Illegal File Sharing or Streaming of Movies, Videos & Film Clips online can have serious financial consequences!

Introduction

Here is a list of certain movies which MIGHT have special code attached to track it on peer to peer file sharing websites such as the Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, ExtraTorrent, RARBG, 1337x, EZTV.ag, Torrentz and other websites using file-sharing clients such as Bitttorent, uTorrent, Vuze, BitTornado and others.  It would also be a potential legal problem to “live stream” these movies on Facebook or Youtube or other sites that allow streaming video.

This list is not 100% guaranteed accurate so this is just general information only.  As always, it is illegal to download and share movies without paying for it so this general caution should apply to ALL online downloading of entertainment, whether music or videos.

1. American Heist
2. About Alex
3. A Many Splintered Thing
4. A Haunted House
5. Avengers
6. 2Guns
7. Assassin
8. Automata
9. Before I Go to Sleep
10. Behaving Badly
11. By The Gun
12. Careful What You Wish For
13. Chalie Countryman
14. Convict
15. Cymbeline
16. Dallas Buyers Club
17. Don Jon
18. Dumb and Dumber
19. Exists
20. Expendables 2 (Back for War)
21. Extraterrestrial
22. Flava Works adult movies
23. Frank
24. Game of Thrones
25. Goodkill
26. Happy Christmas
27. Hercules
28. Homefront
29. Julia
30. Kidapping Mr. Heineken
31. Kill Me Three Times
32. London Has Fallen
33. Left Behind
34. Lone Survivor
36. Northmen
37. Nymphomaniac
38. Olympus has Fallen
39. Our Idiot Brother
40. Predestination
41. Reasonable Doubt
42. Sabotage
43. Sanitarium
44. Skin Traffik
45. Slipknot
46. Spring Breakers
47. Stonehearst Asylum
48. Stranded
49. The Big Wedding
50. The Cobbler
51. The Culling
52. The Dissapearance of Eleanor Righby
53. The Double
54. The Expendables
55. The Humbling
56. The Longest Week
57. The Lookalike
58. The Mechanic
59. The Mule
60. The Nut Job
61. The Prince
62. The Salvation
63. The Taking
64. The Twilight Breaking Dawn
65. The Walking Dead
66. The Wolf of Wall Street
67.  The Zero Theorem
68. Tokarev
69. Vampire Academy
70. Whiplash
71. Yellowbird

What is illegal?

Generally speaking, you can expect to get a “cease and desist letter” or “copyright infringement notice” or a “DMCA notice” if you illegally download and/or share this videos without paying the proper fee.  Also, for allowing others to download the movie off your computer by using p2P “file sharing software” that allows peers in a “swarm” to efficiently download and share these movies or others.  Keep in mind, movies are protected by copyright laws.  Also, illegally “streaming” these videos to any of your social media websites, such as facebook, twitter, or youtube for example can lead to serious infringement penalties.  It is generally against the law to reproduce, distribute, publicly display or publicly perform the copyrighted works of another unless you have consent, or a license to do so.  We have discussed on another blog who parents COULD POTENTIALLY be held liable for the infringing acts of their kids.  This could lead to claims of willful copyright infringement that could be costly at a maximum statutory penalty of $150,000 PER INFRINGED WORK or TITLE OF MOVIE.  So educate your kids and BE CAREFUL.  Make sure you know what they are up to.  That is the job of a parent.

Keep in mind, movies, films, and videos are only one type of media that could be shared, expensive software such as those from Microsoft, Adobe, Siemens and Autodesk could also be downloaded and used illegally.  These lead to software audit demand letters from the software alliance, SIIA, or directly from a law firm that represents software publishers.

What is the Bittorent Protocal?

Many people are not aware how the torrent file sharing technology works.  Here is an explanation from a Malibu Media case in California federal court

The BitTorrent protocol allows users to transfer files over the Internet. Like other file-sharing technology, BitTorrent may be used to legally upload or download computer files—and it may also be used to pirate copyrighted software, movies, music, and anything else that may exist on computer-readable media. But unlike other file-sharing technology, where users connect to each other or to a central repository to transfer files, files shared via BitTorrent exist in a swarm, with pieces of the whole file distributed among the users.  The following example illustrates this technology: • The original user posts a 100MB movie file on a BitTorrent tracker website. The file exists only on that user's computer—the file is not uploaded to the tracker website; • Other users discover this movie file through the tracker website and log onto the BitTorrent swarm to download this file; • On the original user's computer, BitTorrent software divides the 1 00MB movie file into 10,000 pieces, each representing a 10kB chunk; • As downloaders log onto the BitTorrent swarm, these 10kB pieces are randomly distributed—the first piece to the first downloader, the fifth piece to the second downloader, etc.; • After the initial pieces are transferred, additional pieces are randomly transferred to the downloaders—the first downloader may now have the first and 500th pieces; the second downloader may now have the second and 900th pieces, etc.; • Once sufficient pieces have been distributed to downloaders in the swarm, the BitTorrent protocol will automatically transfer pieces between downloaders—the first downloader may receive the 900th piece from the second downloader, the second downloader may receive the first piece from the first downloader, etc.; • The BitTorrent swarm becomes larger as more users log on and more pieces are distributed; • Once every piece of the original file has been uploaded to the collective swarm, the original uploader may log off—the entire movie exists in pieces in the swarm; • When a downloader has received all 10,000 pieces of the 100MB movie file, his BitTorrent software reassembles the pieces to reconstruct the original file on his computer; • These completed downloaders may then log off, or may remain online to continue seeding the pieces of the file to other downloaders. There are several nuances about the BitTorrent protocol. First, every participant may upload and download pieces of the file. Second, these individual pieces are useless until a user has all of them; the user cannot reassemble the original file with even 99% of the pieces. Third, a user may log on and download just one piece (e.g., a 10kb piece) of the file and then log off, waiting to download the other pieces later or discarding the downloaded piece. Fourth, a user may restrict his BitTorrent software to only download pieces, and not upload. When Malibu discovered that its film was being pirated via BitTorrent, it hired IPP, Limited to investigate. IPP logged onto the BitTorrent swarm for the film and downloaded various pieces of the movie file from the Defendants.  These pieces, when reassembled with other pieces, result in the copyrighted film. By this investigation, IPP discovered the IP addresses of the 10 Doe Defendants, along with the date and time of the alleged infringing activity. See Malibu Media, LLC v. John Does 1 through 10, No. 2:12-CV-3623-ODW, 2012 WL 5382304 (C.D. Cal. June 27, 2012).

Other helpful resources

1.  VIDEO:  Penalties for Copyright Infringement
2. VIDEO:  What is a software audit?
3. VIDEO: Should I just ignore the demand letter

NOTE:  Make sure to SUBSCRIBE to our helpful legal youtube channel to stay up to date with breaking legal information and videos to help keep you “smarter than your friends.”  Simply click on the RED “V” for Victory when the video pops up.

Contact an intellectual property law firm (Copyrights, Technology & Software cases)

Our firm handles copyright infringement cases from around the United States.  If you have received a audit demand letter, desist notice, DMCA takedown, or monetary demand letter from a software, music, photograph, literary or video company, give us a call. We can help you examine your legal rights and possible defenses in illegal download, posting, or sharing cases including Torrent Defense.  We offer low flat rate fees for most non-litigation cases, and we have significant federal court experience to back you up if the case goes to Court.  Most firms cannot offer this level of experience at the prices we charge.  We can help both individuals and businesses, Plaintiff's and Defendants.  Call (877) 276-5084.