Re:Unfortunately, this is a valid subpoena (Score 1)

I believe there are many instances though in which an IP address is much more equivalent to a person than is this case here, apparently. At a university I'm familiar with, for example, students in residence halls are required to register their network adapter's MAC address in order to gain network access. The MAC address is associated with their unique user account, and given an IP address and a timestamp by Media Sentry or whoever, it's relatively straightforward to determine which MAC address was the recipient of the IP lease at the given timestamp. They may not be the user behind the keyboard if copyright infringement occurs, but barring something like MAC address spoofing, it's pretty incontrovertible that the keyboard where the infringement occurred was theirs. While I laud Oregon for refusing to place an undue burden on themselves, this really wouldn't be a uniformly precedent-setting situation should it pan out in Oregon's favor, as far as I can tell.