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The ongoing fight between alleged file-sharers and the US Copyright Group continues to proceed in court. On July 15th, the District Court in the District of Columbia received two motions to quash by two of the defendants named in the Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteiligungs Gmbh & Co Kg V. Does 1 - 2,094 case. Predictably, the law firm doing the actual legal work, Dunlap, Kurtz, Grubb & Weaver, filed a motion in opposition to the defendant’s request yesterday.
Alleged file-sharers that are receiving copyright complaints from this law firm are being accused of sharing a variety of strange movies that most have never heard of before. Sure, we’ve all heard of Far Cry and Far Cry 2 the game, but did you know there was a Far Cry the movie? There is, and it’s produced by the German company that is acting as the plaintiffs in this case.
In order to procure the actual names of the defendants, the plaintiffs are required to file John Doe lawsuits with the court. By utilizing the IP address of the alleged P2P butt pirate, investigators working for Dunlap, Kurtz, Grubb & Weaver can then determine the ISP of the individual. At that point, a subpoena is then issued to the ISP, which then informs the end user of the possible violation, and that their information is about to be given up.
The manner in which the end user’s information is given up has been contentious. The EFF and other consumer advocacy groups have jumped US Copyright Group, demanding that relatively small number of lawsuits (one lawsuit for thousands of users) be broken up for each defendant (potentially thousands of lawsuits). This motion was denied late last month, however, it was not a complete failure. The judge ordered that the two sides must work together in other to properly and clearly inform the suspected violators of their rights.
Some of those receiving notifications are fighting back, or at least trying to. In the case mentioned above, two motions to quash were received by the court (however it seems the court treated them as one motion). One of the motions appears to have been simply an email to the court, and was not documented in the electronic filing database. The second motion was provided by a defendant who retained a law firm called McNair Attorneys. The defense objected to the subpoena, stating the “subpoena fails to comply with Rule 45(a) (2) (C)’s requirement that the subpoena be issued “from the court for the district where the production or inspection is to be made” i.e., Missouri.”
Date: 2010-07-20 |