For the third time in less than a year, film studios with copyright infringement complaints against a cable Internet provider are trying to force Reddit to share information about users who have discussed piracy on the site.

In the first instance, US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech meant Reddit didn’t have to disclose the names, email addresses, and other account registration information for nine Reddit users.

Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a patent infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 movie titles, including Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Last Blood, and Tesla.

In her ruling, Beeler noted that while the First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, the film producers had already received the names of 118 Grande subscribers.

She also said the film producers had failed to prove that “the identifying information is directly or materially relevant or unavailable from another source.”

This week, as reported by TorrentFreak, film companies Voltage Holdings, which are part of the previous two subpoenas, and Screen Media Ventures, another film studio with litigation against RCN, filed a motion to compel [PDF] Reddit to respond to the subpoena in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

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[–] Got_Bent@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Fortunately for me, I'm too old to know how to pirate even if I wanted to do so.

However, I'm sure the fine people at Broderbund would like to have a long conversation with me from way, way back in the day.

Choplifter and Karateka took up hours and hours and hours of my elementary/middle school years.

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago (3 children)

If you were playing Choplifter in elementary school, you're really not THAT old. Or you are and that makes me old too, but I'm -hypothetically- completely capable of figuring out piracy. Don't short yourself, there's always room on the high seas.

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[–] snownyte@kbin.social 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

So, okay.

Let's say these film studios DO get 'permission' or 'access' of these IPs. Haven't we already proven in the court of law that IP Address does not equal a person? How come that is? Well, it's because people can hide under VPNs, they could use proxies, they could use open wi-fi, they can change their address by ISP request .etc

They aren't assigned permanent IPs and they aren't tied to their IPs through identity.

This whole effort is just a waste of their time, proving once again, that they're desperate for anything.

On the other hand, the r/piracy subreddit is full of entitled jackasses who pick you apart for stupid arbitrary reasons. I've posted news posts on there before as a means to inform the pirating community as to what to look for in case things could go wrong in the future, as a lead. And any time, people kept commenting like "WHUT DUS DIS HAVE TU DU WITH PIWACY?!" every fucking time.

I'd spell it out for them, I get downvoted, I get my post reported and it's removed. Seriously, fuck all of those e-begging pieces of shit.

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[–] KuroeNekoDemon@sh.itjust.works 13 points 10 months ago (6 children)

I believe under the first amendment in the US Constitution and section 2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada you cannot silence someone’s freedom of speech/expression just because they discussed something you don’t like. This legal claim is bullshit right from the start due to constitutional protections

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[–] JCreazy@midwest.social 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

After reading the article, it looks like the studios want the IPs to show that Frontier is allowing piracy on their ISP and they claim they don't want it for financial compensation.

[–] asteriskeverything@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

This is true.

What I also gathered from the article (for further context) is that these are the same lawyers who tried to the other 2 cases of piracy on reddit. This time the argument is that it is not a violation of the first amendment right because they want the data to go after the ISP

[–] rivermonster@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

End state capitalism, the coportocracy / oligarchy using the legal system they control to wield the fascist police forces against the people who don't behave like they're told. Meanwhile, taxing what little those people have to pay the salaries of those forces abusing them.

I mean, the studios are doing it right and following SOP.

They wrote the DCMA, used the congress they bought to pass it, the president the bought to sign it into law, and now will use the FBI and local militarized police to impose their will by force.

Constituon was an obstacle they did away with when they bought the Supreme Court.

[–] gregorum@lemm.ee 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

oh, boy, am I ever glad I overwrote all of my comments before deleting my account...

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