Washing DC Court To Rule On Multi-Defendant Filesharing Suit

The US Copyright Group is trying to sue some 15,000 suspected defendants for downloading the recently released movies “The Hurt Locker” and “Far Cry”. The main difference between this and a million other copyright infringement lawsuits relating to filesharing is that the group is trying sue all 15,000 defendants in one case, with the accuseds standing together as one.

The rationale behind this amalgamation of defendants would appear to be solely the claimant’s convenience. It is doubtful that the courts will be sympathetic to this request – a request which turns the legal system of its head somewhat – just because of the claimant’s convenience. In fact the circumstances here closely mirror those of the RIAA case in which the judge told the industry giant to get lost. They had to sue individually. (Fortunately for the RIAA their lawyers LOVE to sue, so this was good news for them…)

The reason the request should be allowed, say the US Copyright Group, is because the BitTorrent downloads would likely have “touched machines within D.C. at some point”. Sounds like a very, very weak argument to me, but I am not a lawyer. Let’s hope, for the sake of filesharing everywhere, that this ridiculous request is met with the contempt it deserves.

Washing DC Court To Rule On Multi-Defendant Filesharing Suit

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