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An IP Address Does Not Point To a Person, Judge Rules

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-computer-is-broadcasting-a-person dept.

AffidavitDonda writes with this excerpt from Torrentfreak: "A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US may spell the end of the 'pay-up-or-else-schemes' that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person. Among other things, Judge Baker cited a recent child porn case where the US authorities raided the wrong people, because the real offenders were piggybacking on their Wi-Fi connections. Using this example, the judge claims that several of the defendants in VPR's case may have nothing to do with the alleged offense either. ... Baker concludes by saying that his Court is not supporting a 'fishing expedition' for subscribers' details if there is no evidence that it has jurisdiction over the defendants."

2 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Re:er this is a bit silly by Moryath · · Score: 5, Informative

    Surely the police raided the right people, the owners of the wireless device that facilitated the downloading

    Actually, it turned out the downloader had been downloading using half a dozen access points, and they eventually caught him by tracing back his login from where he had downloaded at a university through the U's secured wireless.

    So the raid was not just worthless, it was a waste of time and involved the needless trampling and horrific treatment of innocent people.

    In other words, whoever collected the "evidence" and authorized the raid were being a couple of lazy fuckasses, which we should never allow law enforcement to be, and which is why it's so important to enshrine into precedent that an IP address IS NOT A PERSON and should not be enough to authorize a raid.

  2. Re:An IP Address can be a person in some cases by wmshub · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ummm...no. You were able to tie an IP address to a MAC address. A MAC address does not equal a person. Especially in the case of a wifi router being the MAC address you found, you have no idea who might have actually been directing the offending internet traffic.