Reddit Refused To Give Out Anonymous Users Linked To Piracy

In so-called subreddits, Reddit offers platforms for every conceivable topic, including piracy and file sharing. This always attracts the interest of the film industry, because they would like the names of the users involved there without success.

Removal for the film industry

Reddit is repeatedly confronted with legal attempts to divulge the names of suspected pirates. Most recently, the court was able to land another success, because this lifted an injunction in which the names of the users and other personal data were required.

A group of around 20 film producers had previously taken Reddit to court. They are taking action against a provider called Grande and want him to be held responsible for copyright infringement. The accusation is that Grande ignores piracy and does nothing about it. As TorrentFreak reports, Reddit is not directly involved in this but should provide access to evidence. But the plaintiffs failed for the second time.

Judge Laurel Beeler stated, “The question is whether this discovery is permissible despite users’ right to speak anonymously under the First Amendment. The court denies the motion because plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a compelling need for disclosure that overrides users’ right to anonymous expression of opinion under the First Amendment.”

Specifically, it is about statements from a Reddit discussion. In this, users talk about the fact that Grande does not publish the names of the pirates. Some of the comments date back to 2011, and there a user says, among other things, that he loaded “like crazy” via Grande torrents, but didn’t get any problems for it. Reddit countered, pointing out that the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is three years.