Last year, lawyers from the US Copyright Group filed a federal lawsuit against 4,577 anonymous Internet users accused of sharing the film Far Cry through BitTorrent. Fed up with the fact that nearly everyone sued in the case lived outside of her jurisdiction, federal judge Rosemary Collyer eventually forced the US Copyright Group to drop most of its lawsuit targets in December 2010. The case continued with a few anonymous defendants and a single named defendant—Adrienne Neal of Washington, DC, where the case was brought.

Neal was served with court papers four days after Christmas, and her response was demanded by January 19. No response came. US Copyright Group lawyers then had the court clerk declare Neal to be in default, and last month they asked the judge to fine Neal $30,000 plus more than $3,000 in attorney fees.

Neal, who claims that she cannot afford a lawyer and had no idea she was supposed to respond, has just drafted a three-page letter to the court; the judge allowed it into the official docket. It movingly illustrates why the current mass litigation approach to dealing with P2P file-sharing infringement is so damaging: it pits those with money and legal expertise against those who may have neither, and even attempting to clear your name can cost huge amounts of cash.

Neal claims total innocence, telling the court she is open to a complete forensic inspection of her computer. She has never used or downloaded a BitTorrent client, she says, and before this case had “never before heard of the plaintiff's movie.” The claim is impossible for us to verify, of course, and it is true that some file-sharing defendants (like Joel Tenenbaum in Massachusetts) have lied for years, only to recant on the witness stand.

But Neal, who is incensed about the "false accusations that have caused much pain and suffering in my household recently," certainly makes an impassioned plea.