"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

This was what was Camelot Distribution Group had probably decided to do while agonizing over how to squeeze legitimate bucks from a stable of B movies. After all, flicks such as Nude Nuns with Big Guns was expected to be more of a hit in stores rather than the box office.

But rather than fighting to keep its movie off the internet and away from the P2P community–sites called bit torrent trackers, Cameron has taken on another tack. Now the distribution company has obtained some 5,865 IP addresses of bit torrent users who downloaded the torrent file for the movie and wants to sue them. Apparently, if a portion of this number decides to pay up after receiving a letter from Camelot, the figures might outstrip sales expectations. Enough to build a new movie distribution model in fact.

If they succeed in court, Camelot stand to make up to $880 million from their impending litigation exercise. That's higher than the US gross of Avatar, and higher than the international box office takes of the latest Harry Potter movie, The Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars Episode III.

The numbers are attractive but easier said than done and Camelot know this. They have IP addresses but they do not have names. This is why they have asked the US Federal court to issue an order compelling ISPs in the US to reveal the identities of subscribers to whom the IP addresses have been assigned. Getting names, enables Camelot to launch an exercise in coercion.

This was what the producers of The Hurt Locker tried last year in a 'pay or else' suit. But this proved to be of little effect. In the month following the announced lawsuits, downloaders went on to grab the film 200,000 time in the month of June 2010 alone and almost a quarter of these were US-based. As of this writing, torrents of The Hurt Locker is still available in the usual sites.

The practice of suing downloaders has emerged to be now part of the business model of Hollywood's fringe producers. Those who hang around the periphery of the glitz and glamour. The producers of porn and exploitation flicks which sometimes tend to be lumped together in that more respectable euphemism, the 'art' film. If Camelot succeed, they would have redefined the future of the movie business worldwide and how films might be distributed, possibly using the courts as what may well be collection agencies.

Perhaps suing 'pornheads' might prove more feasible than previous campaign of US music and movie copyright groups like the MPAA and the RIAA where they have incurred much public ire over their efforts and little else to show for it. It might have some effect as well especially on people who want their names kept off the limelight as porn aficionados. It is different when you sue, teenagers, housewives, and senior citizens. On that, gaining public sympathy is an uphill climb. But going for pornography fans does not make things technically easier.

First, getting ISPs to reveal the names of their subscribers would in itself be like puling digital teeth. Even the RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America have tried persuading ISPs to do this in the past to no avail. ISPs see it as a very easy way to lose subscribers, most of whom were obtained at no small expense. It can also be an extremely time consuming process on the ISPs part. For one, not all ISPs assign static or fixed addresses to each subscriber. Doing so would be an inefficient use of an extremely scarce resource since these address are probably still in the IPV4 address space.

Most ISPs use dynamic addressing-what gets assigned to a subscriber depends of when he gets on the network. Some ISPs - the really large ones, would even use distribution routers. Here, an IP address is assigned to a router so that a large number of subscribers can share the same address via an internal subsidiary address. Figuring out who is using which address at what time somewhere in the past, even the immediate past is not what an ISP is set up for.

But even if ISPs do cough up names and the lawsuits can start flying, there is the legal process to contend with and the sued only have to prove reasonable doubt. While it is possible to prove that a torrent file for a movie had been downloaded, this does not prove that the movie was actually downloaded.

Possession of a torrent file merely proves the capacity to download. Just as possession of a gun is not conclusive proof that someone shot someone. However, unlike a gun, where only one bullet would be needed to kill, torrent files enable a movie to be downloaded in pieces. Sometimes thousands of pieces. And each piece can be supplied by different computers located all over the world. Proving this is a complicated and expensive process with no guaranty of success.