In this case they clearly are as the IP address was traced to a particular person.
I think it’s more accurate to say “IP addresses are not always people” but they frequently are identifiers and enough to be useful in these cases. So it’s a bit of an odd statement to make regarding a case where the ip address literally uniquely identified someone.
It’s like saying “fingerprints aren’t people” in a case about fingerprints linking to an individual.
That may correlate to a given host, device, or customer connection, but none of those are natural persons.
Who had control of said device on that connection? Was a child using it? Remote-execution malware or a botnet? Was a criminal hacking their home WiFi?
You absolutely cannot map an IP address to a person, without additional forensic evidence that usually entails some non-technical circumstances as well.
This is a pedantic and pointless distinction given the fact that the law regularly does in fact map IP addresses to people without additional forensic evidence. People are successfully convicted on the basis of an IP correlation to a device owned by an individual.
Juries aren't going to care about this distinction because the CSI effect makes it seem like anything technical is basically an immutable fingerprint.
I think it’s more accurate to say “IP addresses are not always people” but they frequently are identifiers and enough to be useful in these cases. So it’s a bit of an odd statement to make regarding a case where the ip address literally uniquely identified someone.
It’s like saying “fingerprints aren’t people” in a case about fingerprints linking to an individual.