SOURCE
"In the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 11 covers, among other things, representations to the court. Section 11(b) requires that "factual contentions" or denials thereof contained in motions, pleadings, or other submissions have or will have "evidentiary support."

Where this may get the RIAA's legal team in trouble is its joining 27 defendants together in the same John Doe lawsuit. In its complaint, the record labels asserted that the Does violated the same law in the same manner using the same tools via the same ISP. The labels argue, therefore, that their "right to relief arises out of the same series of transactions or occurrences, and there are questions of law or fact common to all Defendants such that joinder is warranted and appropriate here."

Not so fast, according to Judge Kravchuk. In her order denying the Does' motion to dismiss the lawsuit (thanks to Ray Beckerman for finding this), she is critical of the RIAA's logic. Just because two or more defendants have the same ISP doesn't mean that their conduct "amounts to the same transaction or occurrence." Indeed, she is concerned that the RIAA is "intentionally flouting" Rule 11 for the sake of convenience. After all, it's much easier (not to mention cheaper) to lump a whole bunch of defendants who are completely unrelated except by virtue of sharing a common ISP.

Judge Kravchuk asks the rhetorical question of whether all Time Warner subscribers in Maine could be joined in a single complaint. She then cites a case, Atlantic v. Does 1-22 where the RIAA did exactly that; after it was dismissed, the RIAA filed three separate cases. "It is curious that no attempt was made to join these cases as arising from the same transaction or occurrence if my plausible inference is accurate," wrote the judge in her order. "I think no such attempt was made because it is apparent that the cases would not be properly joined.

"These plaintiffs have devised a clever scheme to obtain court-authorized discovery prior to the service of complaints, but it troubles me that they do so with impunity and at the expense of the requirements of Rule 11(b)(3) because they have no good faith evidentiary basis to believe the cases should be joined," she concludes. "

Yay the judges are starting to get fed up with them. mabey the riaa will have to stop abusing loopholes in the near future.

nah, the RIAA will have the law rewritten so they can keep doing it... or find another loophole (that they probably ended up creating in the first place!)

I've seen at least one case that was...hmm...can't remember which major it was...but it was, say, Electra v. John Does 1-99.
For a brief while, the RIAA was arguing that the DMCA gave them the right to issue their own subpoenas! This was eventually struck down, of course, but not before they got their grubbies on the membership lists of some big P2Ps. Still, they went after big batches of anonymous college students first, as students aren't as likely to use the same ISP for long, and they tend to get scared and pony up the extortion money quicker than most.
The RIAA has always represented the worst, slimiest aspects of Business, and desperation certainly hasn't done anything to make them more morally upright. I haven't seen laws actually being rewritten in their favor, but I can't imagine they think they're operating within the law so much as making pathetically poor attempts at twisting the interpretation. The saddest part, the biggest shame, is how slow the system is to call them on it.