Dunlap Grubb & Weaver was engaged by the US Copyright Group to go to battle once again against illegal Internet movie piracy. “The Hurt Locker”, a 2009 Oscar-winning war film set in Iraq and produced by Nicolas Chartier at Voltage Pictures, is at the center of this latest lawsuit.
The film had its widespread United States release in July 2009. Despite winning six of the nine Academy Awards for which it was nominated, the film grossed just $16 million. Nevertheless, there have been tens of thousands of illegal downloads of this film by Internet users, which conduct constitutes clear copyright infringement. This film was also the victim of widespread pirating within the United States five months before the film was released here. The copyright owner, Voltage Pictures, believes this is central to the movie’s lackluster performance within the U.S.
TorrentFreak.com, a site focusing almost exclusively on news about BitTorrent, reported on February 8th, 2010 that “The Hurt Locker” was the fourth most pirated movie during the previous week. This is one statistic that has the rightful owners of “The Hurt Locker” reeling. While the exact number of those illegally downloading the movie is not certain, the number could reach 50,000-75,000 across all different platforms of file sharing.
There are those who apparently believe there is nothing wrong with movie pirating. The tone on some web sites on blogs demonstrates this. They bash the RIAA, they talk about better ways to steal the movies, and they even slam the movie they just watched for free.
Some individuals would rather pirate a movie than pay for it based on their skewed “principles”. Some think it’s their right, while others pirate movies just because they can. Still others download and watch the movies because it cheaper than renting or going to the theater.
Regardless of their motivations for pirating these movies, they all have one thing in common; they are violating U.S. copyright law. It is our hope that reason will prevail when the settlement offers go out on “The Hurt Locker”. For those who don’t, we won’t hesitate to defend our client’s rights using all legal means.
This will be the 10th or 11th movie we have prosecuted for our clients. The facts are on our side, the law is on our side, and we have a team of intellectual property lawyers who are experienced in prosecuting these cases.
