Large P2P copyright lawsuits are usually filed in a single court to aid the lawyer in not only needing fewer judgments for multiple targets, but also just to keep things straight and give the court a clear idea of what’s going on.
Chicago attorney John Steele has mixed things up and filed at least one large pornography lawsuit in each of Illinois’ three federal districts. The problem is, for Steele, that this appears to have cast too wide of a net, with at least one judge saying that Steele may be running a ”fishing expedition.”
In Illinois’ Northern District, Judge Milton Shadur threw out one of Steele’s lawsuits against 300 anonymous defendants, saying ”I don’t see any justification at all for this action.” Shadur threw out the case largely on the grounds that the defendants were coming from a wide variety of states, not just Illinois, despite Steele promising that all of the accused were Illinois natives.
”The judges in our other cases have, for the most part, sided with our clients and dismissed anonymous motions filed by non-parties,” Steele told Ars Technica. ”We expect to continue to have a majority of the courts find in our favor and allow us to find out who is stealing our client’s content.”
Steele said he relied on geo-location technology to trace IP addresses and brought the charges in the appropriate venues that way. Steele also may have been hoping for an advantage by spreading out the cases and making them feel like local issues.
Federal Judge Harold Baker also threw a large monkey wrench into Steele’s plans. Judge Baker called the case ”novel” and said it has turned the concept of a class action suit ”on its head,” but that granting quick subpoenas without hearing from the accused would be unfair.
The problem for Steele is that the accused are only known by the IP addresses, so there are currently no known defendants who would be able to represent themselves, which means no subpoenas will be issued under Baker’s ruling.
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