Judge: IP-Address Does Not Prove Copyright Infringement
A federal judge in Washington has issued a key order in one of the many ongoing mass-BitTorrent piracy lawsuits in the United States. The judge ruled that a complaint from the “Elf-Man” movie studio is insufficient because the IP address evidence does not prove that an account holder is guilty of copyright infringement.
Mass-BitTorrent lawsuits have been dragging on for years in the US, involving hundreds of thousands of 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 force Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder.
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 alone can’t identify a movie pirate.
Judges who handled similar cases in the past have made observations along the same lines and now Washington District Judge Robert Lasnik has added his opinion, ruling that IP address-only evidence fails to meet the pleading standards required to pursue for copyright infringement.
A federal judge in Washington has issued a key order in one of the many ongoing mass-BitTorrent piracy lawsuits in the United States. The judge ruled that a complaint from the “Elf-Man” movie studio is insufficient because the IP address evidence does not prove that an account holder is guilty of copyright infringement.
Mass-BitTorrent lawsuits have been dragging on for years in the US, involving hundreds of thousands of 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 force Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder.
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 alone can’t identify a movie pirate.
Judges who handled similar cases in the past have made observations along the same lines and now Washington District Judge Robert Lasnik has added his opinion, ruling that IP address-only evidence fails to meet the pleading standards required to pursue for copyright infringement.