San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked an Illinois judge to quash subpoenas issued in a "reverse class action" lawsuit accusing thousands of people of illegally downloading pornography, and urged the court to dismiss the case. In a friend of the court brief filed Tuesday, EFF argued that the plaintiff's "class action" strategy is an improper attempt to sidestep the rights of the defendants.

 

EFF has been involved in a number of copyright troll cases where content owners and lawyers team up to try to obtain the identities of thousands of anonymous alleged file sharers at once in order to extract settlements from them. In response, judges across the country have been cracking down on such abusive strategies. Thousands of unnamed "John Does" targeted in lawsuits filed in California, Washington D.C., Texas, and West Virginia have been severed, effectively dismissing over 40,000 defendants. These rulings may have a significant impact on this misguided business model, which relies on being able to sue thousands of Does at once with a minimum of administrative expense.

 

In this case, OpenMind Solutions v. Does, the plaintiff has taken a new approach: calling its complaint a "class action" lawsuit against the alleged infringers. Normally a class action is used by a group of plaintiffs with similar complaints of a single defendant -- not a single plaintiff targeting thousand of defendants with no attorney in place to defend the rights of the accused. OpenMind then asked the court for permission to issue subpoenas seeking identifying information for the Does, which was granted without the opportunity for anyone to speak on the unknown defendants' behalf.