Judge Banning ''John Doe'' File-Sharing Lawsuits
Cases against a long list of John Does are dropping like flies thanks to the "an IP address is not a person" mentality.
On May 4, Illinois lawyer John Steele filed a case against numerous anonymous "John Doe" file-sharers on behalf of New York company Boy Racer, a "premier name within the alt-porn niche." As with many other bulk lawsuits filed by movie studios and record companies, the suit began with a long list of IP addresses recorded by said companies. And had it been approved for the next step, the court would have ordered ISPs to pull up the personal records of each address whether they actually downloaded the illegal files or not.
But two days after Steele submitted the lawsuit, it was dismissed by Judge Milton Shadur who said he didn't want to see any more "John Doe" cases in his court. "It would seem feasible for Steele and his client to pursue the normal path of suing an identifiable (and identified) defendant or defendants rather than a passel of 'Does,'" wrote Shadur. "Moreover, that practice would also facilitate the determination as to which defendant or defendants is or are amenable to suit here in Illinois."
The movie in question was called "L.A. Pink," but the lawsuit in its present state didn't provide any identified defendants. A previous ruling in an Illinois court already stated that an IP address is not equal to a person, that an 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." As with that case, Steele and Boy Racer couldn't move forward to retrieve personal info from ISPs without actually providing evidence that certain individuals committed the crime within the state of Illinois.
"Boy Racer is free to advance its copyright infringement claims against one or more identified defendants on an individual basis or, if appropriate, a plausible conspiracy theory," Judge Shadur stated. Like Illinois district Judge Harold Baker in VPR Internationale v. Does 1-1017, he wasn't going to support a fishing expedition for subscriber details if there is no evidence that the court has jurisdiction over the defendants.
The Boy Racer case was the second lawsuit Steele filed that was shot down by Judge Shadur. The file-sharing lawyer previously submitted a suit on behalf of Arizona porn producer CP Productions against 300 anonymous individuals who illegally shared the adult film "Cowgirl Creampie."
The case was dismissed twice -- the first time because Steele didn't serve all the alleged defendants within the mandatory 120 days. Steele blamed the ISPs for dragging their feet in providing the personal information based on the obtained IP addresses.
The case was then dismissed again when the judge started receiving "notions to quash" from anonymous defendants from Tennessee, Texas and even New Jersey. He ruled that CP Productions needed to head back to Arizona and file its lawsuit there "at the place of the party that's injured."
The change in heart for cases filed against anonymous file sharers seemingly began back in April when a Buffalo, New York man was wrongfully apprehended and accused of downloading child pornography. Rather than follow the trail of "Doldrem's" online activities, the feds instead used one specific IP address to supposedly track down 25-year-old college student John Luchetti. But the man they captured and interrogated wasn't Luchetti-- this was merely a neighbor who didn't secure his Wi-Fi home network with a password.
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At last, a bit of common sense in an american court!
Agreed, still don't expect any more for a long time, the system only gets better in very small increments (if at all).
Uh oh. I don't like the precedent this sends.
Go after the real pirates in this game: The groups that are releasing the material, not the college punks downloading a movie....
The precedent that common sense and rational argument can be effective in court? Yeah, don't want that catching on...
Great, IP addresses just became a powerful alias. Heres to thieves and criminals getting away with more crap.
Great, IP addresses just became a powerful alias. Heres to thieves and criminals getting away with more crap.
Don't worry, the police have other resources. This is just for lawsuits.
Do be hate'n. I know how all those people are having such a hard time getting by and all. (yeah, right!) Maybe if it did not cost like $15 for a movie ticket, $5 for popcorn, $4 for a drink and $4 a gallon for gas more people would just go see the movie in the theater.
judge must have saw his ip address
ABOUT TIME OMG
Go after the real pirates in this game: The groups that are releasing the material, not the college punks downloading a movie....
Nah. Go after Johnny Depp. He's a practicing pirate.
Doesn't make me happier to see this.
Do be hate'n. I know how all those people are having such a hard time getting by and all. (yeah, right!) Maybe if it did not cost like $15 for a movie ticket, $5 for popcorn, $4 for a drink and $4 a gallon for gas more people would just go see the movie in the theater.
They would go to the movies watch "Cowgirl Creampie"? Don´t make me laugh!
They would go to the movies watch "Cowgirl Creampie"? Don´t make me laugh!
i would
and for me the cost to drive to the nearest good theater costs more than going to a movie (about 18$ to drive there and back, about 11 $ to see the movie, i sneak my own food in)
i wouldand for me the cost to drive to the nearest good theater costs more than going to a movie (about 18$ to drive there and back, about 11 $ to see the movie, i sneak my own food in)
So you're a smuggler!
You know who else is a smuggler?
Han Solo
Therefore, smugglers are awesome. So are pirates. And so are ninjas.
Great, IP addresses just became a powerful alias. Heres to thieves and criminals getting away with more crap.
You make me ashamed of being human.
Hope this precedent sticks.
Disclaimer: I don't think downloading copyrighted material is good. Most people I know feel bad whenever they do it. However, the law as it stands right now is pretty stupid.
Companies/Government really just needs to focus on finding the people profiting off of others intellectual property. Companies can easily protect their material against a vast majority of "piracy" and common infringement by hiring some software engineers to work out licensing / limited copies / security protocols.
P2P sharing is like putting a lemonade in my refrigerator on a summer day with a note on the back of the container that says "Drinking this is illegal but we'll probably never know about it. You might have to pay for 1,000,000x the cost of this drink if you are caught in violation of this policy."
Anyone who is moderately competent with computers knows how easy it is to find anything on the internet. Forgetting the dumb analogy, I can accept that this is a moral grey area, but I really think companies should be at least responsible enough to TRY to protect their intellectual property. And if they don't even try, they shouldn't be complaining and suing the schmucks downloading the new Gaga album for 60$k a song.
