Voltage launches class-action piracy lawsuit

Voltage Pictures LLC is seeking certification in Federal Court for a class-action lawsuit against respondents who illegally file-shared its content. The document, filed Tuesday, asks the court to declare that the respondents infringed its copyright to five movies, to issue injunctions forbidding the respondents from engaging in that infringement, and to order damages. The movies cited in the document are: The Cobbler, Pay the Ghost, Good Kill, Fathers and Daughters and American Heist. It added the identities of those respondents aren’t currently known to Voltage, though the individuals “may be identified through their respective IP addresses.” In a blog post Thursday, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist said the move was unusual. “The use of reverse class actions is very rare in Canada,” he said, noting that “only a few have been reported,” and that similar attempts in the United States in recent years weren’t successful. While class actions “typically involve a representative plaintiff who represents many others who have suffered the same harms from the actions of the defendant,” reverse class actions have one plaintiff and multiple defendants, he explained. “The case raises many questions, most notably whether a reverse class action can be used as an effective technique to target copyright infringement,” he said. Geist added that there are a number of challenges to the strategy, such as questions about who will pay for legal counsel, who will represent the class “when the only named representative is John Doe #1,” and whether defendants will simply be able to opt out of the class. Geist added that “at first glance this Voltage lawsuit is a puzzling strategy that should face stiff opposition from courts concerned with procedural fairness and appropriate representation of the interests of all class members.” Hayes eLaw LLP lawyers Adam Jacobs and Mark Hayes also questioned in a blog post Thursday whether the court is likely to grant class-action certification to the suit, stating that “by alleging secondary infringement and seeking to certify a class action against numerous unknown defendants, Voltage’s Notice of Application may just be a little too creative for a judge to certify a class action.” Voltage previously attempted to combat filesharing of its content in Canada in a court case involving TekSavvy Solutions Inc. --

Voltage launches class-action piracy lawsuit

Brief | April 28, 2016

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Voltage launches class-action piracy lawsuit

Brief | April 28, 2016

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