Decision confirms that illegal P2P users can expect to get sued many miles from home.
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has handed another procedural victory to plaintiff record companies in a copyright infringement suit relating to music traded over P2P networks. The court ruled that it had personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state accused file-sharer merely because the defendant offered sound recordings to the public and was able to download recordings made available by others.
Plaintiff record companies filed suit against 35 John Doe defendants, identifying those defendants by their IP addresses and the songs they were accused of illegally distributing. John Doe #18, who was notified of the suit by his ISP Verizon, asked the court to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction, arguing that he did not have sufficient contacts with the District of Columbia.
The court denied John Doe #18’s motion to dismiss. For one thing, the motion was premature. “Simply, the parties [could not] formally litigate any aspect of personal jurisdiction until the defendant [had] actually been identified.” Without knowing who the defendant was, the court could not tell whether it had jurisdiction.
As it turns out, the prematurity of the motion was inconsequential. The court held that, anonymous or not, the plaintiffs established that the court had personal jurisdiction over John Doe #18. By simply contracting with Verizon, a “District of Columbia-based ISP,” and using a Verizon facility to trade files, John Doe #18 was “transacting business” in the District, and caused tortious injury in the District.
Further, by simply making files available for download by others through his file-sharing software, and being able to download other files, John Doe #18 “clearly directed tortious activity into the District of Columbia.”
Finally, citing to the case of Gorman v. Ameritrade Holding Corp., 293 F.3d 506 (D.C.Cir. 2002), and the famous case of Zippo Mfg. Co. v. Zippo Dot Com, Inc., 952 F.Supp. 1119, (W.D.Pa.1997), the court held that John Doe #18’s computer was “transformed . . . into an interactive Internet site.” This “interactivity” provided the sort of “continuous” and “systematic” contacts with the forum sufficient to support personal jurisdiction over the defendant.
Virgin Records America, Inc. v. Does 1-35, Slip Copy, 2006 WL 1028956 (D.D.C., April 18, 2006).