P2P lawyer: IP address not enough, let me search all PCs in the house (arstechnica)

[Benjamin]

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P2P lawyer: IP address not enough, let me search all PCs in the house
By Nate Anderson | Published a day ago

A file-sharing lawyer admitted this week that IP addresses dont by
themselves identify someone accused of sharing copyrighted material online.

While an IP address can identify Internet subscribers, this does not
tell Plaintiff who illegally downloaded Plaintiff's works, or,
therefore, who Plaintiff will name is the Defendant in this case,
lawyer Brett Gibbs told a California federal magistrate judge. It could
be the Subscriber, or another member of his household, or any number of
other individuals who had direct access to Subscribers network.

To figure out who actually shared the pornographic movie at the center
of the case, lawyer Brett Gibbs of Steele Hansmeier LLC told the judge
(PDF) he would need to search every computer in the subscriber's household.

The subscriber in question, a grandfather who is not named in court
documents, didnt take this suggestion well. He is representing himself,
and when Gibbs called him on the phone to discuss the matter, the
grandfather told Plaintiff's attorney that he felt like destroying
and/or disposing of his computer. When told by Plaintiff's counsel that
such actions would violate the explicit instructions of Plaintiff's
counsel and his ISP, and may even result in Court sanctions for
spoliation, Subscriber indicated that he did not care Plaintiff is
concerned that he may in fact do something rash to attempt to escape
liability in this case in the near future.

Boy Racer

Mass filesharing lawsuits have been predicated on the idea that an IP
address is all the information required to find out who shared a
copyrighted file online (or, at least, that it is all the information
required to find someone legally accountable for copyright infringement
occurring over their Internet connection). In the last two years, tens
of thousands of settlement letters have been sent to Internet
subscribers across the country, demanding a few thousand dollars from
them to make federal lawsuits go away.

That happened in this case, Boy Racer v. Doe, in Californias Northern
District. A judge refused to allow lawyers to investigate the initial
set of 52 IP address in a single case; instead, they could investigate
just one. After contacting the ISP in question, Gibbs had his
subscriber, but a one-hour phone call with the man on August 18
apparently convinced him that the subscriber knew nothing about it.

So Gibbs went back to court to tell Judge Paul Singh Grewal that he
needed to search every computer in the home. California lawyer Stewart
Kellar was at this hearing, and he noted that Grewal was plainly
irritated at the request.

Grewal asks, if the ISP subpoena info is insufficient, why did Boy Racer
only ask for that? Judge Grewal thought it was made clear from the
expedited discovery that the ISP info would be sufficient to allow this
case to succeed and now Im hearing that is not true

Grewal is getting stern, says: now Im hearing the early discovery is
insufficient, now Im hearing you need doc requests and interrogatories,
thats a whole lot more discovery than I was lead to believe, isnt it?
You cant get this discovery without a court order correct? Gibbs admits
that is correct

Gibbs is asking to inspect the subscribers hardware and any systems in
the household. Grewal asks: what if there are 5 computers in the
residence that accessed the IPs? What if there are half a dozen smart
phones? Grewal notes that in his house there are at least a dozen
connective devices

Grewal says if we allow this type of discovery in a case that hasnt
been severed, were looking at the search of potentially hundreds or
thousands of devices without anyone yet being named.

Looking through a defendant's hard drive is hardly unusual; Jammie
Thomas-Rasset had to turn hers over to an RIAA investigator as part of
her file-sharing lawsuit years ago. But the Boy Racer case is becoming
yet another example of the limits of IP addressesand an example of how
all the parties involved increasingly recognize these limits.