Legal Niches

How to Remain John Doe in a File-Sharing Lawsuit

By james_fudge

If you're going to fight one of those John Doe lawsuits filed by various law firms representing the music and movie industry, you may want to be extremely cautious if you send a letter to a court - especially when you're trying to keep information from the plaintiff - like your real name and address. Ars Technica chronicles the mistake of one man, who made the mistake of putting his contact information on a document submitted to the court - asking to keep his information anonymous. Oops.

The story begins on July 17,when New York-based porn producer Lucas Entertainment filed a federal lawsuit against 65 alleged file-sharers who were swapping its gay adult film Missing via the gay-torrents.net BitTorrent index. The problem was that Lucas didn't actually have the names of the 65 individuals who shared the movie - all the company had was a bunch of IP addresses. So, as is the case with these John Doe lawsuits, it went to court and obtained subpoenas for the ISPs who handed out those addresses to subscribers. Read More

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Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on August 26, 2010 (boomark / email).