A massive lawsuit that covered over 24,000 people earlier this year that claimed they illegally downloaded an Academy Award-winning movie is entering a new phase this week. TorrentFreak reports that over 90 percent of the defendants involved in the lawsuit have been voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff Voltage Pictures. Last May the movie production company filed lawsuits against 24,583 people, claiming they had illegally downloaded a pirated copy of The Hurt Locker, which won the Best Picture Academy Award in 2010.
Even with this new legal action the lawsuit still covers 2,300 defendants and some of them have now been named by Voltage Pictures. Voltage claims it has been unable to serve papers for some of the defendants and has yet to identify the users of 2,278 IP address that are still a part of the lawsuit. This process has apparently been held up by Internet service providers who have yet to reveal that who is behind the IP addresses. This was apparently because of “motions purportedly filed by the Doe Defendants.”
A similar lawsuit was filed earlier this year against over 23,000 people who allegedly downloaded a pirated copy of the 2010 action movie The Expendables. That lawsuit was dismissed back in August. However, TorrentFreak reports this week that Nu Image, one of the studios involved in The Expendables lawsuit, is at it again. It is going after over 4,000 people who the studio claims illegally downloaded a copy of The Mechanic, the recent action film from The Expendables co-star Jason Statham.