Slashdot Mirror
Two Florida Judges Quash Copyright Fishing Lawsuits
Fluffeh writes with a piece of good news on the privacy front: "Two rulings in related cases this week have dealt a serious blow to the plaintiffs and their dodgy legal strategy. Ordinarily, copyright law is handled by the federal courts, but Florida plaintiffs have begun using an obscure provision of state law called a 'pure bill of discovery' to attempt to force ISPs to reveal the identity of suspected file-sharers. The rulings, one on Monday and one on Wednesday, saw two different judges siding with the objecting ISPs. 'These back-to-back rulings against the plaintiffs suggest that they're likely to lose any time ISPs raise objections to fishing expeditions against their customers.'"
Time Warner, Cablevision -- will they protect their customers from "fishing expeditions"? Will they conduct expeditions of their own?
Well, naturally, they're a business, and businesses exist to make money. This should not come as a surprise. It's basic math... if (money received) > (money spent + damage to customer relations) then they do it. If not, they fight it.
The bigger problem seems to be when an ISP decides to automate and streamline the process rather than fight for their customer rights. This alters the equation so that "money spent" is almost eliminated, and then they're faced with deciding "How much is it worth to sell out our customer's good will?" Since many ISPs have a monopoly in their area, bad P.R. doesn't count for much, and they do it, what are you going to do, go back to dialup? It's a new revenue stream, so why wouldn't they? They're looking at this as a new way to make money, like any good business would.
I like it more when they don't automate it so completely, and submit a bill for ~$35 for each customer on the list. And when the first list they get has 100,000 IP addresses on it, it hits the fan, and splatters around. But in many markets this is arguably the "high road, the road less traveled" not "the road to greater profit". So we don't see it much.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Teach a man to fish and he becomes an intellectual property attorney for Hollywood.
Have gnu, will travel.
Legal federal precedent has already established that the practice of filing "John Doe" lawsuits en masse in a single jurisdiction friendly to their interests is a violation of jurisdiction policy in that the plaintiff must file cases in separate jurisdictions where the defendent resides. This puts a financial burden on the MAFIAA as they now must pay court costs for each venue.
What this article highlights is that the MAFIAA are using state courts to evade the hurdles established by federal courts. They are twisting a state law out of the spirit of its original intention to expedite disclosure of true identities of "John Does". And once again they are attempting to pursue their case out of a single jurisdiction in direct contempt to federal legal precedent, even though the majority of ISPs named are outside the local jurisdiction. When certain ISPs opted to oppose their efforts, the MAFIAA merely removed the ISPs from their list rather than having their tactics exposed in a court of law.
These intentionally evasive tactics violated defendents' rights in the interest of minimizing legal expenses, expedited turnaround, and shielding lower courts from knowledge of case law. It is also a bullying tactic in that ISPs with weak spines had submitted when they were served with a subpeona obtained under shaky circumstances.
If this doesn't smell like a RICO lawsuit, I don't know what does.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10