EFF Spreadsheet Documents Over 40,000 Severed ‘John Does’

SAN FRANCISCO—The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a comprehensive spreadsheet that lists all of the studios, movie titles, attorneys and number of dismissed and current John Does related to 36 mass defendant lawsuits in which judges dismissed 41,496 John Does accused of illegal file sharing. All but four of the lawsuits were filed in 2010. The Foundation also issued a warning that “some Does are still receiving notices from their ISP’s informing them that their identities are being sought in relation to these cases,” and asked that anyone who receives a request for “subscriber information in connection with one of the cases” to contact EFF immediately by emailing info@eff.org. The attorneys listed include Kenneth J. Ford of the Adult Copyright Company in West Virginia; John L. Steele of the Media Copyright Group in Illinois; Evan F. Stone of the Copyright Defense Agency in Texas; Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver of the Washington, D.C.-based US Copyright Group; and D. Gill Sperlein of California-based IO Group-Titan Media. All of the cases involved adult movies, except for those filed by Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver on behalf of mainstream studios, and one Evan Stone lawsuit. The list of adult studio is a veritable who’s who of producers, including Elegant Angel, Patrick Collins, Hustler Video, New Sensations, Lightspeed Media, Diabolic Video Productions, West Coast Productions, Axel Braun Productions, Third Degree and Harmony Films, among others. There also are some top titles in the mix, including This Ain’t Avatar XXX, Batman XXX: A Porn Parody, Debbie Does Dallas and Kings of New York, to name a few. According to EFF, which refers to these cases as “copyright troll lawsuits,” “The plaintiffs in these cases must now re-file against almost all of the Does individually rather than suing them en mass. These rulings may have a significant impact on the copyright trolls’ business model, which relies on being able to sue thousands of Does at once with a minimum of administrative expense.” AVN contacted longtime industry attorney Gill Sperlein for comment. He replied with a picture of an adorable, purple-haired troll doll. "How could you not love him?" he added. The spreadsheet can be accessed from the EFF website.