IP Address Can't Be Used To Identify Individuals, Judge Rules

[admin]

In what could turn out to be a landmark ruling, a New York district court judge has lambasted the use of IP addresses as identification evidence, especially in mass copyright lawsuits, which he also called a "waste of judicial resources."

Making the ruling in a BitTorrent lawsuit involving the alleged download of a pornographic video, Judge Gary Brown also urged other judges to reject similar cases in the future.

But on the issue of identification based solely on IP address evidence, Judge Brown clearly spelt out the case against linking an the subscriber that leases the IP address, to the person or persons who actually committed the infringing action.

"The assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time," Judge brown wrote in his ruling.

"Thus, it is no more likely that the subscriber to an IP address carried out a particular computer function – here the purported illegal downloading of a single pornographic film – than to say an individual who pays the telephone bill made a specific telephone call."

Judge Brown also made the observation that the popularity of Wi-Fi routers meant that has now made it much harder to link an IP address to the actual individual that committed the infringement.

"While a decade ago, home wireless networks were nearly non-existent, 61% of US homes now have wireless access. As a result, a single IP address usually supports multiple computer devices – which unlike traditional telephones can be operated simultaneously by different individuals," Judge Brown added.

"Different family members, or even visitors, could have performed the alleged downloads. Unless the wireless router has been appropriately secured (and in some cases, even if it has been secured), neighbors or passersby could access the Internet using the IP address assigned to a particular subscriber and download the plaintiff's film."

The ruling mirrors one made in Italy, where also in a piracy case, the judge there ruled that IP addresses alone are insufficient to identify the pirate. And last year in the UK, a judge also questioned the tactics employed by one of the country's most notorious mass copyright law firms, also questioning the use of IP address evidence for identification purposes.

[rago88]

This is good news I think...

I do like the "telephone example" which makes complete sense to me.

[admin]

It's good to see a judge finally tackle the issue of IP address evidence, something that has been common sense to everyone else ever since these lawsuits started.

It's something I talked about in this blog post, but the deliberate over-hyping of the importance of the web piracy problem, and lack of technical understanding by members of the judiciary, has led to these and other instances where "short-cuts" are being promoted as "solutions". The argument being made is almost that because so much web piracy happens, standards ought to be lowered for what is considered "evidence", what is considered "guilt", and that's what's been happening over the last couple of years.

Another issue the courts should be looking at is the actual data being transferred. Right now, the IP address at best shows a connection being made to the swarm, but there's no data (pun unintended) on what actually been transferred, if anything. If I connect to the swarm and seed junk data, which actually prevents piracy, my IP address could get caught and I'd still be on the hook for piracy. Or if someone was at the wrong place and wrong time and connected for just a few seconds to get their IP address caught, is he/she as guilty as someone who's been seeding for weeks? Do you have to upload a significant portion of the file before you are guilty of copyright infringement, or does it only take one single bit of data? These are the questions that the court needs to examine, especially now that ISPs are being forced to take part in these "graduated response" regimes.

[rago88]

Your right on...
It's also becoming a daily problem which is that new laws cannot keep up with technology which is just developing too fast and it ABSOLUTLY does not help that many of those political leaders either have there hands out to the MPAA or worse, they are more technically
defficient than my Grandmother..
.email, Microsoft word, Facebook and some games..
They just do not understand that the Interent is one of the biggest and most important advances in History... right up there with the wheel...
we more or less stopped developing the wheel but the internet keeps growing and most important, changing in leaps and bounds.

[drfsupercenter]

I enjoy seeding torrents of Linux installation CDs so that when my university yells at me for "piracy" I can tell them to stop spying on me and that it's perfectly legal