Judge Rules BitTorrent Cases Must Be Tried Separately 60
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.'"
Re:Well thats a first (Score:5, Interesting)
The interesting thing is that there are no real losses in the case of bit-torrent, because the projections of losses are based on counterfactuals (if x had not downloaded y then...), i.e. possible worlds that are not the actual one. As long as the ontological status of possible worlds is not settled, the reality of the losses is not settled, and so being prosecuted for torrenting based on the supposed losses you have caused someone is no different from being prosecuted for imagined murder, or imaginary pickpocketing.
If David Lewis were still alive the RIAA/MPAA would be writing him such a massive fucking research grant cheque right now.
Real damages.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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!