A subpoena that was served to regional internet service provider Midcontinent to obtain the personal information of defendants associated the file-sharing case brought by producers of The Hurt Locker has been quashed this week by a South Dakota Judge.
US Magistrate Judge John Simko of the US District Court for the Southern Division of South Dakota was reportedly unimpressed by the fact that the US Copyright Group was not in compliance with the federal rule regarding how subpoenas must be handled.
The subpoena was “not in compliance with any of the four descriptions of Rule 45(b)(2),” according to Simko. He also pointed out that, “Service by facsimile transmission is not an authorized method of service under the Rule. The motion to quash is granted for insufficient service of process."
Voltage Pictures brought the lawsuit against 5,000 BitTorrent users in April of this year. The suit claimed that the users illegally shared a copy of The Hurt Locker several months before the US release of the movie, which may have caused financial losses at the box office.
Lack of jurisdiction is one of the reasons cited by Simko in his decision to quash the Midcontinent subpoena. This precedent could signal the chance of a favorable outcome for defendants involved in a similar case in Washinton DC, where a motion to quash has been filed citing jurisdiction issues.
The USCG has not only been reckless in their court filings, but has also had their own copyright violations earlier this year when they stole the design for their website from a competing service.
It’s great to see that a judge is making the USCG follow the law in at least one of these cases. Let’s hope for similar decisions in the future so that they may finally decide to start handling these situations in a legal manner.