$5 dolars for a gallon of ga thats quite cheap considering its £1.40 and upwards for a litre here in the uk. yeah have it easy
I agree with the decision. Due to the initial difficulty in determining who downloaded the file it would waste taxpayer money and possibly cause innocent people embarasment since many downloaders use other peoples network. Having said this you should still stay away from downloading illeagal material. If the authorities get physical possesion of your pc they can tell wher you''ve been.
Great... So all the Jammie Thomases (sp?) out there can go counter-sue. Same with all the college kids that settled out of court.
Time to bury the RIAA.
Poor man crying. He just lost his lawsuit and probably the suit he's wearing.
Do be hate'n. I know how all those people are having such a hard time getting by and all. (yeah, right!) Maybe if it did not cost like $15 for a movie ticket, $5 for popcorn, $4 for a drink and $4 a gallon for gas more people would just go see the movie in the theater.
$5 for popcorn? Where are you getting these deals? Here it's over $10 for the popcorn
@zachary k
and i guess if a thief stole your car and ran someone over you'll be more then happy serve time, after all you are the registered owner of the car it must have been you
An IP address is not equivalent to your identity.
A home address is not you.
Your license plate is not you.
Your home phone number is not you.
In absence of some corroborating evidence to put you in the right place at the right time with these things, they cannot be construed to be you! Anyone else can steal and drive my car, can pick up my home phone, can steal packages off my door step.
Your ACTUAL signature is you.
A fingerprint is you.
Your DNA is you.
These things can be traced back to you with a very small degree of error. If you sign for a registered letter, give a fingerprint for biometrics or during an arrest, or submit to DNA testing, later tests against these results will corroborate to you without needing further evidence.
Somehow, the dumb masses on the internet believe that your name/IP is your identity... that if it has your name you MUST have written it. I have been in forums that wanted to do away with "handles" so that people would not be anonymous... not realizing that ANYONE can fake a name and that would be as anonymous as any handle. People like zachary k are simply brain dead morons to believe that an IP address means anything other than a general location. It is not even a strong alias.
For all you people getting mad about this, you are obviously missing the point. There are lots of people who have unsecured routers, malware installed on their computers, or tech savvy grandkids....just to name a few situations. IP addresses are nothing more than numbers. In US law, you have to prove that the person committed the crime, not a number. It's not like a social security number where (barring ID theft) it is really only tied to one person. I could be sitting outside using your router. I could be using your computer as a proxy. Or maybe...just maybe, you are the one pirating all the music. The problem is, there's really no way to tell simply by an IP address. That means there's no reasonable cause to subpoena personal information. Would you really want to be sued, spend tons of money defending yourself, have your name drug through the mud, and possibly end up paying a penalty for a crime that I committed???? This is a win for privacy and a win for civil rights. And don't go QQ about how only stupid ppl get hacked. Even the best IT pros can get hacked.
For all you people getting mad about this, you are obviously missing the point. There are lots of people who have unsecured routers, malware installed on their computers, or tech savvy grandkids....just to name a few situations. IP addresses are nothing more than numbers. In US law, you have to prove that the person committed the crime, not a number. It's not like a social security number where (barring ID theft) it is really only tied to one person. I could be sitting outside using your router. I could be using your computer as a proxy. Or maybe...just maybe, you are the one pirating all the music. The problem is, there's really no way to tell simply by an IP address. That means there's no reasonable cause to subpoena personal information. Would you really want to be sued, spend tons of money defending yourself, have your name drug through the mud, and possibly end up paying a penalty for a crime that I committed???? This is a win for privacy and a win for civil rights. And don't go QQ about how only stupid ppl get hacked. Even the best IT pros can get hacked.
Nice post. This is the most intelligent comment I've read on the internet in ages. Maybe there's hope for the human race.
Nice post. This is the most intelligent comment I've read on the internet in ages. Maybe there's hope for the human race.
Thank you
If a group were to kill all of the politicians, lawyers and judges in the united states (please god!)
I would protect Mr. Steele with my life as he is the only judge that has read the constitution of the united states of america and the only person I have heard of that has earned the title of judge instead of being some corporate shill he is truly protecting the citizens of this great country and should be honored as our greatest benefactor in the sorry history of our country.
LOL hypothetical - "what are you in for?" "me? I murdered 15 children and then raped their corpses, how about you?" "Oh me? I downloaded Cowgirl Creampie off of the internet, jacked off to it and then deleted it because it was pretty lousy and I couldn't pay the rediculous fine imposed on me by my own government." It seems corporations have all the rights that a citizen does but citizens have no rights when it comes to the whims of corporations. NUKE HOLLYWOOD or at least boycott it. Garbage movies are certainly not worth giving up your rights for.
I guess just like everything else these days media corporations will have to be regulated and closely monitored. No longer will american citizens have to pay 15$ for a good movie and also have to pay 15$ to see a shitty movie. popcorn and fountain soda prices will be capped and actors/actresses(prostitutes) pay will also be capped much like baseball. IMO its time to start bombing sports arenas and jewvie theaters(synagogues). How has entertainment come to the point that the corporations that shit this stuff out make more money then some countries??? Where is the regulation? Where is the accountibility??? It is long past due for a boycott on hollywood and their san fernando valley pervert cousins don't let corporations that only produce a useless timewasting vice take away your rights and essentially neuter the internet before it has even matured.
I guess just like everything else these days media corporations will have to be regulated and closely monitored. No longer will american citizens have to pay 15$ for a good movie and also have to pay 15$ to see a shitty movie. popcorn and fountain soda prices will be capped and actors/actresses(prostitutes) pay will also be capped much like baseball.
Baseball has no salary cap...