GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has hit a snag with its current John Doe lawsuits against movie downloader's. The slowdown in identifying the people downloading films comes in the form of Judge William Alsup. The MPAA had bundled 12 separate cases in one and the judge found that that there was no good reason to do this, but he did decide to let 1 case go ahead. While the other 11 cases were put on hold a file swapper's identity has been requested from Pacific Bell internet.
The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) praised the judge's actions saying this decision allows people to have due process. EFF went on to say that lumping cases together means it's harder for people to defend against claims of these nature.
No one at the MPAA was available for comment at this time.
|  The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) last week launched a legal attack that borrowed the record industry"s strategy of targeting individual file swappers. As in the case of the record labels, the suits were filed against a range of anonymous "John Does," with names to be added after a court-supported investigation process plays out. Late last week, Judge William Alsup said the MPAA had not shown good reason to bundle together 12 separate cases. He allowed the first of the suits to go ahead to a discovery process, in which the identity of the alleged file swapper will be requested from Internet service provider Pacific Bell, but he put the other 11 cases on hold.
 The order was praised by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group that has been a consistent critic of the recording industry"s and movie studios" legal strategies against file swappers. "This decision helps to give due-process rights to the Internet users accused of infringement," said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "Lumping them together makes it more difficult for everyone to defend against these claims." An MPAA representative could not immediately be reached for comment.
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Looks like 1 customer of Pacific Bell internet is going to get a nasty surprise just in time for Christmas. I'm glad the judge slowed the MPAA down, as it's truly is unfair to bunch cases together.
Source: news.com
