Judge will not let content owner subpoena ISPs to identify people by IP address

VPR International, a Canadian content producer, has filed a complaint against 1,017 Doe defendants for distributing its copyrighted material online.  The Doe defendants are identified only by their IP addresses, so VPR sought an order from the court allowing it to subpoena their internet service providers for the “subscriber and location associated with each IP address.”  U.S. District Judge Harold Baker denied this, noting that “an IP address might actually identify an individual subscriber and address, [but] the correlation is far from perfect… The infringer might be the subscriber, someone in the subscriber’s household, a visitor with her laptop, or someone parked on the street at any given moment.”

More Information:

• VPR Internationale v. Does 1-1017: ORDER denying 14 Plaintiff’s Motion to Certify the Court’s 3/9/11 Order for Interlocutory Review entered by Judge Harold A. Baker on 4/29/11.
• Kevin Parish for TorrentFreak. “Judge: An IP Address Is Not a Person.”
• Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for zdnet.com. “Court Rules Internet IP Addresses Are Not People.”