A Hollywood Reporter exclusive this week reveals that the offensive that we all knew would happen, US studios suing private Americans for downloading films, has begun, and is a remake of the record labels moves over stolen music tracks.
The US web site revealed that a group of independent film makers, with the major Hollywood 5 studios currently sitting on the sidelines, are using technology from Germany that has already been used there to successfully watch bit torrent sites and find out who is offering illegal films and who is downloading them. The names and addresses of these individuals still need to be supplied by ISPs, but their IP address is recorded and now some 50,000 people in the US have been targeted.
Initially 20,000 downloaders have has issued legal paperwork and the group is working on another 30,000, says The Hollywood Reporter. The cases are being brought by a collective calling itself the US Copyright Group which runs a web site called Savecinema.org. These have targeted downloaders of five independent films. Some of these films are owned by German distributors, which have imported the technology from Guardaley IT in Germany.
If the ISPs co-operate, and some already appear to be doing so, the names of the 20,000 defendants will be released, and the group will try for settlements covering costs, low level damages and a promise not to infringe again. The exact amount per offence is not yet known, but is thought to be several thousands of dollars, and this mass market approach could provide a significant amount of money to the plaintiffs if it is successful. The Hollywood Reporter says that one German film recovered $800,000 through litigation.
Although the original author of Bit Torrent has put its technology to a legal use, there remain millions of copies that can still be targeted at illegal torrents containing films, and video piracy has hardly diminished in the US.
The US legal system is sure to get behind one of these defendants and go through a test case, and see for sure whether or not the downloaders themselves, rather than the illegal torrent server owners, can be convicted under US law. It could be that this is more about forcing ISPs to be on their guard and send notices to Bit Torrent users about illegal activity, than real convictions ‘ because there are differences in the US law versus German and other European law. Also the US record labels gave up on this strategy as it had no effect on piracy, and turned consumer opinion against them.