JUDGE DENIES 943 SUBPOENAS IN CENTURY MEDIA/LACUNA COIL ILLEGAL DOWNLOADING LAWSUIT

It’s been a minute since there’s been any news on Century Media’s lawsuits against illegal downloaders of Lacuna Coil’s Dark Adrenaline and Iced Earth’s Dystopia. But now there is news, and it’s a pretty interesting development: U.S. District Judge Faith S. Hochberg (pictured right, in case anyone who was just spared thousands of dollars in legal fees wants to buy her a beer or something) has rejected 943 subpoenas against torrent downloaders of the Lacuna Coil release, ruling that “there must be a connection between defendants beyond the copyrighted work and method of distribution, namely that defendants were involved in the same transaction with the same downloader at the same time.” In other words: you can’t just lump all these torrent users in together, as the suit filed by New Jersey attorney Jay R. McDaniel on behalf of Century Media did. As a result, only one John Doe — apparently the single unluckiest person on the planet — remains as a defendant.

These 943 illegal downloaders aren’t quite out of the woods yet — apparently Century and McDaniel can try again, as long as they adhere to the terms set by Judge Hochberg (meaning they bring individual suits against the 943 dismissed defendants) — and I’m not really sure where the number 944 came from, given that initials reports claimed the suits had been brought against 3,136 people who obtained Dark Adrenaline via BitTorrents, so… it seems like there are 2,192 missing from this news. Nor does this story address the 4,327 fans who were being sued for downloading Dystopia. I’d love to try and do some follow-up but the report that initially ran the story didn’t cite a source (as that site is wont to do).

More news as it becomes available.