YNOT – The Illinois Supreme Court has weighed in on a porn piracy lawsuit that attempts to break new ground in the copyright wars.
On June 27, the state supremes ordered a lower court to allow a motion to quash filed by several internet service providers. In April, Circuit Judge Robert P. LeChien dismissed the motion, which sought to prevent Lightspeed Media Corporation from demanding the identities of about 6,500 U.S. residents accused of sharing passwords in order to gain illicit access to the membership areas of Lightspeed’s adult websites.
The lawsuit, Lightspeed Media Corporation vs. John Doe, filed in December, is notable because it is the first to attack content pirates from a new direction. Instead of alleging copyright violation, the Lightspeed case accuses the anonymous defendants of engaging in a password-trading conspiracy that qualifies as illegal hacking.
Lightspeed’s unconventional approach seemed to be working well in April, when LeChien dismissed the ISPs’ motion to quash Lightspeed’s subpoenas seeking personal information about end-users. The ISPs — including AT&T, BellSouth, Verizon Wireless, Centurytel, Cox, Embarq, Qwest, Wayport and Comcast — fought back, filing procedural and substantive challenges with the state’s supreme court.
“Lightspeed and its lawyers aren’t really interested in pursuing their claims against a single individual in St. Clair County [Ill.], nor are they interested in any discovery pertinent to those claims,” according to a court filing by one group of ISPs. “They actually want to harvest settlements of several thousand dollars each from individual internet service subscribers to be identified from a list of approximately 6,600 IP addresses located across the nation that are said to have accessed Lightspeed’s website wrongfully.”
The ISPs argued Lightspeed has no evidence to support its claims of conspiracy or hacking, and therefore not only filed the case in the wrong court, but also was attempting to abuse the rules of discovery.
The state supremes responded with a tersely worded supervisory order: “…[T]he Circuit Court of St. Clair County is directed to … enter an order allowing the motion to quash subpoenas filed by movants….”
According to Lightspeed attorney John Steele, the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision represents only a minor setback. The justices quashed the subpoenas only for the ISPs who appealed, not for all of the ISPs affected by the case. In addition, Steele indicated, his client has other options and arguments to present.
“We are certainly not going to give up, especially since we are very early in the case,” Steele told YNOT.com. “Although we are disappointed in the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court, the decision in no way prevents us from getting the names of the pirates completely. In fact, we are in the process of amending the complaint and naming several defendants, including the ISPs themselves. We hope to have the amended complaint filed very shortly, and we are confident that we will obtain the information we seek from the ISPs shortly thereafter.”
He also remains confident that his client has a strong case against the alleged password traders.
“The Illinois Supreme Court did not say anything was wrong with our case, or that we were not allowed to proceed,” Steele noted. “The court simply had a problem with the initial order from the trial court. Discovery is very liberal in this country, and clearly we need the names of the alleged infringers before we can proceed in this litigation. We have already named and served dozens of infringers all over the country whose information had been provided by ISPs prior to [the Illinois justices’ ruling], and we will continue to fight on behalf of our client and against piracy.”
Steele also hinted that amendments to the lawsuit may introduce an even broader complaint.
“It is interesting to see ISPs, who claim to be fighting piracy, spending millions of dollars to fight tooth and nail to shelter pirates,” he said. “It is pretty apparent to most people, including the pirates, that certain ISPs are willing to work with pirates on a quid pro quo basis, in effect saying ‘If you pay us a monthly subscription fee to conduct piracy, we will protect you by fighting any efforts by copyright holders to find out who you are.’ We believe strongly that the state courts in Illinois will prevent this ‘protection racket’ from continuing, just as most federal courts have.”
The Illinois circuit court has not indicated whether it will continue with a hearing previously scheduled for July 20 or revise the hearing date in order to provide all parties with time to regroup.
The case is no. 11L683 on the docket in the Circuit Court for the 20th District Judicial Circuit in St. Clair, Ill.
