By : Ernesto - From the : Finally a Judge with some tech savvy dept.
A landmark ruling in one of the many mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US has delivered a severe blow to a thus far lucrative business. Among other things, New York Judge Gary Brown explains in great detail why an IP-address is not sufficient evidence to identify copyright infringers. According to the Judge this lack of specific evidence means that many alleged BitTorrent pirates have been wrongfully accused by copyright holders.
Mass-BitTorrent lawsuits have been dragging on for more than two years in the US, involving more than a quarter million alleged downloaders.
The copyright holders who start these cases generally provide nothing more than an IP-address as evidence. They then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, allowing them to ask Internet providers for the personal details of the alleged offenders.
The problem, however, is that the person listed as the account holder is often not the person who downloaded the infringing material. Or put differently; an IP-address is not a person.
Previous judges who handled BitTorrent cases have made observations along these lines, but none have been as detailed as New York Magistrate Judge Gary Brown was in a recent order.
In his recommendation order the Judge labels mass-BitTorrent lawsuits a “waste of judicial resources.” For a variety of reasons he recommends other judges to reject similar cases in the future.
One of the arguments discussed in detail is the copyright holders’ claim that IP-addresses can identify the alleged infringers. According to Judge Brown this claim is very weak.
“The assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time,” he writes.
“An IP address provides only the location at which one of any number of computer devices may be deployed, much like a telephone number can be used for any number of telephones.”
“Thus, it is no more likely that the subscriber to an IP address carried out a particular computer function – here the purported illegal downloading of a single pornographic film – than to say an individual who pays the telephone bill made a specific telephone call.”
The Judge continues by arguing that having an IP-address as evidence is even weaker than a telephone number, as the majority of US homes have a wireless network nowadays. This means that many people, including complete strangers if one has an open network, can use the same IP-address simultaneously.
