In Advance Magazine Publishers v. Does 1-5, No. 09-10257 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 22, 2009) Conde Nast is seeking to identify the people who hacked into their computer system and republished pages from the December 2009 issue of GQ magazine on a blog hosted by Google’s Blogger Service. The complaint alleged a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for the hacking, and copyright violation for the republishing without permission of copyrighted materials belonging to Conde Nast. The court agreed to issue a subpoena to discover the identity of the hackers and republishers because (1) Conde Nast had alleged sufficient facts to bring an action under both the CFAA and the Copyright Act, (2) the identity of the hackers could be overwritten if not discovered soon, and (3) Conde Nast has no other way of obtaining this information. If you were the Judge, what other conditions would you add before granting a subpoena to identify computer hackers? Would your answer be any different if this was just copyright infringement?
In a subpoena ad testificandum or subpoena duces tecum, a judge would give a time, place, and location for the legal proceeding. The judge might also ask for a list of documents, physical evidence, that must be produced or present during court in order to support or dismiss any allegations (in a duces tecum subpoena).
I do not think it takes more to obtain a subpoena. If Conde Nast has alleged sufficient facts I would assume this is sufficient evidence of their server being hacked. Computer hackers seem to be easily able to run wild and undetected like many criminals.