Hey everyone!
Today I bring you the story of Bryan White, a Pennsylvania resident who found himself
the subject of a bittorrent-based file sharing lawsuit and ended up with a $241,000 judgement.
Upon receiving notice on the lawsuit, his reaction was to file a motion to quash the
subpoena to identify him as the ISP subscriber.
If he won this motion, the plaintiff would never know who he was.
Unfortunately, the judge in the case, Michael Baylson, of the Eastern District of PA, denied
the motion and forced Mr. White and four others into litigation.
This was one of the first bittorrent lawsuits to reach the litigation stage.
It was certainly the first that Judge Baylson had seen.
The defendants' motion to dismiss the lawsuit was denied by the judge.
He ordered discovery, which came in the form of a request for the defendants' hard drives.
Once on notice of a legal claim, parties have a duty to preserve evidence and turn it over
when ordered by the court or dictated by legal procedure.
Now, different people have different reactions to things.
Mr. White's reaction to receiving a subpoena for his hard drive was to completely erase
the drive, place it into an encrypting USB case, reinstall Windows, name the drive "Squeaky",
and turn that over, including the USB case, to the Plaintiff's investigator.
The best part is that it almost worked.
The first thing any forensic investigator is going to do is exactly what was done in
this case.
The examiner removed the drive from the USB case and made an exact copy, then began scanning
that drive.
Because the drive was out of its case, the data was encrypted, and the examiner was stumped.
It could have ended there, but before the parties could fight over the contents of the
drive, the examiner died.
Completely separately, completely unexpectedly, he died, leaving his business partner to pick
up where he left off.
The second examiner began to experience the same issues, and, a month or so away from
trial, several emergency motions were made.
Mr. White's attorney was claiming that the Plaintiff's investigator was incompetent,
meanwhile the investigator was crying foul play.
Judge Baylson ordered an independent investigation, and that's where Mr. White's plan unravelled.
The new investigator figured out the USB enclosure trick very quickly, and identified the recent
installation of Windows.
Microsoft was subpoenaed as to the date of Window's reactivation, which turned out to
be three days after Mr. White received the subpoena for the drive.
On the date of trial, Mr. White appeared before the judge along with his computer.
The plaintiff's lawyer, Keith Lipscomb, had prepared his trial presentation with a theme
of rubber ducks and bath time to represent the "Squeaky" clean nature of the drive.
After both parties' testimony, including the presentation of the investigators, Mr. White
settled his case.
The judge allowed it, and even bifurcated, or separated, the finding of liability from
the finding of damages so that settlement could be had.
The judge did rule that statutory damages for one bittorrent infringement in that case
was worth $2,250, or three times the minimum statutory damages of $750.
But Judge Baylson found Mr. White was liable for more than a standard amount due to his
misconduct.
The judge multiplied his damages by ten, for a total of $22,500 per title.
Mr. White had been accused of downloading 5 titles, making his damages $112,500.
Then the judge found Mr. White liable for all of the costs of the investigation as well
as the plaintiff's attorney's fees, bringing the total to just shy of $241,000.
Pretty amazing result, huh?
Also amazing is the over 5,000 bittorrent-based file sharing lawsuits that have been filed
since then.
Tune in next time when I'll talk those cases and about the attorneys that are in the process
of being disbarred over their fraudulent use of copyrights they didn't own.
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I sincerely love you all.
I am Leonard French.
Thank you for watching.