It seems that the usually noisy business of taking on those accused of illegal downloading copyrighted content has quieted down, with reports indicating that anti-piracy litigation is taking a far quieter tack now.

Seems that a quiet anti-piracy campaign could do far better than the noisy ones...

According to an article from the Hollywood Reporter, the lawsuits were filed by the US Copyright Group, which is acting on the behalf of a number of independent film producers and ‘with the encouragement of the Independent Film & Television Alliance.’ The biggest difference here is that this doesn’t seem to be the usual noise and fury campaign to strike terror into the hearts of would-be illegal downloaders everywhere. Instead, the whole campaign seems to be proceeding fairly quietly, which might be better off, considering the fact that coverage of such cases generally tends to be a fairly negative affair.

It’s an interesting case though, and not just because of its uncharacteristic silence, but because of the fact that it’s making use of some fairly interesting technologies in its fight to cull piracy. According to the report from the Hollywood Reporter, the whole affair kicked off when lawyers got their hands on a technology that would allow them to monitor downloads from torrents in real time, making it relatively easy to track down users’ IP addresses… and from there you’re into litigation territory.

The move is a curious one, and it’ll be interesting to see just how much remuneration it seeks from pirates. Considering the fact that the Recording Industry Artists of America (more commonly known as the RIAA) ran into some seriously bad publicity, it seems likely that it won’t be quite as heavy-handed, but who’s to say for now.

Still, it’s hard not to note that the list of films that they’re current filing suit about includes Uwe Boll’s Far Cry, which we can say from personal experience ranks among the worst videogame-to-film transitions yet made. That said, being dreadful doesn’t make pirating it any more legal…