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> The plaintiffs have always maintained that they don’t intend to pursue legal action against the targeted Redditors.

Ok, sure. But wouldn't admitting to downloading movies off BitTorrent open them up to legal action from other parties? In other words, if you downloaded a Sony movie, couldn't they bring a case?

At the start of the piracy era the media companies went after individuals, but through some combination of bad PR and bad ROI that was abandoned long ago and they changed their strategy to get ISPs held accountable.
“We didn’t originally intend to sue, but then we saw their torrent history and our intentions changed.”
1. All written communications with RCN concerning piracy from Oct. 1, 2017 to the present.

2. Payment records to RCN from Oct. 1, 2017 to present.

3. All personal computing records pertaining to usage of BitTorrent from Oct. 1, 2017 to the present.

4. All social media account usernames used including for Reddit, Twitter and Facebook January 1, 2016 to present.

5. All Reddit posts and messages from Jan. 1, 2016 to the present

6. Records of all movie piracy websites (including but not limited to YTS, 1337x, RARBG, Torrent Galaxy, The PirateBay) that were used at your Internet service.

---

How do they expect anyone to say yes to those requests? They don't have power of discovery over some person not directly involved in their lawsuit, so are they just hoping that this person not only will comply but actually has any of this data? It seems Mr. S is stonewalling them and I'm not sure what they can do about it, even with a subpoena.

Any lawyers want to answer what the recourse is for someone who is just ignoring your requests?

Exert more imaginary pressure in the hope that they run scared and fold.

That said I'm inclined to believe that "Person S", the redditor, is not their target.

I'm inclined to think that RCN is the target, with deeper pockets, and they intend to prove that RCN facilitated many subscribers by "allowing" torrenting.

The merits of that case aside, the strategy would be to scare the pants off of RCN and perhaps get them to settle for fear that some subscribers or many will fold and deliver up correspondence that shows repeated warnings about torrenting with no actual action by RCN taken.

This is about US clients and the US ISP company RCN.

Australia has this already solved, there was a High Court case Hollywood et al Vs. IINET that came down solidly on the side of the ISP companu not having to monitor their subscribers torrenting activity, nor having to pass on customer personal data in response to requests based on IP addresses and ISP logs.

> I'm inclined to beleive that "Person S", the redditor, is not their target.

I think they're looking to set a precedent on leveraging a random person to obtain evidence usable against a big target. Once any customer can be leveraged against the ISP, the ISP will do the heavy lifting of of the hammer against such customers.

> Exert more imaginary pressure in the hope that they run scared and fold.

Uh, if you ignore a legally issued subpoena you end up with an arrest warrant and are usually quite promptly arrested. If that subpoena obliges you to hand over equipment and records those records and equipment are forcibly seized in the process.

Sorry but 'the law has no teeth' isn't how things work. Subpoenas are, in fact, enforced. Routinely. That's what enables the justice system to work.

I'm also pretty sure they want this 'person S' quite badly indeed and considering they want all their socials since Jan 1 2016 I'd imagine piracy is just the start of what they're looking for.

Reddit, reportedly, did not comply with three subpoena's in a row:

    Reddit wasn’t willing to go along with the request, at least not in full. The company objected, arguing that handing over the requested information would violate its users’ right to anonymous speech. Reddit later responded similarly to a second and third subpoena request.
It helps to have lawyers object to subpoenas.

As for Mr S. he can be compelled to respond to the subpoena for:

    1. All written communications with RCN concerning piracy from Oct. 1, 2017 to the present.
etc. by truthfully (?) stating that he no longer has these records.

> I'm also pretty sure they want this 'person S' quite badly indeed

To leverage them, quite possibly for immunity should they be able to make anything stick aside from an elaborate online fantasy life cosplaying as a pirate .. or not .. maybe. Absolutely.

I'd still argue that the main target here is bigger fish with deeper pockets - scare an ISP out of being casual wrt pirating, send a message to more ISP's, etc.

> I'd still argue that the main target here is bigger fish with deeper pockets

Based on what's been requested I'd say that this has almost nothing to do with RCN and is in fact almost entirely about this Mr. S, based on that person's social media account usage history being requested.

That, to me, suggests they know that this person isn't merely doing 'a bit of torrenting' but is perhaps part of (or even, orchestrating) some organised piracy scheme. Or more.

But I'm just speculating.

> That, to me, suggests they know that this person isn't merely doing 'a bit of torrenting' but is perhaps part of (or even, orchestrating) some organised piracy scheme. Or more.

This seems unlikely given they have an IP address and an ISP provider.

It's hard imagine that anyone involved in organised piracy schemes is actually using a raw ISP address rather than a logless VPN that laughs at warrents and subpoenas.

It's hard imagine that anyone involved in organised piracy schemes is actually using Piratebay with a "leads right back to them" address that shows up on https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/peer/ and other such tools that scrape public trackers.

Okay then; go ahead and speculate.

Why do you think they've requested this person's - almost - complete history of social media account usage since Jan 1 2016?

> Uh, if you ignore a legally issued subpoena you end up with an arrest warrant and are usually quite promptly arrested. If that subpoena obliges you to hand over equipment and records those records and equipment are forcibly seized in the process.

