A friend of mine got a call about copyright infringement. The plaintiff alleges that a dirty movie was downloaded or transmitted by a program called bit torrent. They say that his IP address came up and he has 5 kids with computers on a wireless router. He does not know it it is true, but did find the program (bit torrent) on one of the kids computer.

He never got any ‘official’ mail or other communications other than a phone call wanting to settle out of court. Researching it I looked on the internet and discovered there is in fact a law suit in federal court and that the plaintiff makes low budget dirty movies then sues anyone who down loads them. It looks like legal extortion to me. He said the guy 'representing' this is Bill Higgins (HE is a dirty movie director too!)

Anyone else ever heard of this????
The guy is Patrick Collins Inc. Take a look at the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Collins_(film)

Currently (2011) Patrick Collins made a lawsuit against over 1000 people for downloading his film "Real Female &^%$*#8." As of right now his company sent settlements of $2500 to each accused, and is threatening to sue for willingful infringement up to $150,000 and up to $30,000 for unwillingful infringement if the settlement is not paid. This genius plan involves getting IP addresses of downloaders, and sending them settlement letters roughly at $2500 (some times $3400). Meaning that if over a thousand letters are sent, the study shows that 90% will pay right away. 2500 * 1000(.9) = 2.25 million USD is pretty much all profit, the only cost is the price to print and send that letter. As far for the remaining 10%, most likely they are not even taken to court due to a lack of evidence, only a small fraction with strong evidence end up in court, and they can be sued as much as $150,000. This tactic as seen is quite profitable, considering that an average adult film costs only about 30,000 USD to shoot. And the most expensive adult film of all time, Pirates XXX, costed under a million USD. Obviously Collins never even came close to a budget this high in his lifetime, yet he profits over 2 million USD from settlement letters and plus the sales of his adult films. Ironically, with this strategy, if one choses to shoot such a low budget film, and not sell any copies, one still will make a profit.