AffidavitDonda writes with this excerpt from Torrentfreak:
“A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US may spell the end of the ‘pay-up-or-else-schemes’ that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person. Among other things, Judge Baker cited a recent child porn case where the US authorities raided the wrong people, because the real offenders were piggybacking on their Wi-Fi connections. Using this example, the judge claims that several of the defendants in VPR’s case may have nothing to do with the alleged offense either. … Baker concludes by saying that his Court is not supporting a ‘fishing expedition’ for subscribers’ details if there is no evidence that it has jurisdiction over the defendants.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.