A consortium of independent film producers is hitting a stumbling block in its plan to simultaneously sue thousands of BitTorrent users for allegedly downloading pirated movies. Time Warner Cable is refusing to look up and turn over the identities of about a thousand of its customers targeted in the lawsuits, on the grounds that the effort would require three months of full-time work by its staff.

The brouhaha dates to March, when the U.S. Copyright Group launched its mass-litigation campaign, suing thousands of BitTorrent users by the IP addresses they used when feeding and seeding films like Steam Experiment, Far Cry, Uncross the Stars, Gray Man and Call of the Wild 3D. Unlike the similar music-industry lawsuit campaign, which spread its lawsuits out over years, the filmmakers hit ISPs around the country with subpoenas for hundreds of customers at a time, demanding Time Warner Cable comb through its records to identify past users by IP address.

Court filings suggest that none of the broadband providers is happy about servicing the mass subpoenas, but Time Warner Cable is fighting them in court, arguing that serious law enforcement requests for information could fall by the wayside if the company is forced into becoming the research arm of the independent film producers.

"Given its current staffing, it would take TWC nearly three months of full-time work by TWC's subpoena compliance group, and TWC would not be able to respond to any other request, emergency or otherwise, from law enforcement during this period," the company said in a court filing. "TWC has a six-month retention period for its IP lookup logs, and by the time TWC could turn to law enforcement requests, many of these requests could not be answered."

Time Warner says it can only reasonably forward the names of 28 account holders per month. Given that there are about a thousand IP addresses linked to Time Warner, that process could take years to learn the identities of the account holders, the filmmakers complain.

The filmmakers are now threatening to sue Time Warner for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement by fighting the demands for subscriber information in court. The U.S. Copyright Group cites the Supreme Court's 2005 Grokster decision, in which the justices cleared the way for lawsuits targeting companies that induce or encourage file sharing piracy.

"To the extent TWC's tactics are just that –- letting the public know that TW is a good ISP for copyright infringers, because TWC will fight any subpoenas related to infringers' activities –- TWC exposes itself to a claim for contributory copyright infringement," (.pdf) Thomas Dunlap, the Copyright Group's lead counsel, said in a federal court filing Tuesday.

Dunlap said Time Warner "is more intent on trying to avoid compliance, while currying favor with its subscribers and potential subscribers."

The Grokster decision paved the way for a federal judge two weeks ago to declare file-sharing-software maker LimeWire liable of facilitating copyright infringement on a massive scale, because it did not take "meaningful steps" to mitigate infringement. The Grokster ruling, though, has never been interpreted as barring an ISP from challenging subpoenas in court.

Time Warner told the District of Columbia judge presiding over the case that responding to 28 IP address lookups per month "is the outer limit of what TWC can reasonable handle" (.pdf). Any more would be "excessively burdensome and expensive."

Neither Dunlap nor Time Warner immediately responded for comment.

Comcast has tentatively agreed to forward the account holders' names, but reserved the right to object. CableVisions Systems, according to court records, is working on a "resolution" to the same issue faced by Time Warner Cable.

All targeted ISPs were given until May 31 to file a motion to object to disclosing account holders' names.

The indie filmmakers are taking a different tactic from their commercial counterparts. The Motion Picture Association of America, for the most part, has limited its lawsuits to BitTorrent sites themselves — like The Pirate Bay, TorrentSpy and Isohunt.

The RIAA's lawsuits against 20,000 alleged music pirates were focused on old-school file sharing systems like Kazaa and Limewire. BitTorrent file sharing is more complicated, with downloaders and uploaders collecting in transient swarms of so-called seeders and leechers.

In the Indie cases, the offending IP address were sniffed out by Guardaley IT, a German peer-to-peer–surveillance firm.

Hat tip: Hollywood Reporter

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