Heads up: If any of you have an insatiable need to see the 2012 Steven Segal, Steve Austin picture Maximum Conviction (and the enormous Stone Cold cookie jar on his desk leads me to believe our own Denis Theriault might be among your number), for the love of god get a legal copy.

Top-flight talent is not cheap, nor are compelling scripts. So it’s only logical the company that made the film—not unlike Seagal and Austin in the picture itself—isn't playing the fool on this one. Voltage Pictures in recent months has filed a barrage of lawsuits in Oregon federal courthouses (and elsewhere) targeting folks they suspect are getting their primo action for free through torrent applications.

At least one of those suits has been tossed, but Voltage is not dissuaded. In the last week or so, the company’s filed four fresh suits in the US District Court in Portland, three against as-yet unnamed defendants only identified by their IP address, one against a Portland bankruptcy attorney.

In Maximum Conviction, as best I can tell from the trailer, Seagal and Austin play a pair of hot-shot agents who must protect two comely criminals from—get this—the US government. It does not look like a "good" film, per se, but everyone has their areas of interest. And Voltage is no slouch. It made the Academy Award-winning Hurt Locker

The proposed damages for illegally watching a Steven Seagal/Steve Austin vehicle released in 2012? I'll write it out long-hand for effect: One hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

For a little context of how grossly overpriced that is, I just asked Denis (who, remember: Stone Cold Steve Austin cookie jar) how much he'd pay to see the film. His bewildered reply: "I don't know, like ten bucks? Whatever a movie costs."

And there you have it.