According to the reports of Torrentfreak, Washington District Judge Robert Lasnik ruled that IP addresses are not individuals. For those who are a bit unaware, IP(Internet Protocol) are numerical value placed in every computer which participates in Internet Traffic.
The customer get Internet access with the help of ISP(Internet Service Provider) companies. So, when there occurs any case of Copyright Infrigement, they target either the ISP or the computer behind the IP address.
This case of piracy is also a bit similar to every other copyright issue, where the copyright material gets downloaded. Actually they relied on the judge’s interpretation of an IP as an individual person. The responsible person for this BitTorrent swarm case can be subscriber, family member, guest or freeloader.
The case was against 152 people who allegedly and illegely downloaded copies of a movie “Elf-Man.”