The Recording Industry Association of America recently started filing suit against college students who didn’t take the trade group up on the discounted out-of-court settlements it has offered. But one student at Boston University is trying to stop the industry in its tracks.
The student has filed a motion with a U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, asking that the RIAA’s “John Doe” subpoenas be quashed, ars technica reports. The recording industry has used those subpoenas to ascertain the names of song-swapping suspects identified only by their Internet-protocol numbers. But the new motion argues that federal courts have traditionally “disfavored” ex parte discovery tactics, like those provided by the John Doe subpoenas, in all but exceptional circumstances.
No other college students have tried this tack before, according to ars technica. But a few defendants in other song-swapping cases have filed similar motions, and all of them have been denied, said Ray Beckerman, a lawyer who runs the blog Recording Industry vs. the People. —Brock Read
