California Judge Denies Discovery In Bittorrent Case 100
New submitter PhxBeau writes with news of a particularly sane judge in a copyright case. Quoting TorrentFreak: "In yet another mass lawsuit against alleged file-sharers, a California court has said that while it's sympathetic towards the plight of the copyright holder, it will not assist in the identification of BitTorrent users. It's a shame technology that enables infringement has outpaced technology that prevents it, the judge wrote, but added that his court won't work with copyright holders who pursue settlement programs with no intention to litigate."
The core issue is that an IP does not identify more than the bill-payer — the good cause standard therefore is not met because the actual infringer is not identified.
Re:IP does not identify more than the bill player (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IP does not identify more than the bill player (Score:5, Interesting)
Identifying the bill payer doesn't do anything other than give the RIAA/MPAA someone, who may or may not be a copyright infringer, to sue.
Look at it this way: If I download pirated material while using Starbucks's free wi-fi, Starbucks is the one who gets accused for copyright infringement..
Re:IP does not identify more than the bill player (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, you wouldn't go to jail because this wasn't criminal copyright prosecution. This was a tort.
Second of all, if the judge HAD allowed discovery, then you would have been very inconvenienced, and then the discovery process would uncover that your friend downloaded the file. So you still wouldn't have paid a fine. But you would have been inconvenienced, and you probably would have paid a lawyer, and lost your computer for a while, and maybe a bunch of other stress.
This is a good decision based on the law, and also because it will save innocent people all that stress.
Anyone can write any IP number anywhere (Score:5, Interesting)
An IP number isn't even vaguely comparable to a license number. These IP numbers are taken from IP packets that could be written by anyone, anywhere. They are comparable to addresses on envelopes in the US Mail, except that there's no handwriting to analyze and no authoritative cancellation mark to identify the general location.
Anyone can write any IP number in the sender field on any IP packet and send it to any other IP number.
Even if you establish that a particular ISP has assigned a particular IP number for routing packets to a particular customer, you have no evidence that a packet marked with that IP number has anything to do with that customer, unless you can get much more stringent information from router logs and/or content that only that customer could have produced. I've never heard of any such evidence being presented.
Re:IP does not identify more than the bill player (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure they would overlook that in an overtly criminal case CP or terrorism, probably by casting the bill payer as an "accomplice" of some sort who could have information about the crime. That would be enough to get the address from the ISP. Whether it would lead to a friendly chat or a SWAT team raid is the biggest unknown, but there's no way they would let a pesky little bit of precedent get in their way for something like that.
Except those would be criminal cases, not civil as is the case here, so the same legal standards would not apply.
To give an extreme example, if someone sent an image of your kidnapped daughter from a given IP address, you would sure as hell want the police to find out who owns that IP. So yes, they would deal with it differently, because an overtly criminal case is different.
Re:IP does not identify more than the bill player (Score:4, Interesting)
"more provocative" cases would have more evidence, the IP Address only opens a door for them to look at the person. Then they devote resources into gather real evidence.
I like this ruling very much, and it is a very important aspect that needs to be brought up, if this IP address could be someone else then they haven't identified the person at all.
The analogy I use for this is: "If you see someone whole stole something run into my back yard, am I then arrested and jailed with no other information?"
They have eye witnesses of an unknown individual who they know stole something go into my backyard. They are claiming to know who the individual is because they went into my back yard. Yet they didn't even look for match, they go after who ever the owner is. Never mind that the owner could also be a victim of that same individual (virus).
Re:IP does not identify more than the bill player (Score:4, Interesting)
You should be aware of the contents of your hard drive though. If ... they find the content ... there, I can see you being held responsible.
So if I drop a baggie of heroin in your car's gas tank (or tuck it into in the grill, or stick a magnetic key hider in the wheel well, etc) when you're not looking and the drug dog 'indicates', you're ok with going to jail?
I didn't think so.
Re:IP does not identify more than the bill player (Score:4, Interesting)
Except the company had no intent to file a lawsuit, so there wouldn't be a discovery phase, they would just send you a bill with "settlement offer" with no recourse other than suing them.
Re:Thank you. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Do keep in mind that if there is actual intent and effort to prosecute, the judge would cooperate."
Very doubtful. If he meant that, he could simply have refused based on the perceived intent of the claimants to settle rather than litigate. Instead, he took the trouble of mentioning that it did not meet the "good cause" standard.
But the good cause standard applies whether they are litigating or not, so no, he probably would NOT "cooperate".