DESPITE LAWSUITS, DOWNLOADS OF “HURT LOCKER” PERSIST

Action by a group of attorneys operating as the U.S. Copyright Group to sue 5,000 people who allegedly downloaded the Oscar-winning film The Hurt Locker have not deterred thousands of others from illegally downloading the movie, the website TorrentFreak reported on Monday. The website, which publishes a monthly list of the films most frequently downloaded on file-sharing sites, reported on Monday that The Hurt Locker remains on its list after being downloaded a little over 200,000 times during June. “Considering that the film has been available on BitTorrent for more than a year already, this high download number is quite an achievement and only a few percent less than the previous month,” the website said, noting that 23 percent of the downloads came from individuals in the U.S. It also noted that while some 200 BitTorrent sites link to copies of The Hurt Locker, none has been asked to remove them. Doing so, it observed, “could ironically result in implied losses of several million dollars in missed settlements.”