Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe, 6:25-cv-06099

Strike 3 Holdings, LLC sued an unnamed defendant for allegedly downloading and distributing Plaintiff’s copyrighted motion pictures via BitTorrent, in violation of the Copyright Act.
Plaintiff only knows Defendant by IP address and seeks to uncover Defendant's identity through a third-party subpoena served on the ISP, Spectrum.
Plaintiff requested leave to serve a Fed. R. Civ. P. 45 subpoena prior to the required Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(f) conference to obtain Defendant's name and address.
The court reviewed whether "good cause" exists to permit this pre-conference discovery, evaluating Plaintiff’s showing of a prima facie claim and necessity.
The court also considered privacy protections via a temporary protective order due to potential misidentification and privacy concerns.
The court granted the subpoena and issued a protective order to keep the Defendant's information confidential until further notice.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Pre-Rule 26(f) discovery	Discovery is necessary to identify and serve Defendant	Not presented (ex parte)	Granted for good cause
Prima facie case of copyright infringement	Plaintiff owns the copyrights and Defendant copied and distributed works	Not presented	Sufficient prima facie case shown
Specificity of request	Only seeking name/address for service	Not presented	Request is specific
Privacy vs. need for information	Plaintiff needs info; privacy interest is minimal	Not presented	Plaintiff’s needs outweigh privacy interests
Protective order	Willing to keep identity confidential, support for procedural safeguards	Not presented	Protective order granted to maintain confidentiality

Arista Records LLC v. Doe, 604 F.3d 110 (2d Cir. 2010) (expectation of privacy does not shield subscriber from being identified in copyright litigation)
Sony Music Entm’t Inc. v. Does 1-40, 326 F. Supp. 2d 556 (S.D.N.Y. 2004) (prima facie elements of copyright infringement in peer-to-peer file sharing context)