had a pretty in-depth writeup on what the courts thought.
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consumerist.com/2014/05/ ··· 10164613This part had my interest a bit
taken from above article link- credit to consumerist
The court said that two individuals who downloaded the same file five months apart are exceedingly unlikely to have had any interaction with one another whatsoever, and that Their only relationship is that they used the same protocol to access the same work.
An analogy was made to two individuals who play at the same blackjack table at different times.
They may have won the same amount of money, employed the same strategy, and perhaps even played with the same dealer, but they have still engaged in entirely separate transactions, writes the court, which vacated the lower courts order.
The court also wasnt convinced that AF Holdings had any intent to actually pursue legal actions against each of the individuals for which it sought account information.
We think it quite obvious that AF Holdings could not possibly have had a good faith belief that it could successfully sue the overwhelming majority of the 1,058 John Doe defendants in this district, explains the court. In seeking such information, AF Holdings clearly abused the discovery process.