Midcontinent Communications doubts that the Washington DC court where the mass BitTorrent lawsuits was filed even has jurisdiction over the midwest-based ISP, and refuses to comply until the film’s producers produce a “valid subpoena from a court with subpoena power.”
Another ISP is fighting back against the ridiculous efforts by the producers of the Academy Award-winning movie “The Hurt Locker” to try and sue tens of thousands of BitTorrent users for illegally sharing copies of the movie online.
The US Copyright Group, a DC-based venture combining the efforts of technology companies and a conglomeration of intellectual property law firms, filed the lawsuits in a DC courtroom back in May, and ever since then ISPs and others have been rejecting its assertion that the court has jurisdiction over the accused.
The US Copyright Group says that it does because BitTorrent is “significantly different in its architecture than the older P2P protocols,” that users create torrent trackers to “essentially create a network dedicated to sharing” a specific file, and that it’s this joint series of “transactions” and “occurrences” that justifies their inclusion in a single lawsuit.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Public Citizen have already argued in briefs submitted to the same DC-based court that the IP addresses in the US Copyright Group’s possession can provide a “a general geographic area for the users” that proves the court has no jurisdiction over them.
Midcontinent Communications agrees, for it’s customer base is exclusively outside the DC area, providing Internet access only for customers in North and South Dakota, and parts of Minnesota.
It filed a motion to squash a subpoena received from the US Copyright Group on the grounds that it doesn’t compensate the ISP for the work involved in identifying the accused, and the fact that it doubts the validity of the subpoena.
It said “the court should require Voltage Pictures to properly serve Midcontinent with a valid subpoena from a court with subpoena power” over the ISP before it’s asked to “reveal highly personal information of purported customers.”
Time Warner has also been fighting back in a way, though that despite concerns only the number of IP addresses it can reasonably process each month and not any jurisdictional issues.
Stay tuned.
