Slashdot Mirror
California Judge Denies Discovery In Bittorrent Case
New submitter PhxBeau writes with news of a particularly sane judge in a copyright case. Quoting TorrentFreak: "In yet another mass lawsuit against alleged file-sharers, a California court has said that while it's sympathetic towards the plight of the copyright holder, it will not assist in the identification of BitTorrent users. It's a shame technology that enables infringement has outpaced technology that prevents it, the judge wrote, but added that his court won't work with copyright holders who pursue settlement programs with no intention to litigate."
The core issue is that an IP does not identify more than the bill-payer — the good cause standard therefore is not met because the actual infringer is not identified.
his court won't work with copyright holders who pursue settlement programs
And this is how it should be.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
It sounds almost as if you're shilling for the plaintiff, defending their misfortune by using the worst of all arguments to criticize the judge's decision.
If you wanted to mass lawsuit and try for a settlement against terrorists, that would be banned as you can't declare the IP address identifies the user that did it. If, on the other hand, you want to get a search warrant to look for terrorist activities, the IP address is more than sufficient in giving probable cause for a search.
Or would you rather be sent to Guantanamo because your network was compromised and your IP address sent terrorist data?
Or maybe it's more about the double standards in legal systems? Do you honestly think the judge would make the same decision in such "more provocative" cases, even if the issue in hand is technically same in all?
We should extend it to cases like that, yes. Innocent people have had their lives ruined more than once due to accusations of child pornography because someone else was piggybacking on their connection. With the ubiquity of WiFi, more sophisiticated methods of determining who the culprit is are needed. The cops should not be allowed to conduct raids or make arrests based solely on an IP address.
good cause is a relative standard.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
The core issue is that an IP does not identify more than the bill payer -- the good cause standard therefore is not met because the actual infringer is not identified.
That would depend on the terms of service. If your broadband provider holds you responsible for the users you permit on to your connection, then a part of that responsibility would seem to be knowing who is using your connection and when. If the TOS allow you to give connections away to third parties anonymously (like the coffee shop I'm sitting in now does), then I'd agree with the above statement.
I wish they (the court) would have emphasized the denial based upon the use of the courts as an empty threat and/or means of discovery for the subsequent pursuit of a private settlement. In other words, once you approach the court to do your dirty work, you've got to use them to mediate the settlement*. If you want to settle privately, hire your own detective agency. P>*Which gets you reasonable and uniform penalties and makes settlements a matter of public record.
Have gnu, will travel.
Identifying the bill payer doesn't do anything other than give the RIAA/MPAA someone, who may or may not be a copyright infringer, to sue.
Look at it this way: If I download pirated material while using Starbucks's free wi-fi, Starbucks is the one who gets accused for copyright infringement..
One case is civil, the other is criminal. Hence the double standard.
should I go to jail and pay thousands of dollars because of it?
You don't need to go to jail AND pay thousands of dollars. It's enough if you just pay.
First of all, you wouldn't go to jail because this wasn't criminal copyright prosecution. This was a tort.
Second of all, if the judge HAD allowed discovery, then you would have been very inconvenienced, and then the discovery process would uncover that your friend downloaded the file. So you still wouldn't have paid a fine. But you would have been inconvenienced, and you probably would have paid a lawyer, and lost your computer for a while, and maybe a bunch of other stress.
This is a good decision based on the law, and also because it will save innocent people all that stress.
An IP number isn't even vaguely comparable to a license number. These IP numbers are taken from IP packets that could be written by anyone, anywhere. They are comparable to addresses on envelopes in the US Mail, except that there's no handwriting to analyze and no authoritative cancellation mark to identify the general location.
Anyone can write any IP number in the sender field on any IP packet and send it to any other IP number.
