98% BitTorrent Users Being Sued In Wrong Jurisdiction?

How can 98% of all the people being sued be in the wrong jurisdiction? How and why is that even possible?

After a major copyright settlement case featuring The Expendables was found to be fatally flawed last month, United States Copyright Group and client Nu Image dropped the case. Now, sidestepping an uncooperative judge in Columbia, the team are hoping to get more joy from one of his counterparts in Maryland, but they still haven’t learned their lesson. Tests by TorrentFreak reveal that 98% of 4,165 potential defendants in the case are being sued in the wrong jurisdiction.

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Cause companies and government are having intercourse with each other. They're not even wearing protection either.

It's possible because determining proper jurisdiction is REALLY hard? Looking back at the law class I took in business school no one got jurisdiction and as I know it law students spend forever learning about it and still are fuzzy afterwards. Interstate & International is a nightmare.

What a coincidence, CBS films has just appeared on my product blacklist.

Whoa, incredible ignorance and greed

It's sad, but I can't really say that I'm surprised.

Mistakes happen when you sue 1000s of people, something is bound to get messed up.
But surprised people haven't learned by now that using bittorrent to get movies will get you sued.

Galvin said:

Mistakes happen when you sue 1000s of people, something is bound to get messed up.

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Mistakes? Are you on crack? These firms knew damned well what they were doing. Trying to save money and skirt the justice system.

Gotta love it, companies are putting legalese in their ToU/ToS agreements that say you can't sue them via class action, yet here we go another side of things trying to sue people based upon a class action status. "We don't know who all it is, but we're going to try to sue them, then when we win we can find who they are at our leisure, ignoring the fact they never had a chance to defend themselves"

Hope this case is thrown out as well.

Galvin said:

Mistakes happen when you sue 1000s of people, something is bound to get messed up.
But surprised people haven't learned by now that using bittorrent to get movies will get you sued.

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Accuracy isn't a concern to these companies. That being said, I hope you get sued and have to defend yourself against a large corporation for a movie you didnt download. That'd be some lulz.

Addtionally, the reason they sue thousands of people at a time in the wrong jurisdiction is that judges dont understand technology and the companies hope the judges will approve subpoenas to the ISP's so the companies can identify the users then send "we will sue you unless you pay us" letters (really, it's extortion under a different name). Often enough Judge's dont understand technology and will approve the subpoena. After that, the company doesn't even need to go to court to get money. They can still send the letters WITHOUT suing and are able to get money just on the threat to sue. Then if you, as a defendant, actually take them to court they just drop the lawsuit and there's not much you can do in response. So it's a win-win for the companies to try to sue in the wrong jurisdiction.

I remember a recent case where a judge told a lawyer that he had to first prove that each and every John Doe was a citizen of the state they were in before the suit could proceed.

They're just wasting the court's time (and state tax money) prosecuting people who aren't even in that state.

I can't wait until some DA with big nuts and a political agenda starts pinching these a-holes for extortion. Once you get about ten or so of these guys seriously thinking they are going to jail, you will be sure to get some canaries in the bunch that won't mind exposing all the illegal things they and their buddies have been doing. Then you can burn down the rest with RICO. What a joyous day that will be.

I really don't see how this isn't extortion. Say I saw my neighbor key the car of the guy across the street. Then I sent him a letter saying that I saw him and he must pay me the sum of $3,000 or I will expose him. Guess what? That is a crime. Not only is it a crime, it is a felony!

H@RD5 said:

Hope this case is thrown out as well.

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Not only that, but they should be fined for wasting the court's time too.

There has to be some kind of punishment to stop these companies from being trigger-happy with their lawsuits.

What these companies don't understand is they are just making it worse by going after people. If they just left it alone, it wouldn't be that bad. Most of the people who usually download things wouldn't buy it in the first place, so it's not really a lost sale anyway. Now they are just pissing off people who intend to buy it and they are in turn boycotting them with their money.

I think Microsoft learned this lesson with Windows XP or Vista, where they were so about trying to stop piracy in a force able manner, only to realize the less they cared, the less their software got pirated.

It would be an interesting to us if the court system starting charging their time to the plantiffs at a cost of x2 or higher factor in the matter of civl cases like this.