MCGIP, LLC v. Does 1-1,164, No. 10-7675 (N.D.Ill., filed December 2, 2010) [Download Complaint]
Filing of copyright infringement complaint will be precursor to more subpoenas seeking to identify unknown file-sharing defendants.
Another porn company has filed a copyright lawsuit against hundreds of anonymous John Doe defendants who allegedly used the Bittorrent protocol to trade plaintiffs’ copyrighted movies. So ISPs around the country should expect another wave of subpoenas sent to unmask these unknown file sharers. The works allegedly infringed in this case include provocative titles such as “Girlfriend Lost a Bet” and “Iraq Care Package.”
Interestingly, this complaint — unlike the complaints in similar Bittorrent porn copyright cases — contains a paragraph that tries to explain why over a thousand defendants should be joined in one lawsuit:
Joinder is appropriate because, on information and belief, each Defendant was contemporaneously engaged in a coordinated effort with the other Defendants to reproduce and distribute Plaintiff’s copyrighted works to each other and hundreds of third parties via the BitTorrent protocol.
This language appears to be an attempt to head-off arguments like those made by EFF and others in some of the other massive copyright infringement actions against scores of anonymous defendants.
