More news on the story that has captured America’s undivided attention. No, not the World Cup, which has captured my undivided attention, but the Hurt Locker BitTorrent lawsuits. When we last left you the Electronic Frontier Foundation was preparing to argue in front of a Federal judge that, in effect, the lawsuits were bunk. That didn’t exactly go as planned, but it’s not all bad news. Well, “bad news” from the perspective of a person still using a public BitTorrent tracker to download things. Who still does that?
The gist is that the Federal judge THREW OUT~! the EFF’s argument that the all-in-one lawsuit filed by the U.S. Copyright Group should instead be filed individually. The idea was there’s nothing linking John Doe number 1 with John Doe number 65 other than that they used BitTorrent to download a movie.
So the lawsuit(s) will continue.
The good news is that the judge has told the USCG to cooperate with the EFF in letting the defendants know about their rights. While the USGC would love nothing more than to intimidate thousands of people into cutting them a cheque for a couple thousand dollars, know they have to actually have to tell the people, you know, they have the right to fight the complaint.
What a waste of resources, all these lawsuits. We could be investing this time trying to invent better tasting ice cream or phones that don’t die when you hold them.