'Expendables' Pirates Next Target of Bit-Torrent Lawsuits

Tons of people download films illegally; there's no way the copyright police will track you down individually, right? Well, maybe, but if you're guilty of snagging a copy of one of Nu Image Films' 179 titles, specifically'The Expendables,'the United States Copyright Group is coming for you, specifically.

Last year, the USCG joined forces with Achte/Neunte to nail 4,500 people for downloading films including'The Hurt Locker'and'Far Cry.'In November, a district court judge cut that defendant list down to just 140 based on jurisdiction rules. Despite some criticism over the loss of defendants, the USCG is in pursuit of that hefty number yet again and this time around is employing Nu Image and its much larger repertoire to bring a significantly higher number of people to justice.

According toTHR, the USCG process will be quite similar to the 'Hurt Locker' and 'Far Cry' case."USCG joins multiple individual defendants in a single lawsuit and subpoenas ISPs to identify its customers flagged for sharing copyrighted content."Those who are identified will get a letter demanding that they settle unless the outfit opts to conduct follow-up litigation.

The USCG's Thomas Dunlap, said they'll start by targeting folks who ripped the wildly successful action film 'The Expendables' and that plan of action certainly makes sense. The film made its way ontoTorrentFreak'schart of the most-pirated movies right when it was released in August and maintained a spot on that list for eight weeks. The lawsuit supposedly will involve thousands of the illegal downloaders who shared the film on BitTorrent last year.

But 'The Expendables' is only the start. After that film, USCG and Nu Image will move on to several additional lawsuits while USCG and Achte/Neunte continue their effort against the 'Far Cry' downloaders. Dunlap said they'll be suing some of the people dropped in that case next week in Boston followed by some in Colorado, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland and then in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Illinois.

As pleased as Dunlap is with the success of the USCG's efforts, there's still that class action lawsuit claiming the defendants of the original string of suits suffered"settlement fraud and extortion"to deal with as well as sanctions against attorney Graham Syfert who's busy selling form motions to demolish subpoena attempts. Then there's the question of whether or not this whole group suit thing is a financially appropriate tactic.

The USCG is certainly out for blood, but it should be interesting to see whether or not their wide span efforts could bring them more troubles and defendants.

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