Film companies demand names of Reddit users who discussed piracy in 2011
Reddit is fighting another attempt by film companies to unmask anonymous Reddit users who discussed piracy.
The same companies lost a previous, similar motion to identify Reddit users who wrote comments in piracy-related threads. Reddit avoided revealing the identities of eight users by arguing that the First Amendment protected their right to anonymous speech.
Reddit is seeking a similar outcome in the new case, in which the film companies’ subpoena to Reddit sought “Basic account information including IP address registration and logs from 1/1/2016 to present, name, email address and other account registration information” for six users who wrote comments on Reddit threads in 2011 and 2018. Reddit wrote in a court filing on Wednesday:
Plaintiffs’ Motion seeks to unmask six anonymous Reddit users that Plaintiffs assume to have committed copyright infringement using Grande, an Internet service provider (ISP). If these Reddit users did engage in copyright infringement on Grande’s networks, then Plaintiffs hope to learn whether the users were drawn to Grande for the ease of infringement. Weeks ago, this Court denied a nearly identical motion by these same Plaintiffs… But rather than returning with better facts capable of meeting the applicable First Amendment standard, Plaintiffs here offer worse facts–expressly acknowledging that they have no need to identify these Reddit users at all.
Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium, are behind both lawsuits. In the first case, they sued Internet provider RCN for allegedly ignoring piracy on its broadband network. They sued Grande in the second case. Both RCN and Grande are owned by Astound Broadband.
Reddit is a non-party in both copyright infringement cases filed against the Astound-owned ISPs, but was served with subpoenas demanding information on Reddit users. When Reddit refused to provide all the requested information in both cases, the film companies filed motions to compel Reddit to respond to the subpoenas in US District Court for the Northern District of California.
Plaintiffs already got details on 118 users
Reddit’s response to the latest motion to compel, which was previously reported by TorrentFreak today, said the film companies “have already obtained from Grande identifying information for 118 of Grande’s ‘top 125 pirating IP addresses.’ That concession dooms the Motion; Plaintiffs cannot possibly establish that unmasking these six Reddit users is the only way for Plaintiffs to generate evidence necessary for their claims when they have already succeeded in pursuing an alternative and better way.”
The evidence obtained directly from Grande is “far better than what they could obtain from Reddit,” Reddit said, adding that plaintiffs can subpoena the 118 subscribers that are known to have engaged in copyright infringement instead.
Reddit said the six users whose identities are being sought “posted generally about using Grande to torrent. These six Reddit users responded to two threads in a subreddit for the city of Austin, Texas. The majority of the users posted over 12 years ago while the remaining two posted five years ago.”
Reddit said that a “higher standard for unmasking a non-party witness exists than for unmasking a potential defendant because–unlike the need to identify a potential defendant—litigation can often continue without trampling a non-party witness’s First Amendment right to anonymity.” That’s one reason why the court quashed the previous subpoena to Reddit in the RCN case, the filing said:
In RCN, this Court recognized that the ISP “is the party that (according to the plaintiffs) ‘has not reasonably implemented a policy for terminating repeat infringers,’ ‘controls the conduct of its subscribers,’ and allows its customers ‘to freely pirate without consequence.'” As a result, the Court rightly ruled that the “high likelihood that this information is available from [the ISP] defeats the plaintiffs’ subpoena.”
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1952189