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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!
That $140,000 is per instance of copyright infringement. Even though they are lumping the cases together, they are still claiming that each John Doe engaged in at least one instance of copyright infringement.
What this does do is increase the costs of the person suing for copyright infringement. Before they needed to file one case against 100 John Does, argue their case, collect the 100 names, and then send the "settle or else" threat letters. If this ruling gets applied to all cases, they will need to file 100 different cases - each against 1 John Doe. In each case, they will need to present evidence to get the name and then send their settlement letters. The costs involved just skyrocketed to the point that suing people for non-commercial file sharing (as opposed to, say, selling movies to people online when you don't have the permission to) will be a money-losing proposition.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.