A U.S. federal court on Saturday, July 29, said Reddit does not have to disclose the identities of six users who admitted to torrenting while using the popular social media platform.
While it is not directly involved in the suit, Reddit received a subpoena from the plaintiffs — 20 film producers — demanding the names, emails, IP addresses, and other identifying information of the Reddit users.
The court had to decide on the users’ right to anonymous speech under the First Amendment. The plaintiffs were unable to convince the court that violating the six Reddit users’ constitutional rights was justified.
The film producers’ case is primarily against telecom company Grande, which allegedly did not adequately prevent its customers from infringing on copyrights.
The producers have until August 7, 2023, to provide expert reports on Grande’s activities and likely hoped that gaining access to the Reddit users in question would’ve helped their case.
This episode highlights the importance of maintaining anonymity on Reddit. Using a reliable VPN for Reddit can improve your security and help to protect your privacy.
Court Files Reveal Statements Made by Reddit Users
Court files listed the usernames of the six Reddit users the movie producers hoped to identify.
In 2011, u/Aikidi, u/kelsoATX, u/xBROKEx, and u/Schadenfreude_Taco commented on a thread titled “Anyone Use Grande Communications instead of Time Warner.” The other two users, u/roboweiner and u/SquirtyBottoms, posted comments on a 2018 thread titled “Texas ISP [Grande] slams music biz for trying to turn it into a ‘copyright cop.'”
The comments made by the six users range in the nature and details of their activity on Grande. For example, u/roboweiner’s comment read, “I have Grande and torrent a lot. Always thought it was pretty cool of them to not snitch.”
Others, like Schadenfreude_Taco, went into more detail, stating, “I’ve had grande for 3 years, downloaded about 1tb worth of
stuff from torrents and uploaded just under 2tb (passthepopcorn and bitmetv)[.] Never had a single problem or got any letters.”
“[T]heir newsgroups server also has excellent retention. I recently downloaded something that was ~300 days old and it was still available. You’re limited to only two connections at a time, though.”
Background of the Reddit Subpoena
Reddit challenged the subpoena on the grounds that it violated its users’ constitutional right to anonymous speech. This right is not absolute, and there are legal grounds to grant “unmasking subpoenas.”
Courts can allow such subpoenas “in the exceptional case where the compelling need for the discovery sought outweighs the First Amendment rights of the anonymous speaker.”
However, the presiding judge, Hon. Laurel Beeler, said the plaintiffs’ subpoena was unjustified. They already had information on 118 of Grande’s 125 “top pirating users.”
“Plaintiffs cannot show that the anonymous Reddit accounts possess material information unavailable elsewhere when Plaintiffs already have even better evidence on that topic,” Judge Beeler stated.
“Plaintiffs need only subpoena the identified 118 Grande subscribers that are known to have engaged in copyright infringement to learn whether those 118 ‘top [] pirat[es]’ subscribed to Grande for the ‘ability to pirate without consequence.'”
Interestingly, the producers subpoenaed the 118 Grande users but did not receive much information in response. Judge Beeler highlighted this fact, stating that even if Reddit were to hand out the users’ information voluntarily, the plaintiffs might still not get the information they seek.
“..even if Plaintiff were to obtain subscriber information for the six Reddit accounts, Plaintiffs would still need to send subpoenas to those subscribers, and the Reddit subscribers are no more likely to respond to “letters” than would be the Grande subscribers,” Judge Beeler added.
How to Stay Anonymous on Reddit and While Torrenting
While the court ruled in favor of protecting the six Reddit users, a different ruling could’ve forced the company to hand over their information. In essence, the key reason why the court did not force Reddit to give up its users’ data was that Grande had already provided more valuable information to the plaintiff.
We recommend you look at what information Reddit stores about its users and how you can limit giving away excessive data.
While we don’t recommend violating copyrights, it’s important to safeguard your privacy while torrenting. Check out our guide to downloading torrent files anonymously for more information.
