The roads and approaches of P2P prosecution and litigation has, at a minimum, been approached in a slightly controversial manner.  Prior to 2003, copyright owners did not need to file a lawsuit to obtain an subpoena in order to unmask the identity of alleged copyright infringers, or p2p file sharers.  However, in 2003, an appeals court ruled that unless the information resided on an online service providers servers (sucn as Youtube, Twitter, etc.), a copyright holder was required to file a lawsuit in order to serve a subpoena requesting the identity of an alleged infringer.

In the most recent case of Arist Records, LLC vs. Doe 3, the RIAA detected what it claimed to be infringing activity on an IP address the university linked to the student. The unidentified student moved to quash a federal judge’s order that the university forward the student’s identity to the RIAA.The student asserted a First Amendment right of privacy on the internet, in addition to a fair-use right to the six music tracks in question.

The appeals court ruled in the RIAA’s favor after balancing a constitutional right to remain anonymous against a copyright owner’s right to disclosure of the identity of a possible “trespasser of its intellectual property interest.”

“To the extent that anonymity is used to mask copyright infringement or to facilitate such infringement by other persons, it is unprotected by the First Amendment,” the appeals court wrote.

And even if a defendant claims a fair-use right to the material in question, content owners have a right to learn the identities to commence a lawsuit, the court wrote.

“And although Doe 3 indicates that he ‘may’ have had a permissible purpose for copying and sharing the music found in his file-sharing folder,” the court wrote, “any assertion of such a purpose raises questions of credibility and plausibility that cannot be resolved while Doe 3 avoids suit by hiding behind a shield of anonymity.”