A Florida judge has ruled that a man may not be sued by a copyright holder because their computer was utilized to download content. It is the newest in a number of choices making it harder for so called copyright trolls to sue alleged pirates.

That way of utilizing an IP as the fingerprint of the computer has been a dependable legal method since piracy became common over a decade past.

Judges have become much more knowledgeable about the intricacies of piracy with several recent opinions determining an IP address alone isn’t sufficient to decide whether someone downloaded something, as time has gone on. Florida District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro has become the latest to drop on such side of the matter.

Malibu Media, a porn provider that filed more than 1,000 suits in 2013 requested a subpoena to be issued by Ungaro against a suspected pirate understood solely by judges’ address. Nevertheless, Ungaro pressed the business to spell out how they got the evidence against 174.61.81.171.

Not thus, based on Ungaro, who wrote that if Malibu Media can demonstrate that a particular internet connection was used, that doesn’t show who was sitting at the computer keyboard.

“Plaintiff has demonstrated the geolocation software can offer a place for an infringing IP address; yet, Plaintiff hasn’t demonstrated how this geolocation software can confirm the identity of the Defendant,” she wrote. “There’s nothing that links the IP address place to the identity of the individual really downloading and seeing Plaintiff’s videos, and confirming whether that man lives in this district.”

So the case was dismissed by Judge Urgano, indicating what may be an important landmark for wrongly accused pirates.

“Even if this IP address can be found within a dwelling, the geolocation applications cannot identify who has access to that dwelling’s computer and who’d really be utilizing it to infringe Plaintiff’s copyright,” she wrote, as quoted by TorrentFreak.

The opinion will not apply to all future cases, even though it’s the newest in a style that party favors copyright holders. Judge Stephanie Rose ruled that a copyright holder might not sue hundreds of suspected pirates in Iowa based simply on their IP addresses, late last year.

Dozens of folks will still have to reckon with firms like Malibu Media while more judges appear to be becoming more sympathetic. People, as stated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, intimidate into paying a huge number of dollars if they are not guilty of reproducing or uploading pictures illegally.