flicks and porn. Over the past year, small-budget film producers have nearly perfected a slick, courtroom-based business strategy that’s targeted more than 130,000 suspected movie downloaders.

For more information, see original article.

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Comment by Marklar on April 4, 2011 at 8:24am: Interesting development Laser. Thanks.

Comment by Jaya Madhava das aka M.J. Koval on April 4, 2011 at 4:26am: Whats happening to people are they just greedy NUTS or BOTH
The honest public-wont sell their films-+ deserves the Right to share anything they want -without their Nazi control FREAK attitudes,,,,we must fight back !
Hitler Hollywood scare tactics and law suits....To Hell with them. ! FIGHT EM !!! Fight Back !!!!!!

Comment by TheLasersShadow on April 4, 2011 at 3:31am

Studio Suing BitTorrent Pirates Does Not Own the Movie, Records Show

By David Kravets
April 1, 2011 |
5:42 pm |
Categories: The Ridiculous, intellectual property

A film company suing 5,865 BitTorrent downloaders over the flick Nude Nuns with Big Guns doesn’t own the rights to the movie, according to court documents and interviews.

Incentive Capital of Utah took ownership last month of the B-rated flick about a sister who is “one Bad Mother.” Yet two weeks after Incentive Capital foreclosed and assumed Camelot Distribution Group’s titles because of an allegedly soured loan, Camelot filed a mass copyright lawsuit (.pdf) on behalf of Nude Nuns claiming it owned the rights.

***

“They’re holding themselves out as the owner of a title they don’t own,” Pia said. Incentive is also suing Camelot for $2 million on contract breach allegations (.pdf).

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It's like that scene from pulp fiction... they thought they were going to do the nasty on several thousand people getting them to settle out of court. Sure enough it turns out they sold the copyright and now they're going to be the ones grabbing their ankles. THATS JUSTICE!!! I hope those punks end up broke in cardboard boxes.

Comment by Marklar on April 3, 2011 at 2:31pm: Of course the studio will be relying on people settling without a fight since the only way these IPs can be collected is for the studio to record them from a server that is seeding the file(s). In other words the legal copyright holder is the source of the only files they can prove to have been downloaded. Hence all copies were in fact legal and no infringement can be shown to have occurred.

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