Friend of mine recently received a letter from Adult Copyright Company in West Virginia that he illegally downloaded a movie through torrent/P2P sharing and that they have his IP address record...First they sent him mass subpoena and after that settlement letter. These letters were sent to several thousand people who are living in different states... They are now asking for settlement of $5000 to pay by certain date,thereafter is going to be more...What are his options? Should he hire attorney or...

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Dammmm that sucks he should have used peer guardian when downloading torrents.

I would suspect that this is a class action law suit. The defendants (now your "friend" is one of them) have probably retained legal counsel. You need to join the defense participants.

He should immediately send $5000 to this unverified company, I'm sure that will solve all his problems. If he's having trouble contacting the company, I can give him my address and I'll forward it on to them. Or, he could have a lawyer look at the letter. Oh, and obviously he should stop stealing other people's property.

He should at least meet with an attorney to see if there is a defense or a way to lower the settlement amount. EDIT: Interesting. The company named specializes in going after people that have downloaded copyrighted porn. Follow this link for more info on the company and the cases they are working . http://www.adultcopyrightcompany.com/cases.html

The mass lawsuits filed by the "Adult Copyright Company" have just been dismissed by Judge John Preston Bailey. If they want to proceed, they will have to file individual suits in each state of residence of the defendants. It could well be that the 'John Doe' defendants won't ever hear about the case again—although anyone who paid up in response to a "settlement letter" won't be seeing that cash again. As reported by Nate Anderson (see link below), the judge noted that it's simply not proper to "join" this many defendants who did not participate in the same transaction and did not work together. The mere allegation that the defendants used the same P2P software and infringed the same movie does not mean they can be can be joined into a single lawsuit.