Hurt Locker Producers Suing "Tens of Thousands" of Downloaders

[mrpenguinismyhomeboy]

Ugh, I mean, On the one hand, it is really impossible to defend pirates, but on the other hand, it seems like the producers are just being greedy, going after every single individual downloader. I mean, to me they should just be happy they made a great piece of art (or at least according to the box art they did) and be proud of themselves. I mean, as long as no one else is saying they made the hurt locker, it doesn't seem like they should be all that mad, such that they sue every individual person who downloaded it illegally. Seems to me like a dick move made by the greedy corporations, and while pirates are undefendable, this just seems greedy to me and I don't like it.

See to me, it's not really a copyright thing. Because nobody goes around going "Oh hey look at me I Made this movie all by myself come check it out!!!!" when it's really some big budget film. So it doesn't seem like an infringement of copyright because no one is falsely taking owner ship of the work. To me it's just more like stealing, or unauthorized reproduction (which yes I know in the little warnings they say not to do that otherwise it;s copy right infringement) but to me it doesn't seem like it's copyright infringement, just duplication.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

I actually think that's good... more people needed to pay for this movie. It was excellent and you need to support the people who made it. We need more Hurt Lockers, not more Avatars. But now since Avatar made more money, that's all we're going to get.

 

[TarkXT]

Funny how this is happening over a movie I would not have even pirated.

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Raise your hand if you've ever seen or ever want to see Far Cry in theatres?

 

[ShadowsofHope]

I actually think that's good... more people needed to pay for this movie. It was excellent and you need to support the people who made it. We need more Hurt Lockers, not more Avatars. But now since Avatar made more money, that's all we're going to get.

We need more American military hard-on movies? Nah.

Avatar is mediocre too, I know. Even with the visuals.

We need more District 9-esque movies!

 

[ThisWasAWaste]

This very mediocre movie never diserved an Oscar...
Poor people who are now going to have to fork in a ton of cash because they figured it'd be good.

That's an opinion. It doesn't give anyone the right to pirate it. If you aren't sure, rent it.

Personally, I really liked it.

 

[ThisWasAWaste]

I wonder when people are going to stop complaining about piracy...?

Why it is against the law is beyond me... And what is even more confusing is that most people seem to think that these companies have valid points.

When you work, you like to get paid right? Does it really need more explaining than this... ?

I actually think that's good... more people needed to pay for this movie. It was excellent and you need to support the people who made it. We need more Hurt Lockers, not more Avatars. But now since Avatar made more money, that's all we're going to get.

We need more American military hard-on movies? Nah.

Avatar is mediocre too, I know. Even with the visuals.

We need more District 9-esque movies!

You did watch the movie... right? I was fairly certain it had a very anti-war tone to it.

 

[Disgruntledgrrl]

While this is terrible, I can see their point on this: Hurt Locker was a very gritty and grim story that did very well at Cannes and was expected to make a lot of money.

HOWEVER because there is a scene where a bomb must be defused inside the body of a dead child, a lot of theaters became squeamish and frankly I barely saw a listing for it in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Like 2 out of 5 theaters might have it and it was for a very short time.

They were probably depending on a "sleeper hit" where the purchases of the movie would buoy it.

I still think it blows. It took $15 mill to make and generated $40 mill. They made their money. And they are forgetting that there are plenty of things out there that can use a computer to download remotely and IP address stealing/masking.

I'm pretty sure that nearly 35% of the "perpetrators" are actually innocent.

 

[Plurralbles]

I actually think that's good... more people needed to pay for this movie. It was excellent and you need to support the people who made it. We need more Hurt Lockers, not more Avatars. But now since Avatar made more money, that's all we're going to get.

but... but... i HATE the directors of both and notice all the hate on this thread; it wasn't unanimously awesome for everyone, alot of people hated it.

Seriously, the face behind the movie must be likable to use that kind of argument. Fuck talent, if I hate you i won't care.

 

[Icecoldcynic]

It's cute how these people seem to think that lawsuit is going to work. I feel sorry for the people responsible for sending out all those letters.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

We need more American military hard-on movies? Nah.

I don't care how doused with nationalism it is, it was a good film. Maybe it was because I saw it in theaters and a lot of people didn't, but watching it on the big screen made for the most intense war film I've seen. In all honesty, when I watched it on my television at home which is relatively big, it didn't grasp the feel of it like it did in theaters with other people and when I was completely focused. I mean it wasn't as good as 2008's Best Picture, Slumdog Millionaire, but it was certainly the best movie I saw last year.

