Verizon Tells Judge: Porn Copyright Troll Is Wasting Everyone’s Time With “Defective” Subpoenas

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Porn producer Malibu Media, which has filed more than 4,000 copyright lawsuits since 2009 — several times more than any other company — is currently trying to compel Verizon to reveal the identities of Internet users Malibu believes are illegally sharing its movies. But lawyers for the telecom titan are telling the court they’ve had enough of Malibu’s “defective” and “unenforceable” subpoenas. As is the usual tactic with porn copyright trolls, Malibu has filed lawsuits against “Doe” defendants. It has issued subpoenas to Internet service providers like Verizon to get the ISP to translate anonymous IP addresses to actual customer names. Once identified, these customers will then be approached by the troll’s legal team with the offer of paying a cash settlement to keep their potentially embarrassing porn predilections out of the public record. Verizon, like some other ISPs, is tired of being involved in these questionable legal actions and is telling one federal court that Malibu is abusing the system. In a filing [PDF] this week regarding one ongoing Malibu copyright case, Verizon’s lawyers explain to the judge that the company’s time is being wasted on subpoenas from the porn purveyor. “Plaintiff’s subpoena of Verizon is defective on its face and would impose an undue burden on Verizon, which has been required to respond to many hundreds of subpoenas from Malibu Media alone,” reads the letter. The lawyers accuse Malibu of dumping the subpoena on Verizon less than a week before the deposition date, while also seeking “a wide range of information from Verizon that is not discoverable.” Beyond that, Verizon says the subpoena in this case is “unenforceable” as federal rules on subpoenas limit the distance Malibu can compel someone to appear for a deposition. In this case, Verizon says Malibu is trying to force Verizon employees who work in the D.C. area to travel to San Angelo, TX, with only a few days notice — and for these employees to bring relevant documents with them to the deposition. And Verizon argues that some of the documentation sought by Malibu — correspondence between Verizon and the subscriber, information about the rental of modems or other equipment, and Verizon’s general policies and procedures — is “either irrelevant, more properly sought from a party to litigation, or outside the scope of discovery contemplated by the Cable Act.” That law prohibits cable operators from disclosing, among other things, the “extent of any viewing or other use by the subscriber of a cable service or other service provided by the cable operator, or… the nature of any transaction made by the subscriber over the cable system of the cable operator.” “This is precisely the information Malibu Media seeks from Verizon,” the company’s lawyers argue. “The information is not discoverable and an extension of the discovery cut-off to pursue it should not be permitted.” [via TorrentFreak]

1. by Chris Morran
2. via Consumerist

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