EFF writes amicus brief about thousands of individual copyright lawsuits

Earlier on this blog we reported on the legal developments across the ocean. In short, the U.S. producers of a few recently released movies, assisted by the lawyers of the U.S. Copyright Group, are attempting to obtain compensation from a large group of people who supposedly downloaded their films without permission via BitTorrent platforms.

Currently, the U.S. Copyright Group has already, through different ISPs, formally presented 5000 downloaders with a settlement proposal. The proposal includes a settlement amount of $1500 on the condition that the money is transferred within a few days. Thereafter, the settlement amount us increased to $2500. Who does not cooperate will be brought to trial with claims for "statutory damages" of up to $150,000.

ISP Time Warner Cable has already indicated that it can not process these numers of identification request and instead submitted a request to quat the individual cases.

U.S. technology-focused blogs TechDirt and ArsTechnica have reported already received many emails from people who received a settlement proposal and say they didn’t download the movie in question at all, but don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to give them advice or defend them.

This is one of the objections pointed out by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its amicus curiae. An amicus curiae is Latin for a 'friend of the court'. In the American (but not the Dutch) legal system, a person not party to the dispute may voluntarily provide information to help the court form a decision in the present case.

In its amicus letter, the Electronic Frontier Foundation claims to be worried about fairness, the right to a fair trial and individual justice due to the massive amount of individual copyright lawsuits against internet users. According to EFF i) the court would  lack jurisdiction over the vast majority of defendants, ii) the plaintiff has improperly joined thousands of individual defendants and iii) the court should make every effort to find a balance between the right to anonymous speech and the need for disclosure of identity.