Judge: An IP Address Is NOT A Person
An Illinois District Judge has denied access to personal info tied to IP addresses in VPR Internationle's copyright infringement case against numerous "John Doe" torrent users.
The battle between copyright holders and BitTorrent users may have taken a sharp turn in favor of the alleged copyright infringers thanks to a recent ruling filed by Illinois District Judge Harold Baker. Friday he said that IP addresses do not equal persons, and thus prevented an adult film studio from accessing personal data tied to IP addresses.
In the case VPR Internationale v. Does 1-1017, Judge Baker denied adult film studio VPR Internationale the means to subpoena ISPs for personal information connected to IP addresses. His reason was based on the recent child porn incident where a man was wrongfully apprehended and accused of downloading child pornography when in fact it was his neighbor leeching from his unprotected Wi-Fi network at home.
Based on that incident, the unnamed copyright infringers accused in VPR Internationale's lawsuit may have had nothing to do with the alleged offense, but instead was "piggybacked" by the real offenders who possibly leeched from their unsecured Wi-Fi connections. "The infringer might be the subscriber, someone in the subscriber’s household, a visitor with her laptop, a neighbor, or someone parked on the street at any given moment,” Judge Baker wrote in his ruling last Friday.
The matter becomes even more delicate when it involves the sharing of adult films. "Orin Kerr, a professor at George Washington University Law School, noted that whether you’re guilty or not, you look like a suspect," he wrote. "Could expedited discovery be used to wrest quick settlements, even from people who have done nothing wrong? The embarrassment of public exposure might be too great, the legal system too daunting and expensive, for some [innocent victims] to ask whether the plaintiff VPR has competent evidence to prove its case."
The judge concluded his ruling stating that the court isn't going to support "fishing expeditions" for subscribers' details if there is no evidence that the court has jurisdiction over the defendants. "Until at least one person is served, the court lacks personal jurisdiction over anyone," he said. "The court has no jurisdiction over any of the Does at this time."
Baker's ruling could spell the end of "pay-up-or-else-schemes" that have previously nailed more than 100,000 U.S.-based BitTorrent users to the wall over the past year alone. It may also be the end of all future John Doe lawsuits if other judges reach the same conclusion in their file-sharing cases.
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Wow really we can click freely?
I suddenly had hope for the US Justice System! This has got to be one of the smarter rulings in recent years, Cheers!
Good to hear this news.
The judge is right im a computer tech with my own business i get dozens of people a week that are infected with a trojan proxy which can allow other users to download files using your ip most current av's don't pick them up due to the rootkit hiding them.
Finally someone has the balls to make this point......
just hire the guys who hacked sony if you want personal info.
you go, Baker! Show them the right way...
Sadly I do not see all courts doing this as well. You would have to be blind to not see the biased towards big business over the common man when it comes to American courts. In-fact in this certain case it may simply be because its the porn industry instead of a more powerful one. There has been no doubt cases of completely innocent people being sued by the RIAA or MPAA and winning without actually proving guilt and of course even the innocent cannot adequately defend themselves as they do not have the financial means to so settling despite being innocent is cheaper. It's obvious that they also do not care if they sue innocent people.
The laws and courts are simply not only biased but lenient on corporations as well. Take BP as a example. BP has more reported safety violations on record than every other oil company combined. The maximum amount they can be fined for such is $100,000 which is often cheaper to pay than to actually fix the problem so they pay the fine and never fix the risk.
The BP oil disaster devastated the ecosystem, the economies that relied on the area, and killed 11 people. All because of the known neglect of safety that BP is known for.
Just looking at the deaths alone that is at-least 11 counts of manslaughter or perhaps more fitting negligent homicide. BP executives made the choices to ignore known problems yet not one is jailed. Yet under any conditions if this was a common individuals action that lead to the death of 11 people they likely would never leave prison alive.
Its our duty to make sure the law remains fair, just, and uncorrupted. It's our duty to elect the right people for the jobs to make those laws therefor it is our fault that things have become this way. You have the power to stop this.
With that I get off my soap-box.
sweet justice!!!!
I am not a number, I am a free man. - The Prisoner
The RIAA's lawyers just went limp.
That's not right, an IP address represents you like a name. Lets hope a higher court corrects this.
[citation][nom]NuclearShadow[/nom]Sadly I do not see all courts doing this as well. You would have to be blind to not see the biased towards big business over the common man when it comes to American courts. [/quote]
Apparently I'm blind. Courts tend to be more biased towards the "common man." The laws may be biased against the common man at times, so a court impartially applying the law may appear that way, but if you complain about it, you really don't understand how our system works, or the fact that the court would be in the wrong to change that. If you don't like it, appeal to congress.
Typically, you do not need to "prove" anything in tort. Only preponderance of the evidence.
and of course even the innocent cannot adequately defend themselves as they do not have the financial means to so settling despite being innocent is cheaper. It's obvious that they also do not care if they sue innocent people.
This statement has no meaning. The laws and the courts are two very different things. I agree, sometimes the laws are biased towards corporations, sometimes they are not. Courts usually are biased against them.
