ISP wins right to restrict P2P defendant lookups to 28
An appeal from Time Warner Cable to limit the number of requests that P2P plaintiffs can make for the personal details of accused file sharers was upheld by US District Judge Rosemary Collyer.
Judge Collyer is currently overseeing two group action cases in the US, known as the 'Far Cry' and 'Steam Experiment' cases, in which thousands of defendants have been accused of illegal file sharing.
The request from Time Warner Cable (TWC) to limit the number of IP address lookups for civil cases was set at a minimum of 28 by Collyer, confirmed the court order.
TWC, previously controlled by Time Warner but now no longer affiliated, argued that it receives over 500 IP requests per month from law enforcement alone and that the sheer number of requests from the US Copyright Group in illegal file sharing cases was not viable considering that law enforcement requests must take priority.
"Copyright cases involving third-party discovery of Internet service providers have typically related to a plaintiff's efforts to identify anonymous defendants whose numbers rank in the single or low double digits. By contrast, plaintiff in this case alone seeks identifying information about 2,049 anonymous defendants, and seeks identifying information about 809 Internet Protocol addresses from TWC," wrote TWC, according to Ars Technica.
However, Collyer noted that the decision related to the two named cases and would not affect those presided over by other judges and courts.
According to a post on Ars Technica, in response to the filing of the motion to limit IP address requests, lead lawyer on the case at Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver said "TWC highlights the fact that it is not a party to this case, but it appears that TWC is utilizing that fact to garner public support for its position and possibly in an attempt to gain more subscribers who would value TWC's efforts to protect the privacy of demonstrated copyright infringers."
The US Copyright Group was not available for comment at the time of writing.