p2pnet.net News Feature:- The MPAA’s (Motion Picture Association of America) efforts to cheap-skate its attempts pillory people who share compressed versions of their feature movies through the p2p networks have been stymied.

Last week, the major movie studios used their MPAA to file 11 lawsuits against hundreds of people they say used p2p file-sharing networks to share infringing copies of movies. They sued groups of John and Jane Does identified by their IP address and demanded discovery of names from the users’ ISPs.

However, a Northern District of California judge ordered that the case for ‘Does’ 1-12 should be put on hold for all but one of the defendants, says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).

Judge William Alsup ruled that, because claims against the 12 defendants were unrelated, yoking them together wasn’t on.

"Such joinder may be an attempt to circumvent the filing fees by grouping defendants into arbitrarily-joined actions but it could nonetheless appear improper under Rule 20," his order states.

The EFF has filed friend-of-the-court briefs, “objecting to similar misjoinder in many of the cases filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against alleged infringers,” it says

"Lumping them together makes it more difficult for everyone to defend against these claims," says EFF lawyer Wendy Seltzer.

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See:-

compressed versions - RIAA sues more people, p2pnet, November 22, 2004
stymied - Court Blocks Movie Studios’ Bulldozer Legal Strategy, EFF, November 23, 2004
John and Jane Does - Hollywood sues file sharers, p2pnet, November 16, 2004

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