7 Lessons From NY Times' Motion To Quash ISP Subpoena

Last Updated on July 21, 2026 by Rob Cashman

Did I just read about a motion to quash a subpoena from of all places, the New York Times? The Times news story shows why newsroom subpoenas differ from 1) ISP subscriber cases, 2) the motion to quash ISP subpoena suggestions our clients are exposed to, and 3) why standing matters for both types of cases.

The New York Times filed its motion to quash on or around July 15, 2026 (following initial reporting on the subpoenas around July 11), and my immediate concern upon seeing these was that these headlines are likely going to send a fresh wave of readers to search online for the same phrase they saw in their ISP subpoena notices when they were sued as a John Doe Defendant in their own copyright infringement lawsuit (i.e., most likely by Strike 3 Holdings, LLC). But a motion to quash in a newsroom investigation is not the same thing as a motion to quash in a standard copyright subscriber case, and my goal in posting this article is to inform you of the differences between them (especially since I just wrote up an article on What Motions to Quash Are, and Should You File Them for our own readers who are facing ISP subpoenas in their own copyright cases).

If you received a notice from your ISP that someone subpoenaed your subscriber information, you may be wondering whether the Times article means you should automatically fight back the same way. The short answer is no. In most ISP subpoena cases, the legal issue is not whether a motion to quash sounds aggressive or impressive enough to win a lawsuit. The issue a judge will consider when looking at your motion to quash is whether you actually have standing, whether the subpoena is defective, and whether filing the motion will change the outcome of your lawsuit in any meaningful way.

At TorrentLawyer, we have tracked ISP subpoena cases since 2010, and we have watched this decision play out thousands of times. The headlines change, but the underlying question does not: is this a motion that has a real chance of doing something useful, or is it just an expensive way to feel proactive?

New York Times motion to quash ISP subpoena (NY Times motion to quash ISP subpoena).

What the New York Times motion really shows

I am reminded from the New York Times case that the phrase “motion to quash” covers more than our kind of legal fight — which is stopping one prolific copyright troll after another from obtaining an internet user’s true identity so that they can pressure him or her to pay them many thousands of dollars to avoid a lawsuit. [In our clients’ cases, this is filed as a “Motion to Quash ISP Subpoena,” the ISP subpoena and so-called “IP address evidence” being the distinguishing factors from what we see with the Times case.]

For Context, the New York Times filed its motion to quash on or around July 15, 2026, in response to grand jury subpoenas issued by the Justice Department to several of its reporters (including Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, and Eric Schmitt). The subpoenas sought testimony about confidential sources used in the Times’ reporting on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One jet. Additional phone records subpoenas targeting journalists and even some of their relatives were later disclosed.

The New York Times case relates to a government investigation. It involves a subpoena sent directly to journalists. It is different from our cases because it is not a subpoena sent to the ISP seeking a subscriber’s identity in a civil copyright case. Both, however, involve motions to quash which is why the New York Times article caught my attention (and likely yours too).

In the Times matter, the subpoena was directed at journalists, and the objection appears to involve press protections, source confidentiality, and the government’s attempt to compel testimony. Each of these provides a very different legal basis from the Bittorrent-based copyright infringement cases our law firm deals with when our clients receive notice in the mail about an ISP subpoena requesting the disclosure of their true identity.

In our cases, the subpoena is usually served on the ISP and not on the subscriber, but it is the subscriber who ends up reacting to the disclosure of their identity by the third-party ISP.

That distinction is the first thing most online articles miss. Again, in the typical copyright infringement-based ISP subpoena lawsuit, the subscriber almost never the subpoena recipient. The ISP is. That means the subscriber faces an immediate standing problem if he files a motion to quash before the court ever reaches the merits of his argument. In other words, the question is not simply whether the subscriber would be harmed by the ISP’s compliance with the subpoena. The issue is whether the subscriber is the right person to challenge it in the first place.

That is why the Times headline is useful to our reader’s understanding (to see how such a motion can be useful in another context), but it would be dangerous if anyone facing one of our clients’ lawsuits treat what the Times is doing as a template for their own case. A reporter resisting a subpoena aimed at the reporter is not the same thing as a subscriber trying to quash a subpoena aimed at their internet service provider.

Why ISP subpoena cases are different

Most ISP subpoena cases, including Strike 3 Holdings cases, are built around a narrow request: one IP address, one date, one subscriber identity. They tailored this narrowness deliberately based on the 6 years of prior ‘mass-bittorrent-based-lawsuits’ that predated their lawsuits. Their subpoenas are designed to reduce the chances of a successful procedural attack and to force the real fight into the standing and timing issues.

