Copyright Law

Achte/Neunte v Does 1-2094 : suit filed for infringement of movie

By Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman

According to a a report in THR, Esq. a new wave of tens of thousands of lawsuits has been commenced by the alleged owners of copyrights in films made by non-major studios. The complaint in Achte/Neunte v. Does 1-2094 was filed on March 18, 2010, in the District of Columbia. It appears that the new cases are employing the very same tactics used by the RIAA in illegally joining large numbers of John Does in the same case, and moving ex parte (without notice) for discovery. It appears that the new cases are based on BitTorrent, rather than Gnutella, or FastTrack, protocols of file sharing.

The ex parte discovery motion was granted on March 22nd.

The Court's order provides that a motion to quash must be made within 30 days of service of the subpoena on the ISP, but makes no provision for how, when, or even whether the ISP is to give notice to its customers. I.e., under the order, the requested information can be divulged to plaintiff before the customer even learns that there is a subpoena.

According to the declaration submitted in support of the ex parte motion, the plaintiff's evidence is "proprietary".

Complaint
Order granting ex parte motion for discovery
Declaration in support of motion

[ Ed. note. My first reaction when I heard of this was that it was an April Fool's joke, since the RIAA's strategy of suing its customers has been a colossal failure, and since a small film maker would be even less likely to be that stupid. But -- unless someone is willing to file false documents in a federal court as part of a prank -- this is real. Real madness. But not an April Fool's joke, apparently. I've never heard of the plaintiff, or of plaintiff's lawyers, or of the allegedly infringed movie, but then again I don't get out much. I'm not much of a businessman, but I was wondering if this is some perverted way of getting publicity for movies no one has heard of. R.B.]

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Full post as published by Recording Industry vs The People on March 31, 2010 (boomark / email).