In early March, mass file-sharing litigation attorney John Steele received a harsh smackdown by Illinois federal judge Milton Shadur, who denied Steele’s attempts to gain settlements from John Doe defendants around the country and stated that he had “abused the litigation system in more than one way.” But that didn’t deter Steele from trying yet again.
This time, Steele went in front of Judge Harold Baker in an attempt to get information for serving subpoenas to 1017 John Doe defendants accused of illegally sharing an adult film produced by Montreal-based VPR Internationale, and was met with another smackdown. This time, however, the judge explained exactly why an IP address matched to a name is not necessarily proof that one is a cyber-criminal.
Judge Baker’s order denying Steele’s request for expedited discovery cites a recent case in which an innocent couple’s home was raided when they were mistakenly accused of downloading child pornography because of a shady neighbor:
VPR ignores the fact that IP subscribers are not necessarily copyright infringers. Carolyn Thompson writes in an MSNBC article of a raid by federal agents on a home that was linked to downloaded child pornography. The identity and location of the subscriber were provided by the ISP. The desktop computer, iPhones, and iPads of the homeowner and his wife were seized in the raid. Federal agents returned the equipment after determining that no one at the home had downloaded the illegal material. Agents eventually traced the downloads to a neighbor who had used multiple IP subscribers’ Wi-Fi connections (including a secure connection from the State University of New York). See Carolyn Thompson, Bizarre Pornography Raid Underscores Wi-Fi Privacy Risks (April 25, 2011), http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42740201/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/
The list of IP addresses attached to VPR’s complaint suggests, in at least some instances, a similar disconnect between IP subscriber and copyright infringer. The ISPs include a number of universities, such as Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, and the University of Minnesota, as well as corporations and utility companies. Where an IP address might actually identify an individual subscriber and address the correlation is still far from perfect, as illustrated in the MSNBC article. The infringer might be the subscriber, someone in the subscriber’s household, a visitor with her laptop, a neighbor, or someone parked on the street at any given moment.
After criticizing the settlement process and reiterating that the Central District of Illinois Federal Court does not have jurisdiction over the Doe defendants, Judge Baker borrows a phrase from Judge Shadur’s playbook, stating that he will not support Steele’s “fishing expedition by means of a perversion of the purpose and intent.”
Maybe Steele will finally get it through his head that his mass porn copyright shakedowns are not welcome in the state of Illinois.
