Since the beginning of 2010, more than 200,000 people have been sued for allegedly illegally downloading copyrighted files. TorrentFreak reports that a huge number of these people are BitTorrent users that have been targeted for allegedly pirating the 2009 Academy Award winning film The Hurt Locker.
According to TorrentFreak, U.S. courts have been “overloaded” with new cases, and the number of people currently targeted for piracy currently stands at 201,828. TorrentFreak pointed to a massive spreadsheet on Google Docs that breaks down who has been sued since the beginning of last year. The vast majority of those defendants are accused of illegally copping The Hurt Locker via BitTorrent, and 1,237 are accused of downloading it on the eD2K network. The copyright holders are trying to collect the personal details of the people accused of sharing the content online so that it can then force them to pay up.
However most of the cases aren’t going to trial; defendants are usually offered a settlement for anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, TorrentFreak says.
Around 60,000 cases have already been settled, but TorrentFreak says 145,417 defendants are still "at risk."
The largest portion of this group comprises those accused of downloading The Hurt Locker. As of May, Voltage Pictures, the makers of the film, had sued 24,583 BitTorrent users, in what could be the biggest file-sharing lawsuit of all time. That is, if any of the cases ever make it to trial. However, at this point none of the cases have made it that far, and TorrentFreak says the first round of settlement offers have been sent out to the alleged copyright infringers.
For more from Leslie, follow her on Twitter @LesHorn.
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