LAWYERS TO SUE ILLEGAL “HURT LOCKER” DOWNLOADERS

Voltage Pictures may have seen only $15 million from theater ticket sales for The Hurt Locker, which won the Oscar this year for best picture, but it stands to net far more than that by suing tens of thousands of BitTorrent users who downloaded the movie illegally online. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Voltage is being represented by the recently formed U.S. Copyright Group (USCG), a Washington D.C.-based group of attorneys that has obtained the IP addresses of thousands of BitTorrent users and has begun suing them for downloading other independent films. The major studios, via the MPAA, are not represented by the USCG. Although it now has lists of IP addresses of persons who likely downloaded The Hurt Locker, USCG must now convince Internet service providers that it is their duty to turn over the names of the actual subscribers associated with the addresses.