See my problem with stories like this is everyone walks away thinking “the good thing happened.” But this isn’t a resolution. It’s halfway there. In a sane society if you make an obviously insane request like this for a bullshit and insane reason you should face consequences for even trying. And I know that makes people uncomfortable and “but the legal system!” comes up a lot. I don’t care. Change it. The CEO and every lawyer that ok’d this request from the court towards reddit should bare minimum be fired and probably fined/face their own criminal charges for even trying this shit.
To me this is effectively the same as finding a diary on the ground that says “I smoked crack and sold a gram to my sister in 10th grade” and some overzealous insane person tries to have a court force somebody who saw them drop the diary to reveal the identity so they can be prosecuted for a “crime” far in the past which very well may never have happened. I mean, if we’re going to have a dogshit legal system, and we do, the least we can ask from the multibillion dollar thieves (the capitalist corporations) is they do their own goddamn detective work. No, don’t find hypothetical posts. I can post that I shot JFK. I time traveled over 2 decades before I was born and I did it. Is the problem with trying to use anonymous “confessions” not surface level obvious? There is no evidence beyond the confession! And I’m no lawyer, but generally speaking a confession alone won’t convict anyone. Actual evidence is required. Assuming this shit was actually done, piracy occured, the ISP won’t keep any sort of logs that long and the odds of their harddrives containing that specific media years later? Doubtful. Maybe the judge breaks the law and allows a more broad warrant not just limited to specific movies. I think a skilled attorney gets that evidence tossed anyway since it was gathered illegitimately. Basically it SHOULD BE goddamn nearly impossible for them to ever prove anyone ever did anything like this without the person walking down to the local FBI office with their harddrives in hand, ISP logs and a written confession of all the shit they pirated since middle school. Maybe mention the time they stole gummy bears from their cousin in 3rd grade too.
I dunno, this shit just pisses me off because it’s so brazen and also just so fucking lazy. Like, put some fucking effort into being assholes for fuck’s sake. Trolling through decade-old reddit posts where some dude vaguely referred to his ISP letting him pirate is the best a billion dollar studio can do? It’s just sad really. The CEO and lawyers should voluntarily resign, go home into a dark room, and commit seppuku. We should really bring that tradition of failed higher-ups having at least the dignity to fall on their own sword (literally) back.