Take BP as a example. BP has more reported safety violations on record than every other oil company combined. The maximum amount they can be fined for such is $100,000 which is often cheaper to pay than to actually fix the problem so they pay the fine and never fix the risk. The BP oil disaster devastated the ecosystem, the economies that relied on the area, and killed 11 people. All because of the known neglect of safety that BP is known for. Just looking at the deaths alone that is at-least 11 counts of manslaughter or perhaps more fitting negligent homicide. BP executives made the choices to ignore known problems yet not one is jailed. Yet under any conditions if this was a common individuals action that lead to the death of 11 people they likely would never leave prison alive.Its our duty to make sure the law remains fair, just, and uncorrupted. It's our duty to elect the right people for the jobs to make those laws therefor it is our fault that things have become this way. You have the power to stop this.With that I get off my soap-box.
This is pretty much pure bullcrap and demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of the law. Neglecting maintainable is typically the textbook case of civil negligence, you need criminal negligence to rise to the level of manslaughter. This sort of thing almost never makes it there.
Thanks for reading.
-B
The people that are going after torrent sharing are LAZY....
While it is EASY to go after some pimple faced college boy who's downloading the latest screener off of TPB, it's HARD to go after the person who put the stuff on the torrent sites in the first place!
Which is who they really need to go after......
This is actually a fairly smart choice. I agree with the courts on this one... I don't even download stuff illegally.
Well, good then! Anyway many people that hack games and movies end up legally buying them in the end.
That's not right, an IP address represents you like a name. Lets hope a higher court corrects this.
This is not true, as was stated in the article:
[citation[nom]Article[/nom]"The infringer might be the subscriber, someone in the subscriber’s household, a visitor with her laptop, a neighbor, or someone parked on the street at any given moment,” Judge Baker wrote in his ruling last Friday.[/citation]Add in the fact that many ISP's give standard residential customers Dynamic IPs, meaning that today you might have 123.45.67.89, but tomorrow you'll have 200.30.40.50, and someone else totally unrelated now has 123.45.67.89.
I think this ruling is fair. In order to pin someone as the culprit you need more than just an IP. MAC address would be a good start, as that should be unique.
What I find most disturbing is these corporations will break the law, in an attempt to show someone is breaking the law ( sharing files ) and most people think thats ok.
That's not right, an IP address represents you like a name. Lets hope a higher court corrects this.
This is not true, as was stated in the article:
"The infringer might be the subscriber, someone in the subscriber’s household, a visitor with her laptop, a neighbor, or someone parked on the street at any given moment,” Judge Baker wrote in his ruling last Friday.
Add in the fact that many ISP's give standard residential customers Dynamic IPs, meaning that today you might have 123.45.67.89, but tomorrow you'll have 200.30.40.50, and someone else totally unrelated now has 123.45.67.89.
I think this ruling is fair. In order to pin someone as the culprit you need more than just an IP. MAC address would be a good start, as that should be unique.
why can't Tom's deal with this spam? It's ridiculous.
That's not right, an IP address represents you like a name. Lets hope a higher court corrects this.
Riiiiiiight, because it is impossible to steal someone else's internet and use their IP address.......
why can't Tom's deal with this spam? It's ridiculous.
And they are probably sending that spam with someone else's IP address lol
This is not true, as was stated in the article:[citation[nom]Article[/nom]"The infringer might be the subscriber, someone in the subscriber’s household, a visitor with her laptop, a neighbor, or someone parked on the street at any given moment,” Judge Baker wrote in his ruling last Friday.
Add in the fact that many ISP's give standard residential customers Dynamic IPs, meaning that today you might have 123.45.67.89, but tomorrow you'll have 200.30.40.50, and someone else totally unrelated now has 123.45.67.89.I think this ruling is fair. In order to pin someone as the culprit you need more than just an IP. MAC address would be a good start, as that should be unique.[/citation]
MAC should be unique per NIC in theory but this is only visible to the next hop. In NAT that means anything behind the router is will only be visible to the router. This means we have no more but actually less information then an IP because all history MAC address history is lost. Again, a MAC != person. Multiple people using one computer, a hacked computer, etc are all examples against this.
Just a thought, what about IPv6 comin very soon, doesn't that give every network device it's own IP address even in your own network eventually, so it will tell exactly which device download the file?
I'm happy the case got a judge who understand the technology involved and how it works and came up to the right conclusion. Pirates sure is a thorn in the side of the gaming/movie/music industry and needs to be checked.
But not with methods that looks like the 1400 "witch hunts" where woman who were suspected of witchcraft were dumped in lakes. If they were floating their were guilty of witch crafting and if they drowned they were innocent - What a nice "trial". May be that is what Mpaa/Riaa wants to get back to... making the inquisition days look like "the good ol'days".
Innocent until proven otherwise - Not the other way around!
About time this landmark ruling has happened. Yes, this ruling is nothing short of a major landmark. If this had came 5-6 years earlier, we could have stopped the RIAA/MPAA from ruining thousands of lives with mere allegations.
That's not right, an IP address represents you like a name. Lets hope a higher court corrects this.
Did you even read the article?
Does your house personally represent you even if 5 people live there?
How about if the IP address points to an office where there are 1000 people working?
Grow up.
Great.
But too bad MAFIAA won't let it stay like that, appeals coming soon.
That's not right, an IP address represents you like a name. Lets hope a higher court corrects this.
Let's hope that you shut up
This just goes to show that anyone convicted of proxying and leeching without the network owner's consent should get lots and lots of jail time. Potentially their getting the victim into further diffculty.
Lock up the leechers.
That's not right, an IP address represents you like a name. Lets hope a higher court corrects this.
To all who responded to this. Please don't feed the trolls.