To kick start the end of your working week; we’ve got one of the most interesting lawsuits of late. No it’s not another Apple vs. Android patent fight but rather, it’s a lawsuit from a California porn studio called Imperial Enterprises. Imperial Enterprises recently sued 3,500 people for illegally downloading the company’s pornographic content, but one of the defendants claimed that there was no way he would or could have illegally downloaded the content.
His defense? He’s a blind man. Imperial Enterprises had tracked the downloaders by using their IP addresses, and it just so happened that whoever was downloading the porn was piggy backing the blind man’s unsecured WiFi connection. He lives in a house with his wife and two kids, aged 4 and 6 – “so they don’t watch porn either. Well, hopefully they don’t”, he said.
Unfortunately for this man, there’s no way around for him than to pay the fine – he doesn’t have the money to afford a lawyer to counter the lawsuit, and he doesn’t have the money to pay up either if he lost the lawsuit. Since big companies don’t care about who they sue (i.e. in this case they have 3,500 people to deal with) – they just want their money. I guess we can all learn from this story the importance of password-protecting your WiFi network, lest you be the victim of another illegal download lawsuit.