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Internet-Downloading Copyright Rulings
Default Judgment. The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland entered a default judgment, without a hearing, in favor of several TV-production studios that sued an individual for making their TV shows available to unauthorized peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharers. Disney Enterprises Inc. v. Delane, DKC 2005-1291. The studios accused the defendant, who operated www.btefnet.net, of making the plaintiffs' shows available to others through BitTorrent P2P software, which directs a user's computer through the Internet to the location of digital files. The court noted in its default-judgment ruling: '[Defendant] Delane used his [software] trackers and Web site to facilitate the reproduction and distribution of those copyrighted works and the site allowed users to sort torrents by the title of television shows available for download. Delane could view, in real-time, a list of all of the files his trackers were helping to distribute, he exercised total control over the infringing activity on his torrent site, and decided exactly what torrents were indexed on the site and what files his trackers were helping to distribute. Finally, these acts of infringement by Delane were willful, intentional, and purposeful.'
Preponderance of Evidence. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania found that Paramount Pictures established by a preponderance of the evidence that an individual infringed on the studio's copyright in the motion picture, 'Lemony Snicket's: A Series of Unfor-tunate Events' by making an illegal copy of the film available on the Internet. Paramount Pictures v. Davis, 05-0316. Based on information it obtained from the Internet detective agency, BayTSP, Paramount claimed the defendant had been the 'first propagator' when he posted the entire movie on the eDonkey peer-to-peer file-sharing network 1 week after the film's theatrical release. The district court decided that Davis ” who had cleaned his hard drive of all data after Paramount filed its suit ” had been correctly identified as the infringer by noting: 'Although BayTSP could not identify the type of computer the infringer was using, the operating system of the computer that distributed the motion picture, or the version of eDonkey that was used the upload the motion picture, BayTSP identified and tracked the motion picture file's metadata, the date and time at which the motion picture was downloaded, the infringer's IP address, the percentage available for download on the infringer's computer, and the infringing computer's unique hash number. Although [Davis's Internet service provider] Comcast did not track the bandwidth usage of the relevant computer, it thoroughly reviewed its subscriber logs and, using information supplied by BayTSP, identified Davis' account as the origin of the infringement. It was therefore not necessary for BayTSP and Comcast to have information regarding the type of computer, the operating system, and version of eDonkey to determine that the computer at his IP address was used to distribute an infringing copy of the motion picture. Similarly, Paramount need not produce an eye witness to Davis' infringement to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that he illegally distributed the motion picture.'
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