In a surprisingly sane
ruling
Washington District Judge Robert Lasnik found that an IP address is not
sufficient evidence of the identity of a copyright infringer. The case
involved the B-movie
Elf-Man, whose production company have
gained notoriety through trollish attacks on people alleged to have
downloaded the movie over bittorrent.
Ruling on a motion to dismiss filed on behalf of one of the defendants, Judge Lasnik notes that part (b) is not a valid claim.
“[The movie studio] has actually alleged no more than that the named
defendants purchased Internet access and failed to ensure that others
did not use that access to download copyrighted material,” Lasnik
states.
In other words, the complaint itself states that the account holder may
not be the person who downloaded the movie, which isn’t enough to pursue
the case.
“Simply identifying the account holder associated with an IP address
tells us very little about who actually downloaded ‘Elf-Man’ using that
IP address,” Judge Lasnik writes.
“While it is possible that the subscriber is the one who participated in
the BitTorrent swarm, it is also possible that a family member, guest,
or freeloader engaged in the infringing conduct,” he adds.
As a result, the defendant’s motion to dismiss was granted because the
movie studio failed to state a claim for direct copyright infringement,
contributory infringement and indirect infringement. The copyright
holder is allowed to file an updated complaint, but doubts that the
movie studio will be able to make a valid claim.
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