Century Media Records has reportedly filed lawsuits in New Jersey against a reported 7,000 people who downloaded recently released albums by Lacuna Coil and Iced Earth off of BitTorrent.

Photo taken by Katja Kuhl

According to Northjersey.com, there are a reported 3,136 defendants who illegally shared files of Lacuna Coil’s Dark Adrenaline and the 2011 Iced Earth album Dystopia, and each record is tied into six different lawsuits. But the accusation points towards them as taking part in distributing the albums via BitTorrent by swarming (or segmenting downloading) them around to mass peers at one time.

Since 2010, a reported quarter of a million BitTorrent users have been sued in Federal Courts across the United States for possible copyright violations, ranging from pirating major motion pictures such as The Hurt Locker and The Expandables to a recently similar case involving All Shall Perish’s latest album.

The challenging twist will come whether a large widespread group of individuals can be named in an individual suit, and name each of the people involved as defendants as well as naming the specific swarm as well that was sharing the copyrighted item.

Lawyers in New Jersey have attempted to block the accused from further copying or distributing further works, as well as disclosing the defendants’ identities. Two separate US District judges who reviewed the case have already rejected the case due to the uncertainty of the people’s role accused. Due to the wide use of wireless routers, it makes it unclear whether they were actually involved in such illegal activity.