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If you are one of the many users who download movies illegally of the net via BitTorrent clients in the United States, you may be at risk of getting sued. There are reports that the US Copyright Group has filed over 20,000 lawsuits against torrent downloaders, and are planning to file yet another 30,000 suits. They are suing on behalf of independent film producers in Germany.
So how are they finding the perps? Guardaley IT, a German technology company has developed software to monitor real time peer-to-peer activity and can capture IP addresses via the time stamps. They can then match the downloads to a large database to determine whether they are download full length movies (illegal) or just trailers which are legal.
“The genesis of this legal campaign occurred in Germany when lawyers from the US Copyright Group were introduced to a new proprietary technology by German-based Guardaley IT that allows for real-time monitoring of movie downloads on torrents. According to Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer at the firm, the program captures IP addresses based on the time stamp that a download has occurred and then checks against a spreadsheet to make sure the downloading content is the copyright protected film and not a misnamed film or trailer.”
From past instances where companies tried to track down individuals for illegal downloading, many Internet users were wrongfully accused of downloading, but it seems this new system works pretty well according to the Open Copyright Group. They said they were impressed with the results of the program developed by Guardaley IT. So will the huge lawsuit benefit the industry or just cause fans to boycott the independent film producers in general?
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