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Actually it's not a first. The key word you're looking for here is "severed", which is what the judge did for the joined plaintiffs. If you want to read more on this, here are some places to start: http://fightcopyrighttrolls.co... http://dietrolldie.com/?s=seve...

Basically, this has happened in the past, and while it changes the cost/benefit ratio it has done nothing to stop these trolls. Now they're starting to target people more discriminatingly. While that's better than the shotgun approach they've been taking, now they're suing one downloader for much higher sums, sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Enjoy some afternoon reading, and piss in Prenda's sought-after goods:

FightCopyrightTrolls.com

Dietrolldie.com

What should have happened was a motion for discovery be granted before the case was dismissed.

Based on what? An IP address? If all you have is an IP address, you don't have enough to go through a discovery motion is what the judge is telling them.

I would expect the burden of proof to be much higher than "we have an IP address" before they drag in all of his stuff and do discovery on it.

We know from past news coverage that their way of gathering this evidence cab be suspect and not always accurate.

There's no way someone should have all of their computers confiscated and examined based on a tenuous bit of evidence that hasn't been objectively evaluated.

Especially when the best they can say is something to the effect of "since your name is on the account, you're the most likely infringer".

A motion for discovery needs more evidence than "we say so", because it's expensive and disruptive for the defendant, and there hasn't been enough evidence presented to support it. Letting them do it on the thin evidence they've been using gives them the power to conduct fishing expeditions and go straight to the intimidation tactics.

Which is why this decision requires a court order before the personal information is handed over.

And once they have that information, they send you a letter that states "We have your IP that proves you did this crime and if you don't pay us $7000, we're going to take you to court where we will most certainly prove (as we have done before and are currently doing to others) that you stole this file and charge you $150,000."

The IP holders are hoping you settle, because the settlement cost they arrive at is less than it would cost to defend yourself. They also usually give you a ridiculous deadline to decide so you have no time to get the facts (In my case they gave me 3 days). The information should be handed over to a JUDGE, not the trolls, and the judge should proceed from there. There was recently a case where a porn troll was chastised for this behavior, and was forced to admit ISP subscribers are NOT defendents and are NOT party to the case until they are served, even though the settlement demanded states otherwise.

It can't be right that a source of infringement can go on just because you can't identify the one causing it.

Copyright trolls are not interested in protecting their copyrights and stopping infringement. They are interested in rent seeking, because it's much more lucrative than selling the works. The very fact that they are able to mine thousands of IP addresses relating to their infringed content is fact of this. Why do they allow the trackers to continue without DMCA takedowns? Why is their content available for download easily all over the web? They *want* you to download it and they want to catch you doing it, because $7000 from you once now is worth more than $30 a month for 230 months (almost 20 years) subscribing to their website. This gives them to leave torrent trackers and aggregators alone.