Over the last year several mass-lawsuits were started against so-called 'John Doe' defendants, who are only identified by their IP-address. However, at the same time a handful of copyright holders have also launched cases against named BitTorrent users.

One of these defendants is based in Calgary, Canada. The adult entertainment studio Corbin Fisher filed suit against the man, who they claim had illicitly shared two of their movies ("Turner F***s Austin" and "Keagan" ) on the BitTorrent tracker Gaytorrents.ru. While most BitTorrent sites treat the private information of their users confidentially, the Gaytorrent.ru operator kindly provided the copyright holder with information that could identify the defendant.

According to information previously received by TorrentFreak, this is not the first time that GayTorrent has handed over the personal details of a member to a copyright holder without being required to by law. This compliance by GayTorrent allows Corbin Fisher to directly target defendants, instead of having to ask the court for a subpoena.

In the initial complaint Corbin Fisher alleged that the defendant willingly infringed on its copyright, and the studio's lawyer Marc Randazza asked US District Court judge John Houston to award $50,000 in damages per movie, totaling $100,000. Although the defendant complained to the court in an attempt to get the case dismissed, he did not defend himself.

Due to the defendants' absence, Judge Houston was left with no choice but to order a default judgement as requested by the plaintiff.

In his ruling Judge Houston rejects the studio's claim that the infringement was willful, just because the defendant was savvy enough to use BitTorrent. This reduced the maximum damages from $150,000 to $30,000 per movie. Judge Houston did, however, rule that the defendant was guilty of copyright infringement.

"The record, as presented does not support a finding of willfulness based solely on plaintiff's speculative argument that BitTorrent requires technical knowledge such that a person using the application necessarily used it in order to defraud plaintiff."

"Thus, this Court finds that the increase in statutory damages suggested by plaintiff is not appropriately assessed here. In this Court's view, statutory damages of $30,000 per infringed work, for a total of $60,000 plus attorneys' fees is reasonable."

In total the defendant was ordered to pay $63,867, which makes it one of the largest fines ever handed out to a P2P user in the US. Certainly the highest we know of where a foreign copyright infringer was targeted.

"There are too many Canadians who are under the mistaken impression that Canada does not respect copyrights," lawyer Marc Randazza told TorrentFreak in a comment. "Canada is a signatory to international copyright treaties, and thus Canadians need to learn that the border does not insulate them from illegal activity,"

"My client is delighted with the verdict," he added.