@WikiDude said:

Get a dumb enough lawyer & you can sue a goldfish.

From what I read, they don't know the identities (yet) of most of the users, only some of the staff/moderators. They're all listed as "John Doe ###"

The problem I think they're going to have is that in many parts of the world outside of the USA, the laws aren't absolutely insane, so even if someone making a legal claim has a date/time stamped IP address record, most other parts of the world will recognize that having an IP address may prove the subscriber to the internet service, however it does not identify the end-user of the device.

Especially in the days of home WiFi systems, is is realistically possible that the end-user of the device used for the infringing activity could be pretty much anyone who has ever been at or even near the service address of the internet subscription. For this reason, it just baffles me as to why the USA seems to be one of the only places in the world where you do not have to prove the identity of the end-user, and the service subscriber is the one on the hook, for no other reason than they are the one named on the internet service account.

In Canada, a copyright holder absolutely can hold the service subscriber responsible for the damages, however in order to do this, they must prove that the service subscriber was aware of the infringing activity on their internet service, AND that they failed to take the necessary actions to stop the infringing activity. This is where our notice & notice system (as it is called) comes in.

A copyright holder can send a notice to the service provider, who then forwards the notice to the service subscriber. The subscriber then has a certain period of time (48 hours if I'm not mistaken) in which to ensure that the infringing activity has ceased. It is only after this notice is delivered to the service subscriber, AND the infringing activity does not stop that the service subscriber can be held responsible (even if they are not the person who engaged in the infringing activity) as the proof of the delivery of the notice, combined with proof that the activity has not stopped is sufficient evidence to hold them accountable.

@Dracula975 said:

Might be nice if a Mod could create a new .Org thread, and move all the new lawsuit posts to that thread. Then maybe merge all the .Net posts without the .Org stuff. Totally up to the staff, but makes sense to me.

Fork created. The discussions of .net and .org are now separate threads.

The lawsuit is with gay-torrents.ORG, which has been down for about 2 weeks, and may not come back.

@WikiDude said:

Get a dumb enough lawyer & you can sue a goldfish.

From what I read, they don't know the identities (yet) of most of the users, only some of the staff/moderators. They're all listed as "John Doe ###"

Different jurisdictions have different rules for identifying people, so some/many will remain "John Doe ###".

From what I read, they don't know the identities (yet) of most of the users, only some of the staff/moderators. They're all listed as "John Doe ###"

Paratolo said:

The matter is explosiv, since they are targeting the users!!

So they can sue anyone who might have or might have not downloaded?

@bi4smooth said:

For clarification:

• gay-torrents.org is down, and may very well stay down. The TLD has suspended their domain, so it now shows as an unresolvable hostname. Prior to that, CloudFlare had disabled their participation (as a front-end), resulting in timeouts connecting to the site.
  To the best of MY knowledge, the site was taken down by court injunction as temporary/permanent relief in response to a DMCA-based lawsuit.
• gaytorrents.net (no dash, different TLD, diffrent site owners, different software running the site AND trackers) has had some recent issues with their DNS - likely a change was made to the server IPs, and there were propagation delays in getting the front-ends (load balancers, etc) aligned - but that's conjecture.

AS OF TODAY, May 19 in North America, gay-torrents.org is no longer resolving, but gaytorrents.net is operating normally again.

One last comment: ORG got shutdown, according to news reports, because they FAILED to respond to DMCA requests to remove torrents. THIS SITE DOES NOT IGNORE DMCA requests, as many users have vociferously complained when their torrents were removed in response to DMCA action. Now you see WHY!

Not that it's 100% effective, but the site policy HERE to actually act on DMCA requests should help prevent this from happening here.

All opinions expressed are mine and mine alone, and all facts stated here are true at the time of reporting and to the best of my own personal knowledge. No other warranty is expressed or implied.

You forgot "All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental"

• gay-torrents.org is down, and may very well stay down. The TLD has suspended their domain, so it now shows as an unresolvable hostname. Prior to that, CloudFlare had disabled their participation (as a front-end), resulting in timeouts connecting to the site.
  To the best of MY knowledge, the site was taken down by court injunction as temporary/permanent relief in response to a DMCA-based lawsuit.
• gaytorrents.net (no dash, different TLD, diffrent site owners, different software running the site AND trackers) has had some recent issues with their DNS - likely a change was made to the server IPs, and there were propagation delays in getting the front-ends (load balancers, etc) aligned - but that's conjecture.

AS OF TODAY, May 19 in North America, gay-torrents.org is no longer resolving, but gaytorrents.net is operating normally again.

One last comment: ORG got shutdown, according to news reports, because they FAILED to respond to DMCA requests to remove torrents. THIS SITE DOES NOT IGNORE DMCA requests, as many users have vociferously complained when their torrents were removed in response to DMCA action. Now you see WHY!

Not that it's 100% effective, but the site policy HERE to actually act on DMCA requests should help prevent this from happening here.

All opinions expressed are mine and mine alone, and all facts stated here are true at the time of reporting and to the best of my own personal knowledge. No other warranty is expressed or implied.

https://torrentfreak.com/flavaworks-sues-operator-and-325-users-of-private-torrent-tracker-gay-torrents/