Maybe once you've read the article, you can run over to Reddit and tell them that.

"While Reddit declined to comply with recent subpoenas for subscriber information"

"Reddit wasn’t willing to go along with the request, at least not in full. The company objected, arguing that handing over the requested information would violate its users’ right to anonymous speech. Reddit later responded similarly to a second and third subpoena request."

Heh, we've went from "they were no angel" to "surely it will be proven they were no angel".
I think there's more going on here than merely a piracy investigation, it just has that smell to it.

But now that I see that RCN was acquired Nov 2020 (a pandemic acquisition) I'm back to agreeing that it's about RCN, not this Mr. S.

A very naive idea but why can't people just delete their data, put their drives in the washing machine and just hand over the computer and be like whoops it's broken?

If ever I'm the subject of a lawsuit that'd require me to turn in my computer, I'd scrub it to oblivion at the slightest intimation of what's happening.

Because that is illegal and the courts will be very sceptical about your claim that your drive just happened to break at such a convenient time.
It is technically illegal, but even politicians are doing it with 0 repercussions

https://www.politico.eu/article/wiped-phone-puts-von-der-ley...

that's a bad use of "even" - the elite get away with all sorts of things normal people do not.
Probably should be, "Especially".
Yes, but that is not trying to block a court and it was done six months before the data was requested.
not a lawyer, but how is it illegal if I do it before I am served with any sort of orders for discovery? I can just wipe my desktop, in a perfectly usable state, with some random applications installed.
It looks like it can be:

"a number of courts have issued rulings imposing a duty to preserve before litigation begins if a party knows of the existence of a potential claim and can identify relevant evidence."

https://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/delete-at-...

Existence of a possible claim. Isnt that always possible, for everyone, always, for any action?
yeah that's what I am confused about, sounds like a gray area, I don't know if me doing something I know is legal could set me up for lawsuits a year down the line so am I supposed to hoard data in the wait of being sued someday lest my data maintenance tic be used against me?

If I know I am doing something illegal then yeah the case against me could be stronger, but what about people who don't

I interpret that as knowing that a particular claim is possible and reasonably likely.
Being punished for either destroying evidence or contempt of court. Neither will be fun for you.
the semantics matter here though, in the absence of the existence of a lawsuit or any sort of legal proceedings is my data classified as "evidence"?
No it's not. No-one has claimed it is. The parent of this whole thread is "If ever I'm the subject of a lawsuit that'd require me to turn in my computer, I'd scrub it to oblivion at the slightest intimation of what's happening."

'So if I was being sued, I'd destroy evidence.' is a great way for the court to give you the hardest of times, and potentially jail time.

Can’t imagine enough people are torrenting these days to make the lawyer fees worthwhile spending for this.
It makes sense for it to be on the rise, the legit landscape now is dire. There are too many platforms to stream or purchase from. If you want to pay it’s difficult.

I understand torrenting offers one easy and convenient search, no ads, can download in advance of a journey, no country lock, no expiring downloads, no series disappearing off Netflix half way through watching.

Also, there are now cases where people legally lose access to purchased TV shows and movies, since the platform you purchased on has a licensing agreement change. Which sounds insane to me and will only encourage torrenting.
You’re often getting better quality from torrents too. Even if I have access to a movie on Netflix, the downloaded copy will likely look worse than a Blu-Ray rip, even one re-encoded down to a more digestible size. Streaming looks like ass, it’s optimized for “good enough for most viewer and not too heavy on the CDNs”.
Tears of the Kingdom had over one million public downloads even before its official release last year. It's probably less common than it used to be (especially for music) but it's still widespread.

I think the biggest change is that people at the bottom have moved on to iptv or paying for shared Plex accounts instead of doing the downloading themselves. The chain is still dependent on torrenting though.

Where is the 1M downloads stat from? I'd have imagined most people are using direct download sites to get such content.

edit: looking at Nintendo's complaint against Yuzu, it doesn't mention bittorrent or explain how they arrived at that number.

I think the daily stats might surprise you https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/en/stat/daily
Oh boy, here in Germany we have companies specialised in that, they buy isp data, track you down and sends you letters asking for $$$

Given the price and quality of paid services torrenting is coming back fast

Private trackers are alive and well, and demand is if anything increasing as media companies make the same mistakes all over again.
It never did.

The execs don't understand, if a kid cannot torrent a movie the kid cannot afford to buy it. Either way they don't make money.

Solution is very easy and Steam, early Netflix proved it.

Make your service affordable and convenient and you will win people with money.

Make your service expensive and inconvenient and people with money will be pushed to piracy cuz its less hustle and cost only time.

Even if there are a lot of people torrenting, would they actually spend money if they weren’t pirating it? Seems to me that someone pirates something when they weren’t willing to pay for it in the first place. Odds are, they might consume something else instead.
Who is allowing "filmmakers" to send a death squad after someone and try to request information they'll never get access to over not even actually pirating something but just talking about it?
This is what some collected info is. A hidden debt history on IP violations - and it's priced into the whole machinery. But if they sell it out en gross, and start collecting, then the "ignore privacy" jig is up.