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

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 Perlman (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 review gave 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.”