Though I find it a little disingenuous in that the judge notes a few other cases that have allowed the joinder to stand… but leaves out the many, many cases where all but one of the Does was dismissed from the suit. In this case, the court certainly bought Marc’s argument, and became one of a small number of courts not to throw out most of the Does sued. Marc Randazza, Liberty Media’s lawyer on these cases, and I disagree over whether lumping together a bunch of unrelated individuals is proper “joinder.” Randazza has argued that many other mass infringement lawyers do this wrong, but his decision to focus on those in a single swarm makes it a more effective argument.
We already, briefly, touched on the recent district court ruling in Massachussetts, in one of Liberty Media’s mass infringement cases, covering the tangential legal question of whether or not porn can even be covered by copyright, but the actual legal issues raised in the case are pretty interesting as well.