Electronic Frontier Foundation is reporting a major
victory in the Federal Circuit (in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals)
limiting the ability of “copyright trolls” to aggregate defendants in one suit
(usually involving file sharing and P2P).
Mitch Stoltz explains the decision with opinion link here.
The litigant was Prenda Law (AF Holdings v. Does 1-1058), which reportedly tried
to force ISP’s to provide the identities of persons or parties who had used
connections associated with IP address.
The federal circuit ruled that defendants can be assembled into one suit
only when they used the same resource at the same time. Also the court apparently ruled that
plaintiffs have to take more steps to determine where defendants actually are
located geographically.
EFF has also been discussing the issue of any
potential downstream liability for copyright for offering WiFi
connections. The DMCA Safe Harbor limits
downstream liability for publication service providers, but right now it doesn’t
make much sense that a coffee shop or motel offering WiFi could be held liable
for illegal downloads by customers. I
guess I could wonder what would happen if a hotel offered P2P itself in a
business center, but it wouldn’t have any control over what is on a guest’s
laptop or tablet. I’m just back from a
trip myself.
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