New Revenue Model For Low Budget Films: Lawsuits

conspirator23 writes "A 64-year-old retired English teacher is being sued by a copyright troll for illegal BitTorrent downloading of a motion picture. Perhaps it's not all that shocking in the current era. That is, until we learn that rather than protecting something like Game of Thrones, the plaintiff is accusing Emily Orlando of Estacada, Oregon of downloading Maximum Conviction, a direct-to-video action flick released earlier this year starring Steven Segal and ex-WWE wrestler Steve Austin. Voltage Pictures is demanding $7500 from Emily and 370 other defendants. If all the defendants were to pay the demands, Voltage would gross over $2.75 million, minus legal fees. Who needs Kickstarter?" As you might expect, Mrs. Orlando had never heard of BitTorrent before receiving the legal threat, and she lives in an area with dynamic IP assignments. This is the same company who has been going after file-sharers by the thousands since 2010.

Hmmm..

[MightyMartian]

Get a lawyer. Countersue for $100,000 for the complainant filing false affidavits with the court. When they try to toss out the claims, say you will settle for $10,000 plus legal fees, otherwise it's off to fucking court.

Re:Can't wait for there to be case law

[eksith]

Oops... did I say "shot"? I meant "should have cat urine poured down their throats". Seriously, I've never seen another institution meant for the citizens to petition government be abused so much. All lobbying (even the anti-gun lobby) will be at risk eventually when enough people decide enough is enough. At the moment, they're distracted by *idol shows to give a damn, but just wait and see.

Re:Preexisting business relationship

[yurtinus]

While we're making up random stuff, you owe me a cookie for writing about EULAs in breach of my asserted writes over that business area.

Find me a case where one of these copyright demand letters was sent to binding arbitration. Go ahead, I'll wait.

...Or you could just stick with writing dystopian fiction.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Can't wait for there to be case law

[dbIII]

It's bizzaro world since the NRA was out there calling for an expensive taxpayer funded nanny state (lots of armed guards in schools).
Maybe they are not the tough guys they are pretending to be?


Personally I see them as gutless losers that want military weapons as toys without the responsibility of joining the military and risking their lives for the flag they are always so quick to wrap themselves in.

Re:Hurt Locker?

[TranquilVoid]

Odd, I'm Australian and found it to be more of a character study. It certainly didn't glorify war but also doesn't criticise the U.S. involvement. In fact I was left wondering how someone who chose to be with James Cameron could demonstrate such subtlety.

Coincidentally a few weeks ago I read a review of it in a Balinese newspaper, I think for expats. The English, or translation, was quite rough, but they did indeed slam it as pro-American propaganda.

Voltage Pictures Strikes Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was actually one of the first unlucky few who received notice from both my ISP and Voltage Pictures informing me that I was being sued for downloading "The Hurt Locker" via bittorrent. They sent me multiple demands of increasing value in-order to have my name removed from the suit.

I talked to others who have also received similar demands, and we all took the same action, which was to ignore them. We decided that what they were doing was really nothing more than a scare-tactic, and later-on we read that the case as thrown out by a judge because the law-firm failed to submit a full listing of names by their given due-date. I have not heard anything from them since.

Apparently, this is a common practice for Voltage Pictures (and similar companies) when their business begins to fail financially.