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Judge Distinguishes Subpoenas over BitTorrent Sharing

By Zoe Tillman

Not all file-sharing websites are created equal, according to U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S District Court for the District of Washington.

Howell, writing in a series of opinions in May denying protective orders for potential defendants in separate but similar copyright infringement cases, noted that while similar orders had been granted in other file-sharing suits, the nature of the site in question, BitTorrent, raised new issues. “The plaintiff has provided detailed allegations about how the BitTorrent technology differs from other peer-to-peer file-sharing programs and necessarily engages many users simultaneously or sequentially to operate,” Howell wrote in Voltage Pictures LLC v. Does 1-5,000, 10-0873. The opinions were all similarly worded.

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