DGW recently scored a major victory in its ongoing fight on behalf of filmmakers to combat internet movie piracy.  The firm, with the assistance of the intellectual property rights consortium The US Copyright Group, has filed several suits on behalf of the creators of The Hurt Locker, The Gray Man, Call of the Wild, and other titles.  Because the people downloading these works on the internet can only be identified by their Internet Protocol ("IP") addresses, the only way they can be identified is by filing a "John Doe" complaint against them and then seeking their identifying information by serving subpoenas on those users' Internet Service Providers.

Although not a party to the case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Public Citizen filed a brief with the DC District Court that is trying to stop these cases, seeking to prevent the filmmakers from enforcing their rights through these "John Doe" suits.  The EFF asserted three reasons why they believe the suits are improper.  First, they argued that all of the Doe defendants should not be grouped together in one lawsuit.  Second, they argued that the District Court does not have jurisdiction over all the Doe defendants.  And third, they argued that the infringers have a First Amendment right to speak anonymously on the internet and that such free speech fights should be extended to the act of piracy.

After full briefing on the issues, Judge Rosemary M. Collyer summoned the parties for a hearing to discuss EFF's arguments.  Following oral argument, the Judge ruled in DGW's favor on all three points.  The Judge found EFF's argument about a First Amendment right to infringe copyrights to be without merit.  The Judge also dismissed EFF's personal jurisdiction argument as premature because, before the Doe defendants are identified, the Court and the parties have no way of determining whether jurisdiction is proper in this Court.

Judge Collyer spent the most time discussing the issue of joinder-whether it is proper to join numerous Doe defendants in a single case.  EFF argued that each download is a discrete act of infringement that should be the subject of a separate lawsuit.  DGW replied that EFF's position ignores the nuances of the BitTorrent file-sharing technology that was used by the infringers in these cases.  Using BitTorrent software, an infringer connects to a group of hundreds or thousands of other users, all of whom are both uploading and downloading from one another simultaneously.  Therefore, DGW argued, all of the Doe defendants were acting in concert in their infringement and were therefore properly joined in the same case.  The Judge agreed and allowed DGW to proceed with its cases.