Israeli Amiel Elbar is one of ten people around the world who Lionsgate Studios is trying to sue for having allegedly uploaded copies of its movie “Expendables 3” to the Internet last year, the Hollywood Reporter has revealed. A DVD quality copy of the third installment of the Sylvester Stallone series was famously stolen and released by someone.
The posting of pirated copyrighted materials such as movies and television shows with the aid of a program called Bit Torrent has been going on for years. Usually movies are not available until their DVDs come out. Otherwise only poor quality copies made by someone who videotaped a film while sitting in a movie theater are available for illegal downloading.
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But before “Expendables 3” even came out a DVD quality copy of the film was made available on line and was downloaded millions of times. The movie bombed at the box office. While this may have happened anyway the leak of the film certainly did not help.
Lionsgate said that the ten people were asked specifically not to upload copies of the movie and warned that they would be sued. Previously known as Jon Does 1 to ten, they include Elbar, who operates a site called “billionuploads, ” Egyptian Ahmed Saleh, Pakistani Muhammad Javed Ashraf and Spain’s Tom Messchendorp.
Expendables 3 only made $39 million, less than half of its predecessor.
