EFF, ACLU Team Up to Fight Mass “Hurt Locker” Lawsuits

Argue it’s unfair for accused illegal downloaders of the movie to have to defend themselves in a DC courtroom regardless of where they live, and that the US Copyright Group (USCG), the law firm behind the mass P2P lawsuits, has created a business model that “cuts corners” and tries to “shake settlements” out of people unable to defend themselves.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Public Citizen have all teamed up to file briefs with judges in Washington DC asking them to quash subpoenas submitted by the US Copyright Group targeting tens of thousands of accused illegal downloaders.

They point out that courts there cannot even hear the cases because the USCG has yet to prove that they even have jurisdiction over the John Doe defendants that the subpoenas are supposed to identify, and that even the USCG admits that an IP address can provide a “a general geographic area for the users.”

“Thus, with minimal investigation, Plaintiff could have discovered that hardly any of the Does it has sued appear to reside in this District, and that therefore the

case against them was likely not properly brought here,” continues the brief. “Nonetheless, Plaintiff improperly sued them here, apparently seeking to force almost all of the Doe defendants to incur the expense and burden of defense in a foreign District (or to settle in order to avoid that expense).”

That’s really what the USCG is up to. Even though an IP address is registered with an ISP in say, Seattle, it wants to make defendants have to pay the costly expense of having to fight a case 2,7000+ miles away. When faced with the cost of airfare, hotel, food – all before legal counsel – of course the person is going to settle. I think I would to be honest.

“By requiring those sued to defend these cases in D.C., regardless of where they live, and by having thousands of defendants lumped into a single case, the USCG has stacked the deck against the defendants,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. “In addition, the First Amendment mandates that each defendant be given notice and opportunity to quash a subpoena and that the plaintiff offer sufficient evidence of infringement about each defendant individually.”

The US Copyright Group originally targeted more than 20,000 BitTorrent users back in March that it accuses of illegally distributing either of the independent movies “Steam Experiment,” “Far Cry,” “Uncross the Stars,” “Gray Man,” or “Call of the Wild 3D.”

Last month it then convinced the producers of the Academy Award-winning movie “The Hurt Locker,” likely miffed at dismal box office ticket sales, to join their venture that sues people en masse and offers the accused quick $2500 settlements to avoid much potentially much larger judgments for infringement at trial.

“If USCG wants to sue thousands of people, it needs to give each defendant a fair chance to fight the accusations,” added EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. “Instead, USCG is taking shortcuts that will result in innocent people getting tangled up in the dragnet.”

The dragnet employed by the USCG is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to create a new business model based on mass-scale extortion, and so it’s nice to see at least groups like the EFF, ACLU, and Public Citizen recognize it for what it is.

Stay tuned.



article taken from www.zeropaid.com