alt Hacker NewsThey aren't suing some broke 23 year old. What they can collect is less than their lawyer fees.
At worst, universities crack down harder on torrents, but that was always an option for labels.
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> They aren't suing some broke 23 year old. What they can collect is less than their lawyer fees.
You may not be old enough to remember this, but that's exactly what they did in the 2000's
I think they still sometimes go for it even when they know they aren't recouping their losses, to deter/scare potential users. Obviously that doesn't scale and it's mostly for publicity stunts but it did happen here in Canada. They more or less just scanned a few trackers and went after every Canadian IP address they found for the given torrents.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/movie-studios-bit...
There is a very important consideration here that this opinion doesn't really touch on, but I think is invited down the road for future cases and legislation: Can you compel the speech of a third party to aid in exploratory evidence gathering (aka fishing expeditions) without a clear, well defined, and particular, cause of action at court to issue a subpoena?
In most classic U.S. jurisdiction, no, you cannot. Compelled activity or speech is generally frowned upon. The most important part of this case, IMO, was the Supreme Court constraining the Fourth Circuit's interpretation of contributory liability and attempting to turn the DMCA system into one for enabling those fishing expeditions.