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Judge Rules BitTorrent Cases Must Be Tried Separately
PhrostyMcByte writes: "TorrentFreak reports that Federal Judge Stephanie Rose recently put a thorn in the plans of copyright holders hoping to file cheap mass-lawsuits against alleged pirates. Rejecting all but one Doe for such a lawsuit, Rose's order mentions that the plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate the five Does in the case were a part of the same 'transaction' needed to be tried together, with an uncommon understanding of BitTorrent showing that '... even in all five cases where Doe defendants allegedly have "hit dates" on the same day and close in time, there is no showing that the earlier defendants were still connected to the Internet and actively distributing data through the BitTorrent client at the same time as the later defendants.'"
All we need now is prosecutions based on real losses and not imaginary figures pulled out the air by lawyers.
This judge just assured himself and his lawyer friends of income for the rest of their lives...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I don't see any other outcome as reasonable. The one catch is going to be that I'm not sure that this will apply to judicial circuits.
Court Locator - Shows court boundaries.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
If you read the actual story, one out of 100 John Doe's in 5 cases complained to the court that they wanted a separate trial. The plaintiff then dismissed the case against that person with prejudice (in other words, gave up any chance to ever sue them again) to avoid the separate trial. Didn't work. The judge took it on himself to look at the complaint, even though John Doe wasn't part of the case anymore, applied it to all five cases not just the one that included John Doe, and now there are five cases against five John Does, and the plaintiff would have to open another 94 cases if they want to proceed. Which means paying about 20 more money for lawyers etc. Suddenly it's not a way to make money anymore.
I was really wanting to get more Linux ISOs for my collection!
Trolling is a art,
Well In theory damages would be limited to (data uploaded) / (File Size) * $1.29 * 0.70 at most.
However when you consider that the common bit torrent user likely doesn't seed files long enough to even reach 1:1 ratio... well the lawsuits aren't particularly economical that way.
Instead they prefer to pursue each user as if they alone are solely responsible for uploading to the entire swarm!
I think that at least one judge has suggested that, if there are many defendents in one case, then the plaintiffs can only ask for each defendant to pay his or her proportion of the damages (in other words, some fraction of $140,000 if the maximum is applied). That might be better for an individual.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
In a huge amount of these cases, the issue of whether the members should be sued individually comes up again and again.
Seemingly, each judge seems to make their own decision on this. In the cases where the judge rules that they should be split up, the case is dropped. Then rinse and repeat with a new judge and new set of defendants.
After 3-4 years of this, hasn't there been a precedent or something or higher level court getting involved so that all these judges don't have to reconsider the same argument over and over again? Seems wasteful, and it keeps these idiots in business.
even if all 5 defendents were uploading/downloading at the same time, why would you try them together as one entity if they were each acting alone as individuals. makes no sense. if you rob a bank in City A and three other people each rob a bank in three different cities, why would you try them together?
when you download with bittorrent, the bits you get are coming from various sources.
After 3-4 years of this, hasn't there been a precedent or something or higher level court getting involved so that all these judges don't have to reconsider the same argument over and over again?
No... and there won't be a precedent, until the RIAA finds a judge willing to solidify the precedent that is favorable to them.