He's one of thousands in the lawsuit campaign against file-sharers, but he seems to be an unlikely candidate. He's legally blind and too busy with his personal life to secure his WiFi connection. Unfortunately for him, he's also unable to afford to fight the case and might be forced to settle anyway.

He stood accused of having illegally downloaded a copyrighted film five months earlier, at precisely 6:03 a.m. on the morning of January 27. The name of the Imperial Enterprises movie he purportedly purloined wasn't mentioned until four pages later. Though printed in tiny italic font in a court filing, it practically leapt off the page: Tokyo Cougar Creampies. Yet when Mrs. Doe set eyes on that ignominious title, she couldn't help but crack a smile at the absurdity of the situation. Her husband is legally blind, with vision roughly 1/100th of that of a person with normal sight. He is physically incapable of watching any film, this particular porno included. "To be honest, it's a little ridiculous," Doe 2,057 says with a rueful chuckle. "My movie-watching ability is nonexistent. My kids watch movies, but they are 4 and 6, so they don't watch porn either. Well, hopefully they don't."

Some interesting things coming out of Australia this week. It seems that AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) is attempting to pressure ISPs into implementing a three strikes law for Australian internet users. That has the Australian Pirate Party crying foul.

One local ISP to receive the letter was Exetel, which in comparison with other ISPs, already has a number of provisions in its agreement with its customers that are favourable to content owners. For example, the ISP has committed to forwarding any copyright infringement notices received to customers. If three or more such notices are received, or if Exetel “reasonably suspects” that a customer is infringing copyright, and the customer fails to provide a valid defence for their activity, Exetel reserves the right to disconnect customers’ connections.

It was only two days ago that we learned of the first class action lawsuit against Sony in the wake of the PSN outage. Now, two days later, we are learning of a second class action lawsuit filed against Sony. This time, this was filed in a Los Angeles court.

The data breach also prompted the filing of a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles on Wednesday, alleging Sony was negligent in allowing the theft of its members' personal data. "Sony broke its contract and violated its customers' trust," said Caleb Marker, an attorney representing plaintiffs in the Los Angeles lawsuit, which is also seeking class action status.

The major PSN outage that saw 70-77 million users data compromised certainly was looking to be one of Sony's more expensive messes. With governments expressing concern over users identities and a lawsuit already filed against the company, it looked like certain disaster until a recent supreme court ruling was made in a separate case.

But the dissenters said a practical ban on class action would be unfair to cheated consumers. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the California courts had insisted on permitting class-action claims, despite arbitration clauses that forbade them. Otherwise, he said, it would allow a company to "insulate" itself "from liability for its own frauds by deliberately cheating large numbers of consumers out of individually small sums of money." Breyer added that a ban on class actions would prevent lawyers from representing clients for small claims. "What rational lawyer would have signed on to represent the Concepcions in litigation for the possibility of fees stemming from a $30.22 claim?" he wrote. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined his dissent.

The case's potential impact is breathtaking. Corporations can now prevent consumers and small business owners from exercising what is often their only real option for challenging companies that defraud them by millions or even billions of dollars: banding together to file class action lawsuits. The case could be equally devastating to millions of non-union employees, who need class actions to challenge systemic discrimination by their employers. The Supreme Court has given major corporations the green light to engage in nearly limitless wrongdoing against others, so long as they do it in relatively small dollar amounts, which ensures that no one can afford to challenge the misconduct without a class action. A sudden demise of class actions will shock the markets and the legal system. It will dramatically increase the market power of major corporations over ordinary Americans and small business owners, who are already outmatched. Innumerable laws that protect the public will become irrelevant because few people can enforce them. Yet for all these far-reaching implications, AT&T's achievement is remarkably ordinary. The company has secured a state of lawlessness similar to the one that allowed banks to foreclose on millions of homeowners without showing evidence that they had the right to do so. It has achieved a deregulatory regime similar to those that tanked the economy and destroyed millions of jobs, devastated the Gulf of Mexico with oil, allow thousands of preventable workplace deaths every year and threaten untold upheaval through climate change. Like the big banks, the oil and coal companies and the mine operators, AT&T simply wants to write its own rules. It's doing just that, through a practice that has become so ordinary we hardly notice the absurdity and injustice anymore: writing one-sided contracts and imposing them on others.

For those who have been watching the PlayStation Network (PSN) outage story, it was likely only a matter of time before someone would be resorting to litigation. Well, it's finally happened in a Northern District of California.

The lawsuit alleges that Sony "failed to encrypt data and establish adequate firewalls to handle a server intrusion contingency, failed to provide prompt and adequate warnings of security breaches, and unreasonably delayed in bringing the PSN service back on line." It also accused Sony of violating the Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standard, which prohibits companies from storing cardholder data.

You'd think that someone who uses the law to enforce copyright would know the laws, at least, reasonably well, before they go threatening people with legal action. Apparently, in one legal threat, one rights holder opted to cite a law in court documents that doesn't even exist.

3. Order the surrender to Righthaven of all hardware, software, electronic media and domains, including the Domain used to store, disseminate and display the unauthorized versions of any and all copyrighted works as provided for under 17 U.S.C. § 505(b) and/or as authorized by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 64; [AUTHORS NOTE: Found at the bottom of page 15]

Nor is the citation to Rule 64 going to help Righthaven. This is the same argument it raised in Righthaven v. DiBiase, and which the court flatly rejected. Indeed, the argument was silly to begin with, since Rule 64 concerns state law remedies and copyright is a federal law.

It seems that the porn industry is currently ramping up its anti-piracy efforts after filing lawsuits against 300 individuals accused of copyright infringement. The lawsuits were filed by Millennium TGA, Lightspeed Media Corporation and Hard Drive Productions in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division.

It may be the least surprising reaction of the year, but the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has said that they would contest the ruling that saw the reduction of the Tenenbaum fine from $675,000 to $67,500. The organization said that it would contest the ruling, but exactly how remains to be seen at this point.

Not too long ago, we reported on how producers of the film "Hurt Locker" were saying that they would sue tens of thousands of file-sharers for downloading the movie. Apparently, a producer since sent a rather inpulsive (to put it lightly) response to someone who threatened to boycott their works over the litigation tactics.

We wrap things up with the last third of 2009. Part one. Part 2.