The L33T Lawsuit

Funimation made a big fuss in the anime community last month when they filed for a lawsuit against 1337 people who illegally downloaded a specific episode of One Piece through bit torrents. Initially, many people thought that Funimation's suit was a prank or publicity stunt, since the number of people being sued, 1337, is famous as the internet lingo for the word elite. However, there is an actual filing of the suit, and Funimation made clear their intention to follow through with it.

Funimation asks the court to stop the defendants from infringing on Funimation's copyrights for this episode and any other videos now or in the future. If another request in the suit is granted, defendants "shall destroy all copies of Plaintiff's [videos] that Defendant has downloaded onto any computer hard drive or server without Plaintiff's authorization and shall destroy all copies of those downloaded [videos] transferred onto any physical medium or device in each Defendant's possession, custody, or control." Funimation also seeks compensation for damages and legal costs.

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Original article at Anime News Network 

This is something that has more or less never been done before in the anime industry. Previously, the anime companies have only filed suits against retails sites producing and distributing bootleg copies of their copyrights, but never against anyone who has downloaded illegal copies.

The North American anime distributor FUNimation Productions is suing a group of related companies in Southern California for allegedly selling counterfeit DVDs of its licensed anime on a website. [...] Some of the DVDs are said to have included English dubbing.

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Original article at Anime News Network 

The anime industry has carefully avoided going after users who have downloaded anime. This was mostly because Funimation, ADV, and the other anime companies were fearful of upsetting the anime community and losing more sales as a result. The closest they had come to this previously was when Funimation sent out cease and desist letters on the behalf of their Japanese partners, demanding that certain series (which were not licensed in the US at the time) have all fansubbing stopped. Now, just over 2 years later, this is the first time that the anime downloaders themselves have seriously been targeted by the anime companies.

Unfortunatly for Funimation, suing the 1337 downloaders is proving to be harder than they had hoped:

On February 10, Senior United States District Judge Royal Furgeson ordered the anime distributor Funimation to "sever" or remove all defendants except one from its copyright infringement lawsuit over an episode of the television anime One Piece. [...] According to the judge's order, the actions of each defendant did not constitute "acting in concert" but rather acting individually, although identically. [...] Funimation can choose to pursue the other 1,336 defendants in individual, separate lawsuits within the next 30 days, if it submits filing fees for each case.

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Original article at Anime News Network

Whether or not Funimation will chose to pursue the remaining cases is unknown, since each additional filing of a suit will cost them $350. Without the ability to sue down loaders en masse, it doesn't seem very economical to take action against downloaders. However, perhaps a lawsuit every once in a while will make people cautions enough to download less.

Here's hoping.