Canadian BitTorrent user fined $60,000 by U.S. Court

This week, a compelling piece of jurisprudence has been added to the ongoing stream of BitTorrent lawsuits in the U.S. A Canadian BitTorrent user has been ordered to pay over $60,000 by a U.S. District Court judge. The Calgary resident, who did not defend himself, was ordered to pay damages for sharing two films on an adult-oriented BitTorrent tracker.

Over the last year several mass-lawsuits were started against unnamed defendants, who are only identified by their IP-address. However, many US judges did not accept IP-addresses alone as sufficient identification of a defendant. Some copyright holders have also launched cases against named BitTorrent users, or have tried to obtain personal data of users to do so.

For example: adult entertainment studio Corbin Fisher. They sued Alan Phillips, who they claim had illicitly shared two of their movies on the BitTorrent tracker Gaytorrent.ru. The operator of this torrentwebsite gave the copyright holder information that could identify the defendant. Although no law required GayTorrent to do so, their cooperation allowed Corbin Fisher to directly target defendants, instead of having to ask the court for a subpoena.

In the initial complaint Corbin Fisher alleged that Phillips willingly infringed its copyright. Due to Phillips absence, Judge Houston was left with no choice but to order a default judgement as requested by the plaintiff.

In his ruling Judge Houston rejects the studio’s claim that the infringement was willful, just because Phillips used BitTorrent. This reduced the maximum damages from $150,000 to $30,000 per movie. Judge Houston did, however, rule that Phillips was guilty of copyright infringement. In this Court’s view, statutory damages of $30,000 per infringed work, for a total of $60,000 plus attorneys’ fees is reasonable.

In total Alan Phillips was ordered to pay a staggering $63,867 for sharing two files, which makes it one of the largest fines ever handed out to a P2P-user by a U.S. Court. Hopefully, Mr. Philips is able to set up a proper defence in the next few weeks and appeal this decision, because this verdict seems quite disproportionate to me. In any event, this case shows American judges will not hesitate to target a foreign copyright infringer and they will not be bothered by foreign ideas about what can be deemed an appropriate and proportional penalty.

References: Liberty Media Holding LLC vs. Quynn Alan Phillips - California Southern District Court, Case 3:2011cv0029; TorrentFreak