Another Mass Piracy Lawsuit Killed by US Judge

[Harry-Potter]

About half a million people in the United States have been sued for file-sharing in recent years, but rights owners face difficulties when filing those cases now. For example, a federal judge in Iowa has recently ruled that rights owners can’t join multiple defendants in one suit, because there is no evidence they shared files with each other. This could make any mass-BitTorrent piracy lawsuits virtually impossible.

 

 

Lots of reports confirm that hundreds of thousands of Internet users have been sued for illegal file-sharing in the US, most of them having been joined together in large cases. The matter is that it makes it very cheap for the rights owners to obtain the details of the defendants. In other words, instead of paying filing fees for each Internet user, they pay once by suing thousands in one case. Such mass-BitTorrent cases are built on the assumption that the file-sharers acted in concert, as they all downloaded the same torrent file and joined the same swarm.

However, one of the federal judges disagreed after taking the time to understand how BitTorrent works. Apparently, not many judges do so. For example, to join multiple defendants in one suit plaintiffs have to make it clear those were involved in the same series of transactions. In case of BitTorrent, the alleged pirates have to trade files with each other. But in most of BitTorrent cases, there were months between the time the first and last defendant was spotted sharing the copyrighted content, so it is very unlikely that all infringers shared files with each other.

Moreover, even if the defendants were found to share the file at the same time, it does not necessarily mean they shared it with each other. In response, copyright owners argued that alleged infringers could be joined in a single lawsuit as they shared a torrent file with an identical SHA-1 hash. Again, the judge wasn’t frustrated with unfamiliar terms and noted that the hash still provides no evidence file-sharers actually interacted with each other. The pieces of the file copied or uploaded by any individual defendant may have gone to any other file-sharer from a given swarm who are not in the case.

This is why Iowa judge decided to limit all mass-BitTorrent lawsuits to one defendant and dismiss the cases of all others. This decision means that movie studios won’t succeed at filing cheap mass-lawsuits before this judge. While other judges don’t have to reach the same conclusion, this ruling provides defendants with extra ammunition to fight such cases.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

[Tsu.Ku.Yo.Mi]

+1 for us pirates.

[professa X]

Hooray finally judges that are doing their jobs. They arent supposed build laws on so called ethics and morality but on logical deductions. I think any judge worth his salt will challenge the legality of these rights holders. If not for the sake of justice then they should for intellectual stimulation!

[ezikialrage]

About time judges started doing a little research on the issue before making a rulling.