That is why a motion to quash in our setting (copyright infringement lawsuits) can possibly only succeed when there is a genuine defect in the subpoena, a real privacy issue, or some other legal reason to stop the disclosure of their personal information. If the subpoena is narrow, timely, and directed at the ISP, the usual ‘motion to quash ISP subpoena’ arguments often fail.

For a deeper discussion of that issue, see my earlier article on Should You File a Motion to Quash Your ISP Subpoena? and the related page on Motion to Quash Legal Information Under U.S. Law (and for a more legal analysis from our Cashman Law Firm, PLLC, Standing and ISP Subpoenas: Why Rule 45 Bars Most Subscriber Motions to Quash.

Can You Use the New York Times Motion to Quash Strategy in a Strike 3 Holdings ISP Subpoena Case?

The New York Times approach relies on the journalists being the direct recipients of the subpoenas, plus, they asserted strong First Amendment protections. Both of these circumstances together do not exist for the typical John Doe subscriber in a copyright case.

In Strike 3 Holdings lawsuits, the subpoena targets the ISP for account details, so any challenge would usually require that the ISP intervene on the subscriber’s behalf. This has happened in the past, but in recent years, most motions to quash are filed by the subscribers themselves — this results in the courts scrutinizing the subscribers for standing before reaching the merits of their filings.

A word of caution: attempting to copy the Times’ aggressive quash-and-publicize tactic rarely succeeds in our cases, and doing so can accelerate the disclosure of your identity or increase your litigation costs without meaningful benefit.

Differences Between DOJ Grand Jury Subpoenas to Journalists vs. Copyright ISP Subpoenas in 2026

DOJ grand jury subpoenas in the Times case seek compelled testimony from reporters about confidential sources in a criminal investigation, triggering the reporter’s privilege analysis and separation-of-powers concerns.

Copyright ISP subpoenas, by contrast, are civil discovery tools under F.R.C.P. Rule 45 aimed at identifying an alleged infringer through routine account records held by a third-party provider.

The former carries constitutional weight and public interest scrutiny; the latter is narrowly tailored for one IP address on one date and focuses on procedural compliance and privacy expectations rather than press freedoms. In the Times case, the reporters likely do have standing to file their motion to quash; in the copyright infringement cases, courts have generally held that they do not.

The standing problem most people overlook

In federal court, Rule 45 governs subpoenas, and the general rule is simple: the person or entity served with the subpoena is the one who has the cleanest path to challenge it. That is one reason ISP subpoena notices create so much confusion. The notification letter the ISPs send to their customers feels personal (as if the subpoena was issued to them), but the legal instrument (the subpoena itself) is not usually directed at the subscriber.

The effect of this is that a subscriber often cannot move to quash just because the subpoena concerns their personal account information. Courts frequently require something more: a recognized privilege, a specific protected privacy interest, or a genuine procedural defect to give it a reason to intervene and nullify the subpoena. Without such a justification, a motion to quash can fail before the court ever reaches the substance of the complaint.

This is the part of the process that settlement-factory style advice tends to gloss over. Many people are told to “just file a motion to quash” as if that were the default answer in every case. Even the ISP letters suggest to their customers that this is the next step forward. It is not. In many cases, a motion to quash is simply the wrong tool for the problem.

What the New York Times case can teach subscribers

The New York Times subpoena fight is a good example of something I wish more readers understood: a motion to quash is not a magical incantation. It is a procedural request that only works when the facts and the legal grounds support it. Sometimes the resisting party is the direct target of the subpoena and has strong constitutional or statutory arguments. Sometimes the subpoena is overbroad. Sometimes the timing is bad. And sometimes the law gives the recipient real protection.

But in the typical copyright infringement-based ISP subscriber case, those facts usually are not present. The subpoena is often clean, narrow, and properly served. The deadline is often short. And the plaintiff’s goal is usually straightforward: identify the subscriber, then solicit a large settlement to avoid litigation on the merits.

That is why the better question in many ISP cases is not “Can I file a motion to quash?” It is “Should I?” The answer depends on whether there is a real legal flaw to attack and whether the motion changes anything other than the billable hours the defense attorney will gain from filing it.

When a motion to quash is worth considering

There are situations where a motion to quash deserves serious attention. If the subpoena is plainly defective, overly broad, untimely, or directed at the wrong party, the motion may have real value. If the request reaches protected material or violates a statutory privacy rule, that can change the analysis too.

But when the subpoena is narrowly drawn, the deadlines are clean, and the requested information is limited to one subscriber identity tied to one IP address on one date (regardless of whether they claim there were more alleged instances of infringement in the Exhibit A to the complaint), the motion often does not change the practical outcome. In those cases, a motion to quash may buy time, perhaps force a dismissal without prejudice (which allows the plaintiff to re-file the lawsuit again correcting the error), but not much more.

