The Dallas Buyers Club (DBC), which has received three Oscars and countless awards since 2013 and nominations, is one of the leaders of the pack for rights holders taking legal action against those who illegally acquire the film. DBC has notable cases in the United States, Singapore, and Australia. Similarly, a little-known 2012 film directed by Robert Redford based on the 2003 book, The Company You Keep (TYCK), is causing a sensation in the UK against piracy.
Both films have a history of going after violators since their respective releases joined the ranks of films like Expendables 3 (2014) and Hurt Locker (2008). Nicolas Chartier, closely associated with Voltage Pictures, has said regarding his series of lawsuits against infringers of his films: “The day after we announced 20,000 lawsuits, Internet downloads of Wounded closet down about 40 percent, “which is good news for businesses, as tracking down copyright infringers is a long and expensive process that often takes months, if not years, and costs many hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But tracking down copyright infringers can be a complicated process and is usually carried out by government agencies. The British Intellectual Property Office recently released the latest installment of the Online Copyright Infringement Tracking Survey to investigate online copyright infringement, attitudes and digital behaviors of people in the UK by the legal and illegal acquisition of copyrighted content. Such a comprehensive analysis of consumer trends covered the period from March to May 2015 and was compared with similar findings from the fourth wave of research from March to May 2013 to establish benchmarks for consumption. Survey participants were asked to describe their behavior within the three months prior to the survey.
Similarly, on the same day, an Australian study for the same period as the UK survey revealed that nearly half of all Australians acquire content by less than legal means. Ultimately, Australia illegally downloads more content than the UK, but both are at the forefront of revived legal action from movie rights holders like The Company You Keep and Dallas Buyers Club.
In recent weeks, letters from DBC LLC and TYCK LLC have been sent to Internet Service Provider (ISP) users who have illegally acquired content through services such as iiNet and Sky Broadband as ordered by judges. This summer marks the launch of a new educational program in Britain to raise awareness and combat piracy. The goal of the program is to influence future piracy figures for the Next Wave survey and help end digital piracy.