 

[Enkidu88]

Interesting that a bunch of small crappy movies (Though I admit Hurt locker was okay, it was hardly oscar worthy) is suing. Because obviously it's not the fact that the Far Cry movie sucked ass that no one bought it, it was clearly because people pirated it.

 

[Ehra]

I always get a kick out of the "I only pirate the movie so I can see if it's any good before buying it!" defense when that's exactly what rentals are for. Of course, who would want to pay for a Netflix subscription when you could just build flimsy justifications for downloading it for free?

 

[zelda2fanboy]

In that sense, torrent exists outside of everything, an invisible network or user computers without any central organization or monitoring. Torrent sites only tap into that "cloud" and bring you search results, nothing more. You can shut them down, but that won't even make a dent in the torrent network. As things stand now, the torrent network is indestructible, because to totally destroy the network, you'll have to manually track down and turn off every single user and home computer seeding a torrent. Good luck with that

Yeah, right. So if I google Avatar torrent right now, google (itself) will give me a tracking file I can throw into my torrent application and begin downloading immediately. Baloney. Torrent sites do not host the actual files, but they do facilitate trading. Do you think the Escapist forum moderators would allow me to talk about movies I'm seeding and post tracking files and addresses? They wouldn't because that would be facilitating piracy. What about a website that gave me a list of local drug dealers? Hey, they aren't doing the actual transactions, so nothing illegal is happening, right?

If google actually hosted the movies trade as directly as pirate bay and torrentfreak do, they'd be sued faster than you could say leecher.

 

[Flying Dagger]

This is quite interesting.

The moment someone here on the escapist mentions video game piracy everyone goes berserk with rage and demands that someone be burned at the stake.

But if this thread is any indicator pirating movies is quite fine because that's just how the internet works.

Fascinating.

It seems "suing people" gets a stronger reaction then "pirating movies"
It's a ridiculous action to take, unless they can prove you used this information to redistribute the movie, it's unlikely they will make any money off it, (without idiots settling) as one persons pirating of the movie won't even come close to netting the legal costs.
What a fantastic way of spending your movie's meager profits.
I bet the people who actually spent money on it are real glad they aren't using it to make more films.

More companies should use Zeno Clash's take on piracy.

An unusual stance on piracy.

Of all the press releases we issued I doubt any reached as many people or sparked as much discussion on the net as our open message to pirates, which was reported all over the web.

As with all PC games, it took a very short time for a pirated version of Zeno Clash to start being distributed via torrents and direct downloads. When we faced this situation, we knew we had little chance of doing anything.

So while I was checking the comments of the first pirated copies of the game (on torrent trackers of a popular website) I decided to step in and leave a post to the people who were downloading the game. The message was well-written, polite, and basically said that our income depended on sales and that the only way we could continue to develop games was if we made enough profit.

When a couple of gaming websites saw these posts, they immediately posted it as news, and the word spread out very quickly. The amount of exposure this produced was not the only big surprise for us; many people wrote to us saying that they had decided to purchase the game only because of the message. Not only that, but people started copying my original message and putting it on other torrent trackers and websites.

While I don't think a significant percentage of people who pirated the game changed their minds, I do believe that the event worked as a big accidental "marketing" strategy and helped create more awareness of the game. It also helped us project a good image of the studio.

 

[Polyintrinsic]

This thread makes me want to pirate something right now. Hmmmmm. *Clicks the top 100 list at piratebay....*

 

[daskat]

My opinion on that movie is that they got a pity oscar. "Hey guys this film did so awfull at box office and other films did much better, lets give them an oscar and maybe they can get a few bucks". They didn't so now they try to get it with some ambulance chaser "law" firm.

 

[rated pg]

Hmm, an unsuccessful major movie which won a lot of awards seems to have found (or tried to find) a new revenue stream.

 

[TechNoFear]

Far Cry [http://www.voltagepictures.com/]

As the copyright on Far Cry was not registered until 2010 and most of the infringement notices pre date this, the only direct loss can be claimed in damages.

So if you just downloaded a torrent and did not sell copies, you can not be fined/have damages awarded against you.

These notices are simply a scare tactic designed to make people pay up (without determining the actual legal merit of the case).