Lionsgate has no names, but they are suing whoever leaked Sylvester Stallone’s third Expendables movie online three weeks before it comes out.
The film is due out on Aug. 15, but as we previously reported, the film hit the torrent community on Thursday. TorrentFreak said that the film was downloaded over 100,000 times in the first 24 hours. Another 100,000 grabbed the film on the second day.
It appears that someone leaked a DVD screener. It isn’t known where the torrent originated, but TorrentFreak reported that it was traced back to one particular group that works on several torrent sites.
This Thursday, Lionsgate filed a lawsuit in California against 10 John Does, notes The Hollywood Reporter. In its lawsuit, Lionsgate revealed that the file leaked on July 24 and the studio claims that it did trace the leak to the original stolen file. The specific sites targeted in the suit are limetorrents.com, billionuploads.com, hulfile.eu, played.to, swantshare.com anddotsemper.com.
Lionsgate says it sent multiple letters to each operator of the sites and they never responded.
So, in addition to seeking a restraining order to get the sites to stop hosting the Expendables 3 file, Lionsgate wants them to stop “induces, causes or materially contributes to” copyright infringement of the movie. The studio also wants the defendants to be kept from operating the sites further and be told to “take all steps necessary to recall and recover all copies of the Stolen Film or any portion thereof that they have distributed.”
image courtesy of INFphoto.com