Even if you establish that a particular ISP has assigned a particular IP number for routing packets to a particular customer, you have no evidence that a packet marked with that IP number has anything to do with that customer, unless you can get much more stringent information from router logs and/or content that only that customer could have produced. I've never heard of any such evidence being presented.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
I'm pretty sure they would overlook that in an overtly criminal case CP or terrorism, probably by casting the bill payer as an "accomplice" of some sort who could have information about the crime. That would be enough to get the address from the ISP. Whether it would lead to a friendly chat or a SWAT team raid is the biggest unknown, but there's no way they would let a pesky little bit of precedent get in their way for something like that.
Except those would be criminal cases, not civil as is the case here, so the same legal standards would not apply.
To give an extreme example, if someone sent an image of your kidnapped daughter from a given IP address, you would sure as hell want the police to find out who owns that IP. So yes, they would deal with it differently, because an overtly criminal case is different.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
"more provocative" cases would have more evidence, the IP Address only opens a door for them to look at the person. Then they devote resources into gather real evidence.
I like this ruling very much, and it is a very important aspect that needs to be brought up, if this IP address could be someone else then they haven't identified the person at all.
The analogy I use for this is: "If you see someone whole stole something run into my back yard, am I then arrested and jailed with no other information?"
They have eye witnesses of an unknown individual who they know stole something go into my backyard. They are claiming to know who the individual is because they went into my back yard. Yet they didn't even look for match, they go after who ever the owner is. Never mind that the owner could also be a victim of that same individual (virus).
Look at it this way: If I download pirated material while using Starbucks's free wi-fi, Starbucks is the one who gets accused for copyright infringement.
Which is why the other part of the judgment is equally important: The court should not be locating the deep pockets just so that the plaintiff can take the settlement private. Once the court has been asked to participate, they should have the right to look at their own work product (the validity of an identity in this case) and block a subsequent private action based on it.
Have gnu, will travel.
In case I wasn't explicit enough: an IP number may be intended to indicate a particular "bill payer," but the presence of a particular "bill payer's" IP number on a packet is not evidence that the "bill payer" was in any way, directly or indirectly, associated with the creation of that packet.
And it's not clear at all from the reports whether the IP numbers in question were taken from packets supposed to have originated from that address, or from packets sent to that address. In the latter case, this is just like junk mail addressed to me---I do not take responsibility for it.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
Notice how he said that he wouldn't support it in pursuit of settlements with no intent to litigate.
That's not a double standard, if they intended to actually pursue these individuals with a real discovery phase where a warrant is obtained to search those individuals' computers to identify the real infringer, then it sounds like he would have found differently.
If criminal (not civil) activity is taking place, the bill payer can be a good first step toward identifying the perpetrator. Those individuals would also be afforded a court provided attorney so they don't end up hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole just to make a copyright troll go away.
I think the naysayers here are emphasizing the wrong point. According to the summary(cause no one RTFA) This judge wont assist the copyright holders who insist on settlement programs. These guys arent going after Joe Schmoe. They're stuffing mailboxes in Everytown, USA and hoping scared people just settle. Its a racket
good cause is a relative standard.
Thank you. The idea that we would compare copyright infringement with terrorism and CP (like the OP did) is just crazy. What's Slashdot coming to that the OP is scored Insightful?
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Yup, and only a matter of time before the RIAA finds another judge who isn't fed up with them...
They only need one order from any judge in the entire country to get their subpoena. Then they can get the list from the ISPs. At that point, what happens is moot, because they have the data, which is all that they were looking for. They just dismiss the case.
You should be aware of the contents of your hard drive though. If ... they find the content ... there, I can see you being held responsible.
So if I drop a baggie of heroin in your car's gas tank (or tuck it into in the grill, or stick a magnetic key hider in the wheel well, etc) when you're not looking and the drug dog 'indicates', you're ok with going to jail?
I didn't think so.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Except the company had no intent to file a lawsuit, so there wouldn't be a discovery phase, they would just send you a bill with "settlement offer" with no recourse other than suing them.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.