Ernesto Van der Sar writes:
Over the past decade and a half, hundreds of thousands of alleged BitTorrent pirates were taken to court for sharing mostly video content without permission from rightsholders.
While this activity is still ongoing, at least to a degree, not all courts have welcomed this type of lawsuit.
On several occasions, courts dismissed piracy claims after ruling that “an IP address is not a person”. In 2014, for example, Florida federal court Judge Ursula Ungaro dismissed a lawsuit ruling that IP address evidence can’t identify the person who allegedly shared a pirated movie.
Geolocation software might make a reasonably accurate estimate of where the associated account holder lives, but even if an exact home address is known, an IP address can’t identify the person who used it to pirate.
“Even if this IP address is located within a residence, the geolocation software cannot identify who has access to that residence’s computer and who would actually be using it to infringe Plaintiff’s copyright,” Judge Ungaro explained.
Filmmakers who use IP addresses as piracy evidence are generally not keen on this conclusion, especially when it gets in the way of their legal efforts. Intriguingly, however, several movie companies now hope to use it to gain an advantage in their dispute with Reddit.
Read more at Torrent Freak.