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Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Case, IP-Address Doesn't Prove Anything (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In what's believed to be a first of its kind ruling, a federal court in Oregon has dismissed a direct infringement complaint against an alleged movie pirate from the outset. According to the judge, linking an IP-address to a pirated download is not enough to prove direct copyright infringement. In the Oregon District Court, Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman recently recommended dismissal of a complaint filed by the makers of the Adam Sandler movie The Cobbler. According to the Judge both claims of direct and indirect infringement were not sufficient for the case to continue. What's unique in this case, is that the direct infringement claims were dismissed sua sponte, which hasn't happened before. To prove direct infringement copyright holders merely have to make it "plausible" that a defendant, Thomas Gonzales in this case, is indeed the copyright infringer. This is traditionally done by pointing out that the IP-address is directly linked to the defendant's Internet connection, for example. However, according to Judge Beckerman this is not enough. In response to community backlash, Oculus has decided to change its DRM policy (again) to allow HTC Vive games to play on the Oculus Rift virtual-reality system.
The link above states some very good reasons why the judge acted this way and there are some unique circumstances in the case that prompted her decision. The defendant runs an adult care center where the IP address is associated and the plaintiffs knew this. The judge ruled that there are a variety of people who could have infringed the copyright other than the defendant (ie. family members, staff, adult residents at the center) and despite fully knowing this, the plaintiffs chose to insist that the defendant was the only possible person who could have downloaded the movie and they used the IP address as "proof". The judge basically said it's not proof of anything and they're acting in bad faith by insisting that it is proof so she issued her ruling. It's possible that better behavior by the attorneys could have led to a filing that she would have accepted so we shouldn't conclude from this that this necessarily means going forward that these types of lawsuits won't be effective any more.
In the continuation of the article it says:
"That an outsider could be the pirate is not unlikely. The defendant operates an adult foster care home where several people had access to the Internet. The filmmakers were aware of this and during a hearing their counsel admitted that any guest could have downloaded the film."
So indeed the judges ruling is reasonable...