Washington
– A federal judge has given attorneys for the U.S. Copyright Group, which is in
the process of filing suit against thousands of alleged illegal movie
downloaders, two weeks to defend their joining of thousands of defendants
together in single lawsuits rather than having to file them separately, Ars Technica
reports.
One lawsuit to be heard by U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer names
over 4,000 anonymous "John Doe" defendants, who allegedly used the BitTorrent
file-sharing network to illegally download the movie "Far Cry."
Last
week, the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Citizen Litigation
Group filed legal briefs asking the court to block these multiple-defendant
subpoenas.
"Members of the movie industry have the right to challenge
alleged copyright infringement, but they must do so in a way that upholds the
law and individuals’ due process rights," said Aden Fine, staff attorney
with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.
"Lumping thousands
of unconnected individuals into a few cases in a court far from where they
live, without providing them adequate notice and a real opportunity to
challenge the subpoenas, is not that way."
Judge Collyer gave the U.S. Copyright Group — which is representing the interests of the producers of films including "The Hurt Locker," "Far Cry" and other titles — until June 21 to defend its grouping of thousands of defendants into single suits.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/x9a80
(Ars Technica)
http://snipurl.com/x9ag1
(DMW previous coverage)
http://snipurl.com/x9aem
(DMW previous coverage)
