Suppose you lived alone, and this scenario unfolded. The plaintiff would reasonably argue that because you lived alone, you were the infringer. Would a court be

Suppose you lived alone, and this scenario unfolded. The plaintiff would reasonably argue that because you lived alone, you were the infringer. Would a court believe this to be reasonable? The ruling doesn't say. Now, if you then, using your own money, hired a computer forensics tech who discovered evidence you had been hacked, and also surrendered your computer and router in discovery and it was confirmed the router showed signs of unauthorized access and the computer didn't have file sharing programs or the file in question, I think it's fairly clear this court would let you off the hook. On the other hand, if your forensics tech found no evidence of tampering and did find filesharing software on your computer, I think you'd have a much harder time asserting that your alibi causes their allegation to fall apart. The court is saying "Look, you can't just saying the IP address is the person, you need to offer a reasonable claim that it is". It is not saying IP addresses are useless or that your identity must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Neither my first post nor this post were meant to be normative -- I'm not from the US, the country I am from makes passive filesharing (i.e. uploading while torrenting) more or less legal, and I would be very happy if legal rulings stopped piracy fishing expeditions. I just wanted to describe the substance of the ruling in a more substantial way than the headline did.