Anybody here been sued?
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Taking a page from the recording industry's playbook, major Hollywood movie studios on Tuesday filed their first wave of lawsuits against people who shared free copies of movies over the Internet.

But while the recording industry targeted people who offered hundreds of songs for others to download, the powerful Motion Picture Association of America said it will pursue people who share even one movie.

"We need to nip this thing in the bud,'' said John Malcolm, the association's director of worldwide anti-piracy operations. One copy, he added, "could easily become tens of thousands of copies available around the world. We do not believe that any amount of illegal use is sanctioned.''

Earlier this month, the movie studios announced plans to sue individuals using file-sharing networks like Kazaa to swap movies.

Malcolm said lawsuits were filed in courts throughout the country as a small part of an anti-piracy strategy that snared 52 million illegal DVDs in 32,000 raids in 60 countries around the world last year.

The first wave of suits involves about 200 people, according to press reports. However, the group that represents major U.S. studios decided not to publicize the exact number of people it sued Tuesday.

The suits were filed against unnamed defendants, identified only by their Internet protocol addresses. The studios will ask Internet service providers to reveal specific subscriber names and contact information.

One suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco names 12 Does, including those with addresses that trace back to SBC's Internet locations in San Francisco, Pleasanton, San Diego, Monterey, Sacramento and Fresno.

The suits claim that snapshots of individual file-sharing lists taken in September or October included movies such as "Troy,'' "Spider-Man 2,'' "White Chicks'' and "The Manchurian Candidate.'' The suits name seven people who only shared one movie.

The Associated Press reported that another suit was filed in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, naming 18 people.

Wendy Seltzer, staff attorney at San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Hollywood's strategy of deterrence will only alienate movie fans. "People are going to theaters, renting movies and buying movies on DVD in record numbers,'' she said. "They haven't showed they need to do this. They haven't learned from the record labels' suits that they don't work anyhow.''

nope

Not gonna happen in Canada.

I'm in Socal but SBC is not my provider thank god.

Can anyone tell me what happens in a situatuion like this?

Do they just come knocking at the door, or do they send you postal mail with their calims against you?

You might get mounted by a mountie though, if push comes to shove

Only if you look like a horse. Of course, they're harder to spot since they sold the red serge to Disney.

If I'm downloading anything Hollywood has put out recently, I deserve to get caught. But since you couldn't pay me to, I'm good.

Agreed. Anyone with bad enough taste to actually want the movies they are prosecuting for doesn't deserve to be an Emule person anyway.

BayTSP goes after very cryptic obscure movies too, so they don't all go after screeners.

How protected am I using Peer Guardian, and how do I know if it's actually working?

is the usa guys that are gonna be sued in the first place, the rest of the world can just lay back and chill...

I'm not going to repeat myself again on this issue, I will say in terms of protection your practically naked.

Read: not at all.

all this stuff you guys are using dont help, if they want to find your ip they find it , and if you think peer guardian or other appz are gonna help becouse you block their ip, it will not.... they just get a new ip... if you want to be safe unplugg your internett connection...

Works for most virii and spyware, too.

i use mcafee and firefox no spyware or virii's here either...

Hopefully will have a local proxy to use.

Cross my fingures.=)

Yeah, I use Mcaffee Virusscan Enterprise and Ad-Aware and my computer is clean.

I think the only protection against lawsuit is luck, and an interest in non-mainstream stuff.

I doubt you'll see Troma Studios suing P2P users, after all.