I'm suprised to find myself saying this, but "Go OSU Cowboys!"

Another Blow for John Doe?

It’s been a rough summer for “John Doe” subpoenas. The Recording Industry Association of America routinely sends the documents to colleges, asking for the names of song-swapping suspects identified only by their Internet-protocol numbers. For the most part, campus officials have complied.

But recently, efforts to challenge the John Doe strategy have gained steam. Now a group of students at Oklahoma State University are asking a judge to quash a subpoena sent by the recording industry, and as Ars Technica points out, they’re leaving no stone unturned.

Like other people who have fought the John Doe subpoenas, the students are arguing that the industry group has no justification for using ex parte discovery tactics, which are usually reserved for extreme circumstances.

But the Oklahoma State group has also tried to dismantle the testimony of Carlos Linares, an RIAA witness who testified in an Oklahoma district court that John Does can be reliably tracked by their Internet-protocol numbers.

The students’ own expert witness is Jayson Street, the chief information security officer for a company called Strategem 1 Solutions. Mr. Street has filed a motion identifying eight of what he calls “the most fundamental and most problematic statements” made by Mr. Linares, and most of the concerns can be boiled down to one basic point: that IP numbers make for an inexact means of identification.

Whether a judge will buy that argument is anyone’s guess, but it’s worth noting that students seem to be growing more aggressive in their attempts to quash the John Doe subpoenas. —Brock Read