DRM News

The legal process has begun churning forward as the suit against as many as 50,000 alleged downloaders of The Hurt Locker begins moving.

This week, thousands of people received settlement offers from Dunlap Grubb & Weaver, the legal firm working on behalf of Voltage Pictures in bringing this litigation forward. Dunlap Grubb & Weaver is offering to settle out of court with any and all individuals at once for $1,500 apiece, $2,500 if they wait.

With many people confused about what this means or what their rights are, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has offered their help in getting legal aid to those who need it. As well, an Arizona law firm called White Berberian has indicated on their web site that they are interested in defending those accused of file sharing as well. From their site :

Thousands of people throughout the United States have received a letter from their Internet Service Provider (ISP) concerning a subpoena or a demand letter from the legal firm of Dunlap Grubb & Weaver (Thomas Dunlap or US Copyright Group) concerning copyright infringement of one or more movies. If you have received one of these letters, it is important for you to consult with an attorney regarding your rights and risk exposure in connection with this matter.

White Berberian Negotiations Group invites you to engage our services so that you may resolve this issue quickly and with minimal expense. We will represent you in an effort to negotiate a reduced settlement in this matter and will do so at minimal expense.

Dunlap Grubb & Weaver have run in to several speed bumps during the early stages of this, and other, movie download lawsuits. Many ISP’s have stated that the number of IP address searches the law firm is asking for is unreasonable. Specifically, Time Warner has refused to co-operate without court order, citing the costs associated with these investigations as a primary reason for their reluctance. Dunlap Grubb & Weaver (under their other guise US Copyright Group) fired back, stating that Time Warner are a good ISP for copyright infringers.

More recently, Federal judge Rosemary Collyer has demanded that the lawyers prosecuting these cases explain why assembling 4,577 people in to a single lawsuit is a proper use of the court system. According to an EFF & ACLU filing as a friend of the court :

"Plaintiff’s joinder of more than 4,500 defendants in a single action is improper and runs the tremendous risk of creating unfairness and denying individual justice to the suit," they wrote. "Mass joinder of individuals has been disapproved by federal courts in both the RIAA cases and elsewhere."

She has stated that if a proper explanation is not given in two weeks, she will sever the lawsuits. That will force the movie producers and US Copyright Group to file separate suits against each accused downloader on a singular basis, with all of the associated filing and court fees for doing so.