Canadian Court Rejects Reverse Class Action Lawsuit Against BitTorrent Pirates

The idea that a content owner can tell an isp "we think this guy is doing the bad thing with our content" and then tack on "oh and add on this hyperlink so we can sue them ... as a class / block of ip address" makes no sense.

So someone's ip address gets tossed in the mix and it's wrong, what? Then assuming they see it they have to join a class action lawsuit and deal with all that as an individual?

The entire process seems like it would be impossibly far down the road and the individual whose ip was just tossed in there ... can they prove "I didn't do it?" if the process just started with the rights holder saying "we think these people did, because we says so"?

this is the big takeaway for me of this article

> IP Address Is Not Sufficient The verdict also cites jurisprudence holding that an IP address alone is not sufficient to establish copyright infringement. It also requires proof that the defendant authorized or controlled the alleged infringements, instead of merely being the listed subscriber connected to an IP address. This is a critical finding when it comes to the class action approach where all defendants are treated similarly, as these nuances may differ greatly from person to person. “I cannot see how there is any basis in fact to conclude that the proposed class proceeding is preferable to individual actions because the individual issues in this case swamp whatever common issues there might be,” Justice Gleason writes.