Judge blocks MPAA’s mass suits
Just after members of the Motion Picture Association of America filed 11 lawsuits against hundreds of people they accused of using file-sharing networks to share copies of movies, a U.S. District Court judge found the process improper and ordered the cases to be put on hold for all but one of the defendants.
In the wave of lawsuits, the MPAA sued individuals, identified only by their IP addresses, and demanded to know users' identities, Wired News reported. U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that because claims against the 12 defendants were unrelated, grouping the defendants together into one big case was improper.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed friend-of-the-court briefs citing objections to similar tactics used in cases filed by the Recording Industry Association of America against alleged copyright infringers.
