An anonymous reader cites TorrentFreak's report. Reddit is not required to share the IP addresses of the six users who made comments related to copyright infringement on the website. The company successfully protested a third attempt by a group of filmmakers who had planned to use the requested logs as evidence in a lawsuit against Internet provider Frontier. Rather than focusing on her anonymous Redditor, the filmmaker can directly track the ISP's subscribers. […] Early last year, a movie company first sent a subpoena to Reddit, asking for personal information from multiple users. Reddit refused to cooperate, defending users' right to anonymous speech, and a California federal court agreed. In a second attempt a few weeks later, several movie companies sent similar subpoenas to Reddit. This time, the request was more targeted, as all comments specifically mentioned her ISP being sued. Grande Communications. However, Reddit still refused to comply, emphasizing that its users' First Amendment rights were still at risk. After hearing arguments from both parties, Judge Laurel Beeler sided with Reddit again.
This denial was a further setback for the studio and its lawyers, but they were not willing to give up on this path to obtaining evidence so easily. Last month, they were in court again with similar but tweaked demands, this time in connection with a lawsuit targeting internet provider Frontier Communications. Broadly speaking, the third case was comparable to the others. Movie companies such as Voltage Holdings and Screen Media Ventures used comments by six Redditors to suggest that ISPs had failed to take appropriate action against repeat infringers, or that “lax” enforcement could potentially lead to pirated products. I wanted to show that I had played a role in attracting people to Japan. Contrary to previous requests, movie companies no longer asked for names or email addresses, only logs of applicable IP addresses. This allows commenters to remain anonymous, the lawyers argued, because “IP addresses are not personal.” Reddit again refused to hand over the information, claiming it violated users' rights to anonymous speech. The fact that only IP addresses need to be revealed doesn't change that, Reddit argued.
After both sides had a chance to present their arguments, the matter went to the desk of Federal Judge Thomas Hixson in California federal court. After reviewing the documents, Judge Hixon denied the motion to compel. […] Key to this decision is the so-called “2TheMart.com” standard, which was also applied in the two previous cases. In that light, the court sees no reason to reach a different conclusion. […] “While the court is not aware of any case in which the Ninth Circuit has refused to apply the First Amendment unmasking standard to IP addresses, other courts have held that “IP addresses cannot be unmasked,'' The same way posters provide fake names and addresses. ” “Therefore, the court has no reason to believe that providing an IP address does not constitute unmasking, which is subject to First Amendment scrutiny,” Judge Hixson wrote. “In short, the court found that Movants could not meet the 2TheMart standard because the evidence sought by Movants was available from other sources, including Frontier, during the normal discovery process.” If you are unable to obtain sufficient evidence, you can, of course, always try again. If anything, it shows that movie companies have no intention of giving up easily.