It’s a solid defense, since the lawsuit’s about the sharing of the books. The metadata of the torrents isn’t part of the relevant IP, and how they used the content they downloaded is a separate issue.

That’s what I thought. I don’t think their defense succeeding here really gets us anything new.

Has anyone in the US ever been busted for downloading from a direct download portal? Or usenet?

I think any progress here is mostly in principle, as I don’t think there’s a big practical risk to downloading only as it stands today, though I don’t follow things as closely as I used to and could be mistaken.

Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs.

Your example is exactly why meta didn’t seed.