Plaintiff porn company sued an unknown bittorrent user (identified as John Doe) alleging that defendant had downloaded and distributed more than 20 of plaintiff's films. Plaintiff asked the court for leave to serve a subpoena on Optimum Online— the ISP associated with defendant's IP address— prior to the Rule 26(f) conference. (Leave of court is required to start discovery before the Rule 26(f) conference, but a plaintiff cannot have that confer-once unless it knows who the defendant is.) Plaintiff already knew defendant's IP address. It needed to serve the subpoena on the ISP to learn defendant's real name and physical address so it could serve him with the complaint.
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