Judge In US Copyright Group Case Seems Skeptical Of Lumping All Those Lawsuits Into One

from the convince-me dept

Thu, Jun 10th 2010 7:49am — Mike Masnick

Following the filing from the EFF, Public Citizen and the ACLU questioning US Copyright Group's (really law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver) decision to lump together thousands upon thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits into a single lawsuit, it sounds like the judge in the case is quite skeptical of the strategy. She's demanding that US Copyright Group explain in writing why she shouldn't throw out all but one of the John Doe defendants for "misjoinder."

A brief entry in the official court docket lays out the order. "MINUTE ORDER requiring Plaintiff to show cause in writing no later than June 21, 2010 why Doe Defendants 2 through 2000 should not be dismissed for misjoinder under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20," wrote the judge in The Steam Experiment case. The same order was repeated in a separate case targeting 4,577 users alleged to have shared the film Far Cry.

Considering that USCG has been making the argument that ISPs who don't hand over the names of the accused are guilty of inducing infringement, I can't wait to see the legal response. In the meantime, though, it's good that the judge appears to be aware that this strategy is highly questionable.

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Filed Under: copyright, joinder, lawsuits, misjoinder
Companies: us copyright group

21 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2010 @ 7:54am

actually, she doesnt appear skeptical, she is just asking for their legal reasoning to put them together. if you want to run 5000 does at the same time, there needs to be some connection.
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:09am

Re:
Oooh! They're all named 'John Doe'
Obviously it's some sort of crime family...
; P
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:14am

Re: Re:
you cant say that in a doe-mocracy.
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cc (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:14am

Re:
Doh.. If she wasn't being skeptical, she wouldn't have questioned the reasoning in the first place -- she'd just taken it for granted.
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Ima Fish (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:15am

Re:
"there needs to be some connection"

Considering they downloaded an Uwe Boll movie, they all have excruciating bad taste in movies.
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AJ, 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:17am

Re:
After reading the entire story and links, she appears quite skeptical to me!
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LumpyDog (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:24am

Re: Re:
Yeah. Almost worth setting aside the constitution so we can throw them in the clink for wanting to see that awful waste of film.

But not really.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:29am

new names for democrcy
larry-darrlyanddarrylocracy
MO-ocracy
curlyocracy

stoogocracy
pinkynbrainocracy
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Ima Fish (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:41am

Re: Re: Re:
"But not really."

But it's pretty darn close.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:49am

I guess Uwe Boll figures if he isn't going to make any money at the box office with his crappy films then he'll make it up in lawsuits. I can't believe even 4,577 people downloaded Far Cry.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:50am

Re: Re:
Ding!
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Sean T Henry (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 8:52am

I thought that Far Cry was a video game not a movie.
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LumpyDog (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 9:04am

Re:
It was a good video game that was made into a terrible film.
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A Dan (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 9:06am

Re:
This same guy keeps making awful video game movies.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0093051/
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jun 2010 @ 10:32am

Re:
Proof that piracy does not represent monetary value!
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Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased) (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 11:32am

The One
That would suck to be the one guy.
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Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased) (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 11:33am

Re: Re:
Wow! Jessica Simpson as Metroid...this film has no chance...no chance whatsoever.
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Jay (profile), 10 Jun 2010 @ 12:41pm

For added reading
You should see the Ars Technica report about the accused P2P users themselves:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/songs-of-innocence.ars

Here's where the pirates be human and falsely claimed by Davy Jones.

YAARGH!
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Pixelation, 10 Jun 2010 @ 5:53pm

The real reason
These lawyers, aside from being money "Grubb"ing whores, are probably interested in jobs with the Obama administration.
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slander (profile), 13 Jun 2010 @ 12:19am

Re: Re:
This same guy keeps making awful movies.
FTFY
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Mikeg35435, 14 Jun 2010 @ 9:58pm

Hurt Locker Hypocracy
Strange that the Hurt Locker people are being sued by the person on whom the movie was based on. Apparently he wasn't paid anything for his story. So he sued them in a Delaware court and now the defendants are telling the court that none of them live in Delaware and the suit should be moved to California where they live.

It seems though that they have no problem suing people in DC where practically none of their down loaders live.

Justice......what a joke. USA has the best justice money can buy.
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