LOS ANGELES — The filing of porn BitTorrent lawsuits slowed down in the past week with only five claims filed in federal courts across the country.
K-Beech filed four suits, one targeting 47 John Does in Georgia and three individual suits targeting Does in Colorado.
Digital Sin, with the only other suit of the week, filed a single claim against 5,040 Does in California.
Ira Siegel, who represents Digital Sin in the case, now has lodged 15 porn BitTorrent suits targeting a mind-boggling 44,196 defendants since porn consumer piracy claims first started appearing in federal courts last fall.
Siegel, a Beverly Hills, Calif., practitioner, also is the attorney of record for On the Cheap's piracy case against 5,011 Does.
Just last week a federal judge whittled away On the Cheap's case, leaving only one defendant to fight infringement charges leveled over allegedly sharing On the Cheap's "Danielle Staub Raw."
U.S. Judge Bernard Zimmerman, in his order severing the "Danielle Staub Raw" Does, said that mass copyright litigation against defendants scattered all over the country is a “logistical nightmare” for the courts and violates the "principles of fundamental fairness" to defendants.
While Siegel didn't respond to XBIZ queries on Monday, a search of his porn BitTorrent lawsuit filings show that all 15 of them are for thousands of defendants at a time, including his mass suits on behalf of Wicked Pictures, which recently sued 3,036 Does, and Discount Video Center, which sued 5,040.
Siegel today asked the court to proceed before a U.S. magistrate judge in the Digital Sin case. "Appeal from the judgment shall be taken directly to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals," a motion added.