Adult entertainment company Corbin Fisher has been actively pursuing pirates, though not without some sympathy: pay up pre-trial, say the lawyers, and you'll never even see the inside of a courtroom.
A new case finds the company suing two different BitTorrent groups, ostensibly leveling charges against some unnamed individuals who may not have actually pirated the file themselves.
On Wednesday, Corbin Fisher's parent Liberty Media Holdings, LLC targeted two different swarms (.pdf #1 and .pdf #2) and a combined 25 John Does for the illegal distribution and reproduction of its film "Amateur College Men Down on the Farm" according to court documents acquired by Slyck.
The complaints maintain the bulk of the misdeeds were carried out in Ohio, and confirm that while the true names of the alleged perpetrators are yet unknown the company plans to subpoena their ISPs.
That is where things tend to get tricky: receiving a mailing address for a defendant may help, but if the computer utilized for illicit activities is shared by multiple users narrowing down just who is at fault could prove difficult.
Furthermore, as Slyck notes, naming individual John Does in cases already accusing a swarm of computers not only seems redundant, but compounds the difficulty assigning blame: a computer may have been connected to the swarm, but does that mean its owner actually downloaded, viewed or distributed the material illegally?
These types of cases are difficult to build (assigning real names to take the place of countless "John Does" is just one step), costly to litigate and don't always go as planned. As a result, some companies (Corbin Fisher included) offer amnesty to those violators who come forth proactively, admit their "crimes" and pay up. It's an out-of-court settlement before anyone is technically taken to court, and sidesteps all the messy legal work.
Of course, that's not to say the amnesty deal is flawless; people could falsely confess to the crime and/or email stories about talking unicorns. (Via Slyck)
