Patrick Collins, Inc. v. John Does 1-21

282 F.R.D. 161, 2012 WL 1190840, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57962
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Michigan
DecidedApril 5, 2012
DocketCivil Action No. 11-15232
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 282 F.R.D. 161 (Patrick Collins, Inc. v. John Does 1-21) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Michigan primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Patrick Collins, Inc. v. John Does 1-21, 282 F.R.D. 161, 2012 WL 1190840, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57962 (E.D. Mich. 2012).

Opinion

REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION TO DENY DEFENDANT JOHN DOE 18’S MOTION TO QUASH SUBPOENA AND TO DISMISS (DKT. NO. 6)

MARK A. RANDON, United States Magistrate Judge.

I. INTRODUCTION

Patrick Collins, Inc. (“Plaintiff’) is the registered copyright owner of the adult movie “Cutíes 2” (the “Movie” or “Work”). Plaintiff brought suit against 21 John Doe Defendants (collectively, “Defendants”) alleging direct and contributory copyright infringement of the Movie. Plaintiff claims that Defendants downloaded and uploaded the Movie [162]*162via a peer-to-peer protocol, BitTorrent. On December 16, 2011, this Magistrate Judge granted Plaintiffs motion for leave to serve third party subpoenas on Defendants’ Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) to obtain Defendants’ names and residential addresses (Dkt. No. 5).1

John Doe 18 (“Doe 18”) was among those Defendants whose names and addresses Plaintiff sought. Doe 18 moves to quash the subpoena served on his/her ISP and to dismiss Plaintiffs claims due to misjoinder (Dkt. No. 6). Judge Denise Page Hood referred the motion to this Magistrate Judge for a report and recommendation (Dkt. No. 4). The issues have been fully briefed (Dkt. Nos. 6, 9); oral argument was held on March 8, 2012.

The facts of this case are complex and highly technical, involving concepts of computer science, networking, and other technology. Despite this complexity, the straightforward and well-established permissive joinder rule governs the outcome. Because this Magistrate Judge finds that join-der is proper, IT IS RECOMMENDED that Doe 18’s motion to quash the subpoena and dismiss be DENIED.

II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Before delving into the workings of Bit-Torrent,2 a simplified overview of Plaintiffs claims may be helpful:

Plaintiff alleges that a specific individual received the Movie “Cutíes 2,” used a computer to break the Movie down into small pieces, and created a file that allowed the pieces of the Movie to be downloaded over the internet (Dkt. No. 1; Compl.). According to Plaintiff, each Defendant uploaded and downloaded pieces of the Movie through a series of transactions that can be traced back to this specific individual, known as the “Initial Seeder.” Everyone who can be traced back to this Initial Seeder is part of a common group of users (“Swarm”) downloading or uploading pieces of the Movie. BitTor-rent is the protocol that allowed Defendants to engage in their allegedly related transactions. Plaintiff alleges that Defendants are part of the same Swarm, and this makes them ripe for Joinder under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20.

Plaintiff chose to sue 21 potential defendants in the Swarm.3 Besides being in the same Swarm and copying the Movie, Plaintiff alleges that Defendants reside in the Eastern District of Michigan (based on their IP addresses).4

A. How BitTorrent Works: A Detailed Explanation

For the technologically challenged, a working definition of a few recurring terms is useful to understand how BitTorrent operates:

Glossary of Terms
Communication Protocol: Procedures that enable devices within a computer network to exchange information. Also known as a protocol. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms 440 (6th ed. 2003).
Hash Identifier: A way to uniquely identify an encoded file. There are many variations on this concept, however, it is simply a long string of letters and numbers that form a unique string. It is practically impossible for two Hash Identifiers to be [163]*163identical because of the extremely long string that is randomly generated for each piece when the Torrent is made.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): Another system of communication standards. HTTP is the protocol by which websites on the World Wide Web communicate with browsers; hence the HTTP before a website’s address.
File: A collection of related records treated as a unit. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms 797 (6th ed. 2003). A file can be a movie, a set of text, a picture, et cetera. The computer science use of the term is analogous to the term “file” in common parlance.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP): Another system of communication standards wherein a file is directly transferred from the server to the downloader.
Internet Protocol (IP): The set of standards responsible for ensuring that data packets transmitted over the Internet are routed to their intended destinations. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms 1101 (6th ed. 2003).
IP Address: The numeric representation of a device on a network that communicates using Internet Protocol. The address is of the form “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.”
Leecher: (1) A BitTorrent user who has not yet fully downloaded a file; (2) A user who has inhibited, or throttled, the upload speed setting in the Client Program so that it will download much more than upload; (3) A user who exits BitTorrent after the download is complete to prevent uploading to other peers.
Piece: An initial seeder breaks a file into pieces. The pieces are typically one-quarter megabyte in size; however, the last piece will be the size of the remainder. The Hash of the pieces is included in the Torrent file. At any given moment, a peer may be simultaneously uploading and downloading pieces from and to many different peers within the same swarm for the same Torrent. Bram Cohen, Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent, 1 (May 22, 2003), http://bittorrent.org/ bittorentecon.pdf
Seeder: A user who has downloaded the whole file and is uploading all of its pieces to other peers in the swarm. Cohen, Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent, supra.
Seeder, Initial: The individual who has taken a complete file (a movie, picture, program, or any other kind of computer file) broken it down into pieces, encoded it with Hashes, created the Torrent file with the data about that file and its tracker, and made the complete file available on BitTor-rent.
When users begin downloading from this initial seeder, a swarm is created; each individual in the first stage of the swarm downloads the same file from the same initial seeder with the same Hashes and then the file spreads virally with that same digital fingerprint as torrent
Swarm: A group of users downloading the desired file from each other, from seeders (if any are online), and from the initial seeder (if still online). Additionally, a swarm denotes that all of the users in it are downloading files with the same Hash Identifier.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL): The unique Internet address assigned to a Web document or resource by which it can be accessed by all Web browsers. The first part of the address specifies the applicable Internet protocol, for example, http or ftp; the second part provides the IP address or domain name of the location. Abbreviated “URL.”

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
282 F.R.D. 161, 2012 WL 1190840, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57962, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/patrick-collins-inc-v-john-does-1-21-mied-2012.