Large-scale infringement lawsuits in the United States are mainly aimed at BT users, which is about to reach the point of suspicion. A total of 99,924 defendants have been prosecuted in the past 12 months, and the number of new cases filed is increasing rapidly. In particular, adult companies' tens of millions of dollars in payment benefit programs are at risk.
A large number of recent P2P lawsuits in the United States have mainly been brought by companies dealing with adult content. They included this new revenue stream by combining with a new production company.
Through these massive lawsuits, copyright holders sought to obtain the personal details of torrent users who shared their online files. Once this information is turned over, copyright holders often offer the opportunity for the defendant to settle the case for hundreds to thousands of dollars, avoiding a full trial and even greater financial penalties.
The U.S. judicial system is currently overloaded with these cases, but the scope of the problem has so far been unclear. An anonymous TorrentFreak reader spent several months creating a complete overview of all the large-scale P2P lawsuits filed in the U.S. starting in 2010.
The study shows that between January 8, 2010 and January 21, 2011, a total of 99,924 people were indicted. The vast majority of defendants are accused of using BT to share copyrighted works, but a small number of defendants also include users of ed2k.
Eighty of those cases were first-time lawsuits. 68 cases are still pending, with 70,914 accused still at risk.
While the Hurt Locker producers were among the first to file a lawsuit, it made no further sense, as the plan was blocked by copyright hooligans as well as adult film studios. Nearly all of the recent filings involve adult material, and the law firm has accepted the first adult cases after the American Copyright Group.
The massive lawsuit has received a lot of criticism from consumer rights groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and one of the main points of its criticism is that the copyright holders are not conducting a full trial of each defendant, they are trying to get a settlement, which means that there may be weak The evidence will not be proven in court.
Two weeks ago, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief asking an Illinois judge to drop a subpoena over pornographic file-sharing allegations.
Copyright owners have the right to protect their work, but they cannot do so through inferior and unfair means,” said Corynne McSherry, director of intellectual property at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We ask the courts to protect the rights of every defendant, not to let these copyrights Rogues play with the system. "
Information on large-scale P2P cases is accessible to the public via Google Spreadsheets, which will be updated regularly.
"I hope that the data available will facilitate discussions and be of value to people who are actively resisting or blocking lawsuits," said the anonymous person who created the spreadsheet.
While it's not easy to stop litigation, it's clear that these questionable plans would generate tens of thousands of dollars, considering the enormous wealth that could be generated by suing, multiplying the 100,000 defendants by the $1,000 settlement fee per case.