Why US Copyright Group abandoned its first two P2P lawsuits
11 08 2010The Hollywood Reporter has the story of the US Copyright Group’s latest “unexpected move”—dismissing the first two P2P lawsuits it filed earlier this year. Shocking stuff, unless you’ve actually been reading the court docket.
US Copyright Group, which is controlled by Virginia law firm Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, has sued more than 14,000 Americans this year for allegedly downloading various independent films on BitTorrent networks. In January, it brought the first two of these cases, targeting 749 anonymous “Does” for sharing the film The Gray Man and 83 Does for sharing Uncross the Stars (later upgraded to 195 Does).
US Copyright Group used the suits to subpoena ISPs, trying to get real names and addresses instead of the IP addresses it had collected. The lawyers then sent out settlement letters to these defendants, asking them to pay up or risk a named federal lawsuit.
So why did the group dismiss both of these cases this week? Well, this was always the plan. Once the names were gathered, the Doe suit would be dismissed and named lawsuits could be filed against anyone who didn’t settle. And those subpoenas have now been answered, as per the court’s requirements.
The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/why-us-copyright-group-abandoned-its-first-two-p2p-lawsuits.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.
