P2P defendants demand legal fees from Far Cry filmmaker
Lawyers for the US Copyright Group have sued more than 14,000 people in 2010, all of them in the federal courts of Washington, DC. Individuals have moved to quash the subpoenas that would expose their names, but these have been almost wholly rejected, in large part because they were written (sometimes by hand) by individual defendants making inappropriate arguments. But now, some defendants are fighting back in a much savvier way, with actual lawyers. And they want their pound of flesh from rightsholders.
The Far Cry case targets more than 4,000 "Doe" defendants alleged to have shared that particular Uwe Boll film using BitTorrent, and it's in that case that a major "Omnibus Motion" has now been filed. A group of defendants have hired several DC lawyers to file a joint motion demanding that the subpoenas in the case be quashed, that the defendants be dismissed from the litigation, and that Boll's production company cover their legal expenses (something probably not anticipated by Boll's firm, Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteilingungs GmbH, when it signed on with US Copyright Group to score some cash).
