Wait, did he really get that close to getting everyone’s information? That’s a little disturbing.
It's not that simple. To put it as simply as I can, Brinton (most likely at the insistence of Patrick) screwed up by naming Quasi as John Doe 1 despite him never making any defamatory posts. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act absolves a web host (Quasi) from any responsibility for the posts made by the users of his website. But Patrick being the narcissist that he is was more concerned about trying to nail Quasi than to actually go after people who made defamatory posts.
So before the hearings for the initial subpoena, Quasi offered to release whatever information he had for Does 2-60 to Brinton in exchange for withdrawing the subpoena against him. Granted, he didn't have much anyways, as he set up this website in a way to collect as little information about the user as possible. He doesn't log IP addresses (which can be confirmed by looking at the "Guests" page - it always shows one guest viewing the forum because the logged IP for all users routes to 127.0.0.1). He also doesn't collect any information from you for signing up apart from a username, an email (which can be faked as he doesn't require verification), and a password. This information was all turned over to Brinton as part of a contingent deal. But since there was nothing in it that could be used to identify anyone, they tried to claim that Quasi didn't hand over all the info he had and decided to go through with their subpoena to Cloudflare for info on Quasi. It got quashed because, as I said before, Quasi never made any defamatory posts and also cannot be held liable for the posts of other users. Funny side note, someone here changed their email before the info was sent to Fatty's lawyers to "
[email protected]" which was read out loud by the parking ticket attorney.
If they were smart, the subpoena to Cloudflare would have requested information about all IP logs of visitors to this site. And they would have to send another subpoena to Quasi as well requesting information about posts made by Does 2-60, like timestamps. Theoretically, they could match Cloudflare logs to forum timestamps and come up with an IP for some of these users and then subpoena ISPs for information about the associated customer, but this is the type of stuff that the FBI pays its agents millions of dollars to do. It's not that simple and it certainly couldn't have been done by a construction lawyerette, a wine lawyer twink, and a mumbling parking ticket attorney. Watching the traffic attorney trying to explain internet law was hilarious if you have any understanding of it. He didn't have a clue what he was talking about and was making shit up on the fly, stumbling over his words left and right in the proccess. But since Fatty was already so invested in the lawsuit, they had no choice but to throw whatever they could at the wall to see what sticks. It ended up being nothing.
Nobody here was ever within a lightyear of being identified. The lawsuit was doomed from the beginning because Quasi doesn't collect info and Fatty's lawyers didn't believe that. If Fatrick had a million+ dollars for actual cyber crime attorneys and a team of cyber security experts to sift through Cloudflare logs, then maybe he would have had a very slim chance at being able to identify one or two people who didn't use a VPN. Again, a VERY slim chance. That's about it.
Full disclosure, there did exist an angle where the lawsuit could have been successful. There were certainly posts named in the lawsuit that were objectively defamatory. The trouble is identifying the people who made them and then somehow proving that the post caused damages. Both of these were next to impossible with the little funds and resources available to Patrick.
I swear to god I have autism or sumpthin.
