Lionsgate studio claims that the sites in question failed to respond to takedown requests sent to them. Lionsgate is seeking a permanent injunction to stop further distribution of the film, as well as the seizure of their owners' domains and bank accounts.
Last week we saw the film leaked, while its official release was scheduled for August 15th in the US. The Expendables 3 movie leaked as a high-quality DVD two weeks before the official release. The timing and quality combine to make the leak one of the most controversial in recent years.
Although the film studios behind the film seemed to be rather quiet, they tried very hard to limit the damage. Lionsgate even sent takedown requests to several file-sharing websites. While most of the sites complied with the requests and removed the infringing links, some others did not respond.
In response to this apparent lack of cooperation, Lionsgate has sued six file-sharing sites – Limetorrents.com, Billionuploads.com, Hulkfile.eu, Played.to, Swankshare.com and Dotsemper.com. The complaint was filed in federal court in California and accuses the owners of the sites of “copyright infringement.”.
Surprisingly, Limetorrents is the only torrent site in the lawsuit, and Lionsgate points out that the Expendables movie was still prominently featured, and available, on the accused website when the complaint was filed.