That is why the facts matter more than the reaction. The law does not reward every aggressive response (although I have seen my share of funny but tragic attempts at monetizing the motion to quash). Rather, the law rewards the proper response making use of the proper legal tool by the proper party with standing to file that motion that fits the posture of the case.

Better alternatives in many cases

A motion to quash is not the only option, and it is often not the best one. Depending on the case, written objections, a protective order, or pre-disclosure settlement discussions (at least in our cases) sometimes create a better result at a lower cost. Then again, sometimes not settling — especially when our client did not do the downloading — is the better outcome, and we advise our clients of these options as well. In some situations, each of these approaches can preserve privacy, reduce expense, and avoid unnecessary motion practice.

This is especially true in Strike 3-type cases, where the practical question is often whether a challenge changes the plaintiff’s path at all. If the plaintiff can simply refile or proceed in a slightly different posture after disclosure of the internet user’s true identity, then the motion to quash ISP subpoena tactic may only delay the inevitable. Delay has value sometimes, but delay is not the same as winning the lawsuit.

For readers who want the fuller framework, my related post on Why Motions to Quash Fail & Alternative Strategies to Subpoena Objections is the next place to start.

Why I wrote about this on our TorrentLawyer blog

I wrote about the New York Times news item on this blog because I am hoping that it will remind our readers that subpoenas are not all the same, and motions to quash are not all the same. This is exactly the kind of distinction I hope to have demonstrated in this article.

Our potential clients face ISP disclosure of their personal information search online for one phrase (“motion to quash”), but they often need to understand that under the same search results answering “what is a motion to quash,” there are two different bodies of law: the general rules about subpoenas (as demonstrated in the Times case) and the very specific realities our readers facing ISP subpoena cases must contend with. As usual, my goal is to help my readers avoid confusion of the topic.

So, if you were reading about the recent high-profile New York Times motion to quash ISP subpoena topic in the news, and you were wondering whether it changes the advice you got when deciding what to do about the ISP letter and copyright infringement lawsuit that you dealt with (or are now facing), the answer is usually that the NY Times article changes the vocabulary more than the strategy.

The real analysis (even for the NY Times journalists contesting the subpoena with a motion to quash) still comes back to standing, deadline math, subpoena scope, and whether the motion is actually capable of changing the outcome. That is why, in most ISP subpoena cases, the smartest move is not to react to the headline.

Even in our field, attorney websites still tout motions to quash as a viable strategy (especially by settlement factory websites or ‘volume-based’ attorneys). The smarter approach (and the reason I wrote these articles) is to forego the alluring attorney sales pitch and to evaluate the what actually happens in practice and the legal basis of whether a motion to quash is actually a viable option before the deadline passes and the ISP hands over your identity to the plaintiff’s attorneys.

Short FAQs:

Should I file a motion to quash my ISP subpoena after seeing the NYT news?

No. The Times situation involves direct subpoenas to journalists with constitutional protections unavailable in most civil copyright cases. In Strike 3 Holdings or similar ISP subpoena matters, evaluate standing, subpoena defects, and timing with counsel instead of assuming the headline strategy applies.

Will a motion to quash stop my subscriber information from being released in a copyright lawsuit?

It can delay release in limited cases involving clear errors or overbreadth, but success is far from guaranteed when the request is narrow and properly served on the ISP. Many defendants find alternative strategies more practical.

How does the 2026 New York Times subpoena fight affect ISP subpoena defense?

It highlights that not all “motion to quash” headlines are relevant to copyright subscribers. The key variables remain who received the subpoena, what it requests, and whether the challenger has legal standing to object.

Legal information and disclaimer

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (F.R.C.P.) is the body of law that governs lawsuits filed in the federal courts, and F.R.C.P. Rule 45 governs subpoenas and the grounds for quashing or modifying them. In some cases, privacy statutes such as the Cable Communications Policy Act (47 U.S. Code § 521) may also matter, but the analysis of which apply and with what weight they apply is highly fact-specific and varies by court.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this page or by contacting the firm unless and until a formal agreement is signed.

Cashman Law Firm, PLLC offers free phone consultations for defendants evaluating whether a motion to quash makes sense in their case. However, before contacting our firm, I ask that you first read the article that we wrote to educate our readers about motions to quash, and how they apply to the kind of copyright infringement lawsuits that our firm has represented over the last 16 years.

The New York Times Just Moved to Quash Subpoenas — What That Means for ISP Subpoena Cases