Over 40,000 John Doe Copyright Troll Cases Dismissed

Requiem18th writes "From the EFF site: Thousands of unnamed 'John Does' in P2P file sharing lawsuits filed in California, Washington DC, Texas, and West Virginia have been severed, effectively dismissing over 40,000 defendants. The plaintiffs in these cases must now re-file against almost all of the Does individually rather than suing them en masse."

Despite the dismissal, EFF has received reports that some Does are still receiving notices from their ISPs informing them that their identities are being sought in relation to these cases. If you get one, contact the EFF immediately.

Re:Safe torrents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also in Illinois! I got named as one of 300 John Does for a porn torrent I got from http://www.puretna.com/ [puretna.com] a while ago. It's not the companies who are trying to go out of their way to chase alleged P2Pers, but rather the lawyers are making a business out of this and the lawyers are the ones who approach companies to do this.

Luckily earlier this month the case was dismissed for all 300 Does involved, so my ISP will thankfully not be releasing my information to the plaintiff's lawyer, John Steele... he is one of the "bad" kind of lawyers.

If you are named on one of these John Doe subpoenas, contact one of the lawyers on this list from the EFF [eff.org]. I contacted five different lawyers, one offered pro bono and another looked up my case in advance and sent me documents from the court showing it had been dismissed. Another lawyer referred me to the pro bono one, and another lawyer told me $180 an hour. I don't think the fifth lawyer replied. Overall, results were good.