For the third time in lower than a 12 months, movie studios with copyright infringement complaints towards a cable Web supplier are attempting to power Reddit to share details about customers who’ve mentioned piracy on the location.
In 2023, movie corporations misplaced two makes an attempt to have Reddit unmask its customers. Within the first occasion, US Justice of the Peace Choose Laurel Beeler dominated within the US District Courtroom for the Northern District of California that the First Modification proper to nameless speech meant Reddit didn’t must disclose the names, electronic mail addresses, and different account registration info for 9 Reddit customers. Movie corporations, together with Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a copyright infringement lawsuit towards Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 film titles, together with Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Final Blood, and Tesla.
Within the second occasion, the identical corporations sued Astound Broadband-owned ISP Grande, once more for alleged copyright infringement occurring over the ISP’s community. The studios subpoenaed Reddit for person account info, together with “IP deal with registration and logs from 1/1/2016 to current, title, electronic mail deal with, and different account registration info” for six Reddit customers, per a July 2023 court docket submitting.
In August, a federal court docket once more quashed that subpoena, citing First Modification rights. In her ruling, Beeler famous that whereas the First Modification proper to nameless speech just isn’t absolute, the movie producers had already obtained the names of 118 Grande subscribers. She additionally stated the movie producers had did not show that “the figuring out info is instantly or materially related or unavailable from one other supply.”
Third piracy-related subpoena
This week, as reported by TorrentFreak, movie corporations Voltage Holdings, that are a part of the earlier two subpoenas, and Display screen Media Ventures, one other movie studio with litigation towards RCN, filed a movement to compel [PDF] Reddit to reply to the subpoena within the US District Courtroom for the Northern District of California. The studios stated they’re in search of the data regarding claims they’ve made that the “capability to pirate content material effectively with none penalties is a draw for changing into a Frontier subscriber” and that Frontier Communications “doesn’t have an efficient coverage for terminating repeat infringers.” The movie studios are claimants towards Frontier in its chapter case. The studios are represented by the identical attorneys used within the two aforementioned circumstances.
The studios are asking that the court docket require Reddit to supply “IP deal with log info from 1/1/2017 to current” for six nameless Reddit customers who talked about piracy on Reddit. Though, Reddit posts shared within the court docket submitting solely date again to 2021.
Reddit responded to the studios’ subpoena with a letter [PDF] on January 2 stating that the subpoena “doesn’t fulfill the First Modification normal for disclosure of figuring out info concerning an nameless speaker.” Reddit additionally famous the 2 beforehand quashed subpoenas and instructed that it didn’t must adjust to the brand new request as a result of the studios might purchase equal or higher info elsewhere.
As with the beforehand talked about litigation towards ISPs, Reddit is a non-party. Nonetheless, for the reason that movie corporations claimed that Frontier had refused to supply buyer figuring out info and Reddit responded with a denial to the requests, the movie corporations filed their movement to compel.
The studios argue that the data requests don’t implicate the First Modification and that the rulings across the two aforementioned subpoenas should not relevant as a result of the brand new subpoena is just about IP deal with logs and never different user-identifying info.
“The Reddit customers wouldn’t have a acknowledged privateness curiosity of their IP addresses,” the movement says.
