DID CANADIAN HOCKEY TEAM ILLEGALLY DOWNLOAD MOVIE?

The producers of The Hurt Locker have often blamed online piracy for the movie’s dismal showing in 2009. With a total domestic gross of just $17 million, the film, which dominated the Academy Awards presentations in 2010 with six wins including Best Picture, likely holds the record for the fewest tickets sold for an Oscar champ. Voltage Pictures, which produced the movie, hired a group of attorneys, the U.S. Copyright Group, to go after those who pirated the movie, in hopes of wringing from them settlements that might offset the losses they claim they suffered due to piracy. The website TorrentFreak.com, which tracks BitTorrent use — the technology used by most illegal file downloaders — reported on Wednesday that the lawyers’ group is also targeting Canadians and was able to obtain a court order forcing three Canadian Internet service providers to turn over the IP addresses of persons downloading The Hurt Locker. One of them, the website disclosed, turns out to be owned by the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. The team is expected to claim that many individuals have access to its IP address and that there is no means to determine who among them might have downloaded the movie.