Courts to Demand Heavy Proof in File Sharing Lawsuits

The United States are the land of opportunity, where everybody can sue anybody and even win. And moreover, the seemingly obvious decisions turn to eye-widening, jaw-dropping twists of plot. A recent ruling could be the turning point for the way cases are instrumented against file sharers.

A year ago, Atlantic Recording, Electra Entertainment Group, Interscope Records and giants Sony BMG Music Entertainment and BMG Music filed a lawsuit against Christopher David Brennan, a Waterford, Connecticut resident, after he was found to have 2,071 songs he allegedly infringed copyrights on his PC.

The record labels asked for a default judgment after David's mother did not show up in court, notice served. This situation would have had Brennan forced to pay for each track he had, among other remedies, PC World reports. The original complaint included the claim that the youngster used an "online media distribution system" to "make…available" the copyright infringed files.

The default judgment was not granted by District Judge Janet Bond Arterton because the "allegations of infringement lack any factual grounding whatsoever," and the suit has a "nonexistent factual record." Arterton delivered a huge blow to the template litigation strategy of the RIIA (Recording Industry Association of America), as Pamela Jones considered on the Groklaw blog.

What the decision says is that the finding of music tracks on a person's personal computer does not indicate that there has been some copyright infringement involved. Proving that will be very difficult, if not impossible, under certain circumstances, for the record labels.

Fred von Lohmann of Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote on his company's blog that "this ruling suggests that courts are not prepared to simply award default judgments worth tens of thousands of dollars against individuals based on a piece of paper backed by no evidence." It is not clear at this point if there is such evidence in the Brennan case.