Copyright troll drops flawed lawsuit
p2pnet view P2P | Freedom:- “The EFF kicks ass, no doubt about it.
“The spreadsheet will be updated by day’s end.”
That’s the person who created the amazing spreadsheet and graphic which, as p2pnet said on Sunday, “give chapter and verse on the mass P2P filesharing lawsuits launched in 2010 and 2011, as well as other copyright cases, such as those featuring Righthaven.”
The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and and Public Citizen (PC) says a US adult video company has abandoned its lawsuit after a serious legal screw-u[p.
"Mick Haig Productions dropped the case just 48 hours after EFF and PC demanded that it withdraw subpoenas Mick Haig's lawyer [Evan Stone] apparently issued while the question of whether the court should allow the subpoenas at all was still under consideration”, say the two organisations
In December and early January, “federal judges in West Virginia and California recognized that it is improper to join thousands of people in one lawsuit based solely on the fact that they all allegedly used the same software protocol to share one or more copyright works”, says the EFF, going on >>>
As a practical matter, this means that copyright owners in those cases must file separate lawsuits against each alleged infringer and must have a reasonable basis for believing that they are filing in the right court. Given the additional expense of filing and litigating these cases fairly — expenses the plaintiffs were likely hoping to avoid by ignoring the court rules and due process requirements — these cases may not go much further.
Late last week, Mick Haig Productions dismissed its case against 670 alleged John Doe file sharers “after EFF and Public Citizen argued that Mick Haig should not be allowed to send subpoenas for the Does’ identifying information, because it had sued hundreds of people in one case, in the wrong jurisdiction and without meeting the constitutional standard for obtaining identifying informat”, says the EFF.
“There is often a gap between when cases are filed and when judges have the opportunity to look at them closely,” says EFF legal director Cindy Cohn.
“But that time appears to have arrived. Judges around the country are waking up to the dangers of mass copyright litigation and taking action to make sure the process is fair for the thousands of people who have been targeted in these suits.”
p2pnet – Mass P2P filesharing lawsuits, chapter and verse, January 31, 2011
EFF – Copyright Troll Gives Up in Porn-Downloading Case, February 1, 2011
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan
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