US Copyright Group to Federal Judge: 'We Are Doing John Does a Favor'

The US Copyright Group, a fancy name for the group of Virginia lawyers that like to sue file sharers in bulk, has told a federal judge that they "see no problem" with suing 5,000 Bittorrent users as John Does. Lawyers for the EFF and the ACLU have a different take on the matter entirely. The suits were "improperly joined," according to the EFF and ACLU. At least one judge hearing the case wants more information from all parties on the matter.

Yesterday, lawyer Tom Dunlap of the firm Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, filed a 29-page document in the Washington, DC District Court. The gist of that brief was that, according to Dunlap, suing 5,000 anonymous users at once is proper because of how Bittorrent works. Dunlap's argument tries to distinguish Bittorrent from all other P2P networks:

"Each particular act of infringement involved a specific one-on-one connection between two users for that specific file," says the brief. "Once the sharing of that file was over, so presumably was the relationship between the infringers."

The firm also said that it is doing all these John Does a "favor" by giving them the ability to defend the case in one jurisdiction, combine or join other Doe Defendants’ filings and the ability to receive "uniform decisions by the Court." Lawyers doing people "favors" seems as alien as clowns doing roadwork.

Of course the EFF and ACLU see it quite differently:

"Joining thousands of unrelated defendants in one lawsuit may make litigation less expensive for Plaintiff by enabling it to avoid the separate filing fees required for individual cases and by enabling its counsel to avoid travel, but that does not mean these well-established joinder principles need not be followed here."

A hearing is set for June 30.

Source: ARS