Last year, Voltage Pictures announced that it was planning to sue tens of thousands of Internet users who’d downloaded The Hurt Locker via BitTorrent, and 24,583 defendants were named when the production company filed its lawsuit several months ago. Unfortunately, things haven’t gone so well since then, and Voltage has voluntarily dropped more than 21,000 of those defendants while struggling to tie actual names to the remaining offenders, since the company only has IP addresses to go on and many Internet service providers have been less than forthcoming when it comes to handing over the names tied to those IPs. Still, Voltage had better hurry up: The company has only 120 days from the initial filing to serve papers to its defendants, and its inability to actually find those defendants has led the company to request an extension. [VentureBeat via MCN]