The Hurt Locker was leaked on P2P and BiTorrent before the film was released in theaters. It only made $16 million dollars, but won six Oscars. The films early release spread throughout the Internet, and the low earnings is one of the main reasons Voltage and Copyright groups are filing suit’s. The lawsuit is expected to be filed later today.

Copyright groups have made it clear and have set examples that downloading movies without permission is illegal. They have made their name by suing thousands of P2P and torrent users to stop copyright infringements, and make the pirates pay for the stolen property.

They use a system called GuardaLey, which collects IP addresses of individuals that are suspected of downloading the film. The IP address figures out which Internet Service Provider (ISP) is responsible for the download, and then emails it, and asks the ISP to keep all records of the download time. When the download time has been figured out, lawyers work to obtain the individuals accused. The producers then send out settlements to each individual. According to statistics, almost everyone complies and pay’s up.