from the hook-line-and-stinker dept

Bear with me right here, as a result of that is going to take some explaining as a matter of throat-clearing for this submit, which is definitely the whole drawback.

Again in 2021, a number of movie studios filed a lawsuit against ISP RCN, accusing it of ignoring piracy carried out by its clients. That swimsuit principally adopted the identical bullshit playbook utilized by studios previously: copyright infringement was occurring by RCN clients, RCN didn’t do sufficient to play copyright police, subsequently give us a complete bunch of cash. However the place this will get bizarre is that the studios wished to current proof of RCN’s blind eye in the direction of piracy and, for some purpose, determined that feedback on Reddit boards going again over a decade in the past have been simply the proof they wanted. As a part of that, the studios demanded that Reddit unmask 9 of these customers it claimed have been concerned within the piracy, in response to them. Reddit solely complied with 1 particular person and pushed again on the opposite 8.

Because of that, these studios filed a movement in courtroom to try to drive Reddit to conform.

The movie corporations final week filed a motion to compel Reddit to reply to the subpoena in US District Court docket for the Northern District of California. The most recent submitting and the continued dispute over the subpoena have been detailed in a TorrentFreak article printed Saturday.

“The proof Plaintiff requests from Reddit within the Rule 45 subpoena is clearly related and proportional to the wants of the case,” the movie studios’ movement mentioned. The Reddit customers’ feedback allegedly “set up that RCN has not moderately applied a coverage for terminating repeat infringers,” that “RCN controls the conduct of its subscribers and screens its subscribers’ entry,” and “set up that the power to freely pirate with out consequence was a draw to turning into a subscriber of RCN.”

The explanation for among the particular language the studios used is that requests like this include a really excessive bar over which they have to hurtle. That’s as a result of there are moderately extreme First Modification implications concerned in unmasking an nameless web consumer on account of their speech.

And based on the response filed by Reddit, the studios are fully stuffed with shit, or have been massively incompetent of their requests.

Reddit’s new movement mentioned the movie studios “can not overcome the Reddit customers’ First Modification rights as a result of the customers’ posts Plaintiffs have recognized as the idea for this subpoena are fully irrelevant to Plaintiffs’ lawsuit.” Reddit continued:

4 of the seven customers at situation don’t seem to have ever even talked about RCN, based mostly on the proof provided by Plaintiffs. They merely consult with “my supplier” or “our ISP.” And people references are all made in a dialogue about Comcast, not RCN. Plaintiffs’ argument that the customers are “very seemingly” referring to RCN ought to be rejected as speculative. Two of the three remaining customers did point out RCN, however have been discussing points (similar to their customer support expertise) unrelated to copyright infringement or Plaintiffs’ allegations. And the ultimate consumer vaguely talked about RCN arguably within the context of copyright infringement as soon as 9 years in the past, nicely past any arguably related timeframe for Plaintiffs’ allegations.

Which is exactly what Reddit has been speaking about this complete time because it has repeatedly described this complete factor as a fishing expedition by the studios. They need to discover proof that by some means ties RCN customers particularly to discussions about how they’ll get away with piracy utilizing RCN as an ISP. But when that is the perfect they’ll do, then maybe it might be higher to easily drop this complete authentic lawsuit, as a result of so far as good proof goes, this ain’t it. Usually, RCN isn’t even the ISP in query, and it additionally wasn’t the topic of the Reddit thread for a number of of the customers the studios are looking for to unmask.

The February 2022 thread was began by a consumer “explaining that they’d obtained a copyright infringement e mail from Comcast and expressing that they have been ‘kinda fearful,’” Reddit wrote. “Within the 12 months since, there have been over 240 replies in that dialogue. Amongst these lots of of feedback about Comcast’s copyright practices, one mentions RCN.”

Reddit mentioned it offered figuring out data for that one consumer to the plaintiffs. “However the remaining 4 Comcast Customers are actually being focused merely as a result of they occurred to submit within the Comcast Thread, even though none of the customers have been responding or referring to any dialogue of RCN, and none point out RCN themselves,” Reddit wrote.

Reddit’s submitting goes on with extra particulars. For starters, a number of of the targets for unmasking that really have been RCN clients… by no means mentioned piracy. Like, in any respect. The studios additionally claimed that as a result of one consumer talked about how RCN had reset their residence router, this by some means implies that Reddit “screens and controls” the precise habits of the client whereas on the web. Which is fairly fucking silly, as a result of sustaining infrastructure and monitoring internet exercise are two fully separate issues. After which there’s this…

The studios argued that the 2009 submit “establishes that RCN has the technical capability [to monitor users]. If RCN had the power 13 years in the past, it definitely nonetheless has the power now.” The submit in query mentioned RCN changed an error web page with branded search outcomes. Reddit instructed the courtroom that the submit doesn’t show what the movie studios declare:

This observe is named NXDOMAIN DNS hijacking, and lots of ISPs have engaged in it to show commercials to their clients. It has completely nothing to do with copyright infringement or piracy… DNS hijacking doesn’t display ever-present surveillance or management by an ISP over its customers. It as an alternative displays an ISP’s international coverage of routing sure DNS calls to an IP tackle of their selecting.

You understand, it positive can be good if these movie studios, previous to pumping out this movement earlier than the courtroom, might be bothered to really perceive what the hell they have been speaking about. Virtually none of this makes any sense as a part of its lawsuit towards RCN, it might completely violate core First Modification rules, and is clearly the fishing expedition that Reddit has been claiming it’s.

You possibly can learn the whole submitting embedded under, however hopefully these studios get laughed out of this specific courtroom with velocity.

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Corporations: rcn, reddit


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