The RIAA? Amateurs. Here's how you sue 14,000+ P2P users

Ars Technica
By Nate Anderson

The big music labels and movie studios have stepped back from the lawsuit business. The MPAA's abortive campaign against individual file-swappers ended years ago, while the RIAA's more widely publicized (and criticized) years-long campaign against P2P swappers ended over a year ago.

So why have P2P lawsuits against individuals spiked dramatically in 2010? It's all thanks to the US Copyright Group, a set of lawyers who have turned P2P prosecution into revenue generation in order to "SAVE CINEMA." The model couldn't be simpler: find an indie filmmaker; convince the production company to let you sue individual "John Does" for no charge; send out subpoenas to reveal each Doe's identity; demand that each person pay $1,500 to $2,500 to make the lawsuit go away; set up a website to accept checks and credit cards; split the revenue with the filmmaker.

The lawsuits are brought in Washington, DC's federal courthouse, and they all come from the same law firm: Leesburg, Virginia-based Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver. In half a year, the group has proved surprisingly active and has managed the rare feat of making the RIAA campaign look slow-moving and small-scale.

No one seems quite sure how large this new pool of lawsuits has become, so we scoured the DC federal docket to find out just how many of these cases were brought already in 2010, and have collected them below for convenience. With a major new case filed only a week ago, it's clear that this campaign is just ramping up.

As it does so, the cries of those who say they have been wrongly targeted will grow—but most people will probably just pay up.

January 2010

The Gray Man, 749 Does. Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver went after its first set of targets in January, bringing suit on behalf of Worldwide Film Entertainment against 749 anonymous individuals. The Gray Man tells the story of an aging grandfather with a secret: "in actuality, he is a child murderer who tortures and cannibalizes his victims." The film's tagline reads, "A real-life Hannibal Lecter."

Uncross the Stars, 195 Does. In the other case filed in January, G2 Productions brought suit against 83 Does over the film Uncross the Stars, a family-friendly flick starring Ron Pearlman (who also plays Hellboy) and Barbara Hershey. The plot involves a retirement community in Arizona, which may be why the National Senior Living Providers Network called the film "a rare treat...that makes the audience laugh and cry."

The Uncross the Stars suit is notable for bring the first time that Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver rolled out a strategy it would employ repeatedly over the following months: suing a few people first and then amending the complaint later to up the number significantly. Thus, while the case is headed "G2 PRODUCTIONS, LLC v. DOES 1-83," 195 Does are now targeted after an Amended Complaint was filed.

March 2010

Far Cry, 4,577 Does. (In)famous German director Uwe Boll, best known for a series of mediocre video game films, got in on the lawsuit action two months later. In the middle of March, Boll's production company Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteiligungs GmbH filed suit against 2,049 Does over illicit distribution of the movie Far Cry based on the FPS of the same name. A few weeks later, the complaint was amended and it upped the number of targeted Does to 4,577.

Call of the Wild, 1,062 Does. The 2009 3D adaptation of Jack London's "Call of the Wild" was independently funded by Call of the Wild LLC. The producers hitched themselves to the litigation dogsled, filing suit a day after the Far Cry case. While only 358 Does were targeted initially, that number jumped to 1,062 a few weeks later as more Does were added in the Amended Complaint.

As for the movie itself, Christopher Lloyd starred in it, and a Variety reviewgave the picture decent marks apart from its use of the 3D gimmick. "Too bad the animal's protruding nose is the only feature that demands the third dimension," the review concluded.

The Steam Experiment, 2,000 Does. A few days later, yet another suit hit the DC District Court. Production company West Bay One sued an even 2,000 Does over its film The Steam Experiment, also known as The Chaos Experiment. The film stars Val Kilmer. According to the Internet Movie Database plot summary, "A deranged scientist locks 6 people in a steam room and threatens to turn up the heat if the local paper doesn't publish his story about global warming."

April 2010

Smile Pretty (aka Nasty) and others, 1,000 Does. Maverick Entertainment Group makes a host of low-budget films that will never make it to your local cineplex, including Army of the Dead, Border Town 2009, Buds for Life, Demons at the Door, Holy Hustler, and Smile Pretty (aka Nasty). In mid-April, the company went after 1,000 Does for sharing one or more of these films over the Internet.

May 2010

The Hurt Locker, 5,000 Does. The most influential case was filed only recently. Thanks to its Oscar buzz, Voltage Pictures' The Hurt Locker is the best known of all films involved in these lawsuits. It's also the largest case to date, with 5,000 Does, and has attracted some significant publicity.

Adding it up
14,583 Does have now been sued in federal court, with lawyers from Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver handling each case. The number is extraordinary; even after years of lawsuits, the RIAA campaign against file-swapperstargeted 18,000 people

Between January and May of this year, indie filmmakers have been persuaded to go after almost the same number of people, with most of that volume coming in only three months.

Data source: Administrative Office of the Courts, Wired

The sheer volume suggests that these cases aren't designed for prosecution—and they don't need to be. As the RIAA lawsuits showed us, most people will settle. Data from the recording industry lawsuits, revealed in a court case, showed that 11,000 of the 18,000 Does settled immediately or had their cases dropped by the labels. Seven thousand either refused to settle or never responded to the settlement letter, but after the RIAA subpoenaed their identities and filed "named" lawsuits against them, nearly every one settled.

After years of litigation, the number of people who have pursued a trial all the way to a verdict can be counted on one hand.

The legal campaign has the potential to earn real money. Copies of the settlement letters and settlement contracts seen by Ars Technica show that Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver generally asks for $1,500 to $2,500, threatening to sue for $150,000 if no settlement payment is forthcoming. Assuming that 90 percent of the current targets settle for $1,500, this means that the lawyers, studios, and P2P detection company would split $19.7 million.

Once the infrastructure has been set up, this sort of system is simple to replicate, since it's built largely on sending out letters and collecting cash. If the lawyers can continue signing up indie film clients at the current rate, they could be on their way to filing nearly 30,000 lawsuits by year's end, which would double the potential cash on the table.