The US Copyright Group, also known as Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, is making good on its promise to put the hurt on P2P users. The law firm has begun leveraging the work of outside lawyers to file lawsuits in various states against users accused of illegally downloading movies like The Hurt Locker. It's the same tactic the US Copyright Group employed earlier this year when refiling its suits over Far Cry after originally filing massive Doe lawsuits in a single federal court.

The law firm first made headlines in early 2010 when it began outlining its plans to sue thousands of users for torrenting films—some of which had not even been released to the public yet. In June, the number of defendants grew to at least 14,000, all going through a federal court in Washington DC. The sheer volume of cases indicated that the US Copyright Group wasn't so much going for prosecution as it was settlements; after all, the RIAA has shown that most people will settle when faced with the possibility of a courtroom fight over copyright violations.

US Copyright Group was hit with a few setbacks with The Hurt Locker and Far Cry suits—notably jurisdiction issues thanks to filing so many lawsuits in a single venue. The group also temporarily turned its attention to porn in order to get in on the growing number of lawsuits in that genre, but has now returned to its original goal of going after independent film downloaders. In January of this year, the firm began refiling its suits over Far Cry in Minnesota and Illinois, and now has begun employing the same strategy for The Hurt Locker in Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota, and West Virginia, with plenty more on the way.

"Filing in Florida in about 10 minutes," Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver founder Thomas Dunlap told CNET. "I am driving to courthouse now, should have cases already in Illinois. We will file in California, Texas, Washington, and Oregon in the next two weeks."

Because the majority of the lawsuits are being filed against anonymous Internet users, the law firm has had to subpoena ISPs in order to try and discover their real identities. It looks like Ars isn't alone in getting questions from people confused by these lawsuits. A "half dozen" people also contacted CNET after having received notices from their ISPs about Dunlap. Not all of the lawsuits are against "Does," though—the firm has managed to dig up the names of a few accused downloaders and has filed suits against them in Virginia and West Virginia.

According to the complaint filed against West Virginia resident Linaka Stein, the firm is accusing her of using BitTorrent to download The Hurt Locker and then make copies available to other users on at least 17 separate occasions. In addition to an injunction, Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver wants statutory damages of between $30,000 and $150,000 per infringement, making the total damages somewhere between $510,000 to $2,550,000 if Stein is found to be willfully infringing.

A suit filed against Virginia resident Richard Ball makes similar accusations, but only asserts that Ball downloaded the film without making it available. Still, with such high potential damage awards, it's no wonder some defendants are scared into settling. After all, who wants to end up in the shoes of Jammie Thomas-Rasset?

Update: Ars readers have begun to e-mail about having received letters about Hurt Locker; one letter gave the user an option to pay $2,900 by March 11 in order to stay off the lawsuit, or $3,900 until March 25.