Every day, millions of people from all over the world submit posts, comments, and other content to Reddit.

In many cases, discussion comments are read and soon forgotten but several old threads were brought back to life recently as part of a piracy liability case.

Redditors as Evidence

The comments in question were picked up by Kerry Culpepper, a copyright attorney who leads several piracy lawsuits against Internet providers on behalf of independent film companies.

In the case at hand, the makers of The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, London Has Fallen, Hellboy and other films, accuse Internet provider RCN of not doing enough to stop subscribers from pirating on its network. Instead of terminating the accounts of persistent pirates, the ISP turned a blind eye, the filmmakers argued.

The main lawsuit was filed at a federal court in New Jersey and the parties are in the process of gathering evidence. As part of this quest, the filmmakers stumbled upon responses from nine Reddit users, whose comments are potentially relevant to the dispute.

For example, a comment from Redditor “ChikaraFan” noted the following regarding RCN’s handling of copyright infringement emails:

“Seems extremely rare if ever. RCN seems fairly lax…no data caps. I looked up before I switched and had little trouble.”

Reddit doesn’t usually give up the identities of its users. However, in February the movie companies obtained a subpoena asking Reddit to share the personal details of nine users, including relevant IP-address logs.

Reddit Objects

Reddit was unhappy with the subpoena, characterizing i