One of the most high profile US Copyright Group lawsuits was for producers Nu Image, who made The Expendables movie, which ended up making over $100 million. For some reason, they thought that it would be a good strategy to then shake down a bunch of people who downloaded the movie. In fact, they sued an astounding 23,322 people. After first allowing such subpoenas to go out to identify who was behind those 23,322 IP addresses (though not necessarily behind any infringement), the judge realized that most of those people were not in the proper jurisdiction and dismissed 23,238 of the IPs from the lawsuit.

Now it appears that rather than go forward with the case against the remaining 84 IP addresses, the entire case has been dismissed voluntarily by Nu Image and USCG. That said, the dismissal is without prejudice, meaning that they can refile it. I'm wondering if they're working on another strategy to try to once again link up a lot more than 84 people. If, instead, Nu Image has realized that perhaps this isn't a smart strategy, that would be nice to hear... but until there's confirmation on that front, it seems likely that it's just looking for a more efficient way to sue its fans.

While many courts had pretty clearly rejected attempts by various mass lawsuit filing "anti-piracy" law firms to sue a ton of people in a single lawsuit, we were surprised and dismayed back in May to see one judge allow subpoenas to go out on all 23,322 IP addresses sued by US Copyright Group over file sharing on the movie The Expendables. Considering how many courts had challenged such bundling, it was truly surprising that this court allowed it. However, after making that initial ruling, the judge noted that "several issues... have recently come to light regarding this case," and changed his mind. He pointed to the serious jurisdictional questions, considering that most of those sued were probably not in the DC area and ordered USCG to show why the jurisdiction was proper.

Apparently it failed to do so. The judge has now said that the vast majority of the IP addresses in the lawsuit do not appear to originate from the DC area and thus should not be in the lawsuit. TorrentFreak calculates that 23,238 of the 23,322 IP addresses appear to originate from elsewhere. Nice to see another judge recognize the problems of such mass lawsuit filings with little basis, even if he came a little late to it.

We recently noted that a judge in one of the biggest mass copyright infringement lawsuits ever filed, representing 23,322 potential infringers of the movie The Expendables, had allowed the lawyers at US Copyright Group to issue subpoenas on those people in order to properly serve them with the lawsuit. However, it appears the judge is reconsidering -- perhaps because lots of people have since raised the point that these efforts often appear more like a shakedown than any legitimate lawsuit, and the judge has taken notice. After saying that "several issues... have recently come to light regarding this case", he goes on to berate US Copyright Group lawyers for failing to have served a single person out of the 23,322.

The judge also seems to have discovered (a bit late, but better late than never) the jurisdictional issue that most other judges who have been dealing with these cases have noted, in that the vast majority of those sued almost certainly do not live in the region of the DC district court, and this troubles the court:

The Court hereby ORDERS Plaintiff, if it intends to pursue the previously filed motion for expedited discovery, to show cause as to why venue and joinder is proper for all 23,322 putative defendants in this case. Alternatively, Plaintiff may seek leave to amend its complaint to name a certain subset of defendants and file a new motion for expedited discovery, addressing both legally and factually why venue and joinder is proper as to each defendant, and how Plaintiff intends to establish the same. In either case, Plaintiff shall submit a proposed discovery plan that: 1) sets forth a time certain for which it seeks to pursue non-party discovery on an expedited basis; and 2) outlines how Plaintiff intends to serve each defendant within 120 days of filing the amended complaint pursuant to Rule 4(m) or proposes any extensions Plaintiff may seek in order to effectuate service on all named defendants.

Read through the whole order. This is a judge who is not amused. This statement being the key one:

The Court finds it inappropriate and a waste of scarce judicial resources to allow and oversee discovery on claims or relating to defendants that cannot be prosecuted in this lawsuit.

It seems that more and more judges are beginning to recognize these cases for what they really are. Attempts to use the court system as a threat-based business model, rather than as a venue for resolving actual legal issues.

We've seen a good trend in the various mass file sharing lawsuits lately, with judges blocking so-called "fishing expeditions" by the various lawyers filing these things. The judges are properly recognizing that these lawsuits are more about scaring people into settling, rather than any sort of reasonable lawsuit. However, not all the judges feel that way, and apparently the judge handling the latest (and biggest) lawsuit from the US Copyright Group, representing the producers of The Expendables, has apparently allowed subpoenas to go out on 23,322 IP addresses, the largest single group of people sued in one of these lawsuits. It's really unfortunate that the judge didn't realize how improper it is to lump all these defendants together and didn't realize how this is really just a business model choice by the company, rather than a reasonable lawsuit.

As was widely expected, the producers of the big budget Hollywood movie, The Expendables have joined the coalition of the clueless with the producers of Hurt Locker in deciding to shakedown some of the movie's fans. Once again, using law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver under the name US Copyright Group (whose existing lawsuits of this nature haven't gone too well so far), a lawsuit lumping together 6,500 unnamed people accused of file sharing has been launched. As with the previous lawsuits, the intent here is just to suss out names attached to the IP addresses, at which point they'll be sent misleading and threatening letters, which suggest they pay up to have the lawsuits against them dropped. Of course, as with previous such lawsuits, I'm sure there will be a quick back and forth as someone points out that lumping all of these defendants into a single case is not proper, and it'll depend on whether or not the judge is reasonable to see if the case will actually move forward.

Still, it kind of makes you wonder what the producers of The Expendables are thinking. The studio, called Nu Image, is pretty much deciding to purposely piss off a large group of fans, just at a time when they're apparently working on a sequel. Nothing in this action will make any of those people more interested in paying money to see any more movies from Nu Image in the future. In fact, about the only thing it will do is give a large group of people an excuse not to pay to see Nu Image movies. And for what? To get a tiny group of folks who downloaded the movie to pay a few thousand dollars -- a large chunk of which just goes to the lawyers? That's not exactly a brilliant business strategy.

Most of the movie producers who have jumped onto the "pre-settlement" letter bandwagon, whereby they simply demand cash from people, who might have downloaded the film, in exchange for not suing them, have been either small time producers or porn producers. The one exception, so far, had been the producers of Hurt Locker, who suggested that anyone who suggested this move might backfire was naturally a "moron and a thief." Others in Hollywood had seemed to recognize that suing people, who downloaded your movie and demanding that they pay thousands of dollars to avoid a lawsuit, might lead to a serious backlash. But, apparently that's not true of everyone. The producers of the "let's get together a bunch of has-been actors and make a film" action flick, The Expendables, have apparently signed up to be the next big name movie to extort money from fans. Even though these types of threats and lawsuits haven't been shown to work all that well so far and often lead to a massive backlash among fans.

In related news, US Copyright Group is now insisting that it really, really (no really!) is planning to start suing people in a variety of different jurisdictions. They've promised this for a while, but there have been some doubts. I'm sure that some lawsuits will definitely be filed, but I'm guessing that the number won't be nearly as big as has been suggested in the past.