Judge rejects copyright trolls' BitTorrent conspiracy theory

Several copyright holders tried to get ISPs to hand over the identifying information of numerous customers without actually filing copyright lawsuits against them - on the basis that it was all part of a conspiracy. However, a federal judge James Holderman of the Northern District of Illinois rejected this tactic, saying that it was trying to get around the "stiffening judicial headwind."

He said that conspiracy charges require evidence of an agreement among the purported conspirators and the fact tht several BitTorrent users' computers communicated with one another does not constitute a conspiracy among the users.

In response to this "stiffening judicial headwind," some litigators have adopted a new tactic: sue just one Internet user, but use that lawsuit as a pretext to subpoena other defendants who had participated in the same BitTorrent swarm.

"BitTorrent users remain anonymous to other BitTorrent users, and have no connection to them beyond the mere fact that they downloaded the same file," Holderman wrote. "It is therefore not a reasonable calculation that the individuals connected to the subpoenaed IP addresses will have any discoverable information related to the current defendants."

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