The movie studio has a long list of legal demands for the websites hosting the stolen movie.
Illegal downloading of Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables 3 is putting some websites in lots of legal trouble.
The high-quality leak sparked copyright issues with the movie’s production company Lionsgate. Now, it’s taking six websites to court for punitive damages. A federal investigation has also been opened, after Lionsgate called law-enforcement agencies to help locate the pirates, according to Deadline.
The movie studio claims that the movie hit more than a million downloads, since learning of its illegal upload online last week. It sent takedown requests to the file-sharing sites. M ost sites complied by taking down infringing links or copies, while some failed to respond. Lionsgate has accused those sites’ owners of direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement.
The studio has made a lengthy list of demands: it’s asking the court for a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, a permanent injunction to stop the sites from further distributing the film, and a request to suspend the sites’ domain names, or transfer them to Lionsgate. Each site could be forced to pay $150,000 in damages.
The company is doing all it can to protect this money-making franchise. According to court documents, the first two installments of the Expendables franchise have generated more than $575 million. This isn’t the first time the franchise has been targeted, either. Film studio Nu Image sued 23,322 internet users who illegally downloaded the first Expendables movie. The lawsuit was later dropped when a federal judge in Washington, D.C., questioned jurisdiction.
The identity of the individual who first uploaded Expendables 3 hasn’t been revealed. The action film is set to open in theaters on August 15.
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