Judge Restricts Access To Details Of Mass Lawsuit Filing By Porn Company

from the too-dirty-for-the-court-system dept

In the last few months, there have been tons upon tons of stories of porn film makers following the tried and shamed method of legal extortion known as sending out mass automated threat letters, warning people that they'll be sued for downloading porn if they don't pay up. Barely a week goes by when we don't have people submitting another story of another porn studio suing thousands. We've stopped posting them because it's hardly news any more. If anything, all those lawsuits seem to represent the last gasp effort of a bunch of porn studios who haven't figured out how to compete in the new digital era.

However, in one case, things have gotten a bit odd, as Judge John Preston Bailey has restricted access to all of the legal documents -- including the publicly filed complaint -- in the case brought by porn studio West Coast Prods, who sued 9,729 people for unauthorized file sharing of one of its films. There are a lot of questions as to why the documents have had their access restricted (only to lawyers involved in the case), but THREsq notes that it heard Judge Bailey has "decency concerns," and that "he can't stomach the thought of having a lot of dirty language floating around."

For obvious reasons, this seems to go against the nature of publicly filed documents. The EFF is already noting that with such actions "it will be difficult for the targets and their potential counsel to understand and assess the allegations against them." While an accused person could retain a lawyer, and that lawyer could probably get access to the documents, "a person should not have to hire a lawyer simply to be able to read the allegations against him or her."

Filed Under: copyright, lawsuits, porn, restricted documents