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Verizon Loses Suit Over Subpoena of Subscriber Info
Brian Golden writes "As a result of a suit filed by the RIAA, the identity of a Verizon customer with a penchant for mp3's was ordered to be released. Man, how many people are now sweating bullets trying to remember what they downloaded?" News.com.com also has a story. If you've forgotten about this case, see our earlier story. Verizon wasn't making any sort of principled stand to protect its users' privacy, it just wanted to avoid the costs of complying with the (many) subpoenas it will now receive.
The power's concentrated in the hands of the copyright holders, who have the money and the control. The DMCA was passed because they wanted it; the Verizon motion was decided this way because they wanted it...a w/
http://www.geocities.com/digitalmilleniuml
geek. lawyer.
The recording industry asked Verizon last summer to reveal the name of a customer believed to have downloaded more than 600 songs in one day, but Verizon refused
(Emph mine.) So just based on the fact that the customer might have downloaded [any number] of songs, they have convinced the federal government to step in and force Verizon to release information to a group of record companies? This is revolting.
Ok.
What happens if, say, I have my MP3 collection on my computer at home. I get permission to temporarily use the storage at work while doing a reformat of my computer. When I download all the files back to my computer at home, is the RIAA going to come knocking?
Two choices: encrypt the entire collection or re-rip from CD. I don't know which would take longer.
...
tell it to the judge, you're going to court and will have to foot the bill for the expenses.
Sure you may get off, but it will be 25,000 dollars later.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A federal judge ordered Verizon Communications Tuesday to turn over the name of a customer suspected of downloading songs over the Internet, handing a victory to recording companies in their fight against online piracy.
But what if I start my own ISP and the database of customer records is indexed without any information that would be able to identify the person or phone line that's dialing in to use our Web access services?
Any payment information would be done with cash only and written on pencil and paper kept in a lockbox or safe of some sort so that no matter what a court rules, my customers remain anonymous.
Is this feasible?
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Anything you write down, record on tape, commit to a file on your computer, or store in any way other than in the meat between your ears can come back to haunt you.
Verizon should make sure they log as little as possible - keep IP to User ID logs for not more than a day, don't log ANY actions of your proxy servers, and so on.
Then, when the *AA comes and says "We need all your logs for the past week so we can find this pirate", Verizon can say "Here's all the logs we have - the last 23 hours. Cheers!"
If you absolutely feel you must have the possiblity of accessing logs older than that, then encrypt them with a public key. Let the private key be held by an individual in another country. If you need to access the logs, you mail the encrypted log to him, he decrypts it and sends it back.
Then if you are served, you give the logs to the nice officers, and then tell your friend that you have been served. Then, even if you want the logs decrypted, your friend won't.
Let them go to East Elbonia if they want the logs decrypted.
www.eFax.com are spammers
But now, with this one-two punch aimed at ISPs (see http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/18/21 16255&mode=thread&tid=141)they've started annoying the big boys - corporations with real money. No ISP in their right mind wants to have to give up their user's personal info without a fight - it makes them look bad and generates a lot of bad will with their customers.
So might it be that Verizon, AT&T, BellSouth, Earthlink, etc. will start some counter-lobbying on the Hill to get the DMCA limited? Sure, they're not really doing it for the best reasons... but you know what they say about "the enemy of my enemy."
I've often thought about this. This is my solution.
.
:)
Assuming you run Linux, make a loopback crypto partition. However, don't just use a password for the encryption key.
Make a smallish file (128 bytes) of random uuencoded data into a file (random128bytes)
Write a shell script that prompts for your password, and uses the contents of that file with the password appended.
That way, the password is still required, but if in doubt, you can shred -u random128bytes, and you'll never be able to get it back. Knowing the password won't help you at all.
Any suggestions for improvements from the Slashdot paranoids?
Get your own free personal location tracker
This is:
1.An attempt, and order BY the government to uphold the will of a corporation, above and beyond that of the citizens. Therefore:
2.A hostile act by the government against the citizens of this nation.
--otterpop378
If the RIAA doesn't know who the person is, how do they know the person unlawfully downloaded the music? That person may be legally entitled to possess copies of those 600 tracks as they may already own the CDs. For all they know, this person may be a record company employee!
I certainly feel I am doing nothing wrong if I download tracks I already own on CD, and I certainly own right to play more than 600 tracks. More like 6000!
According to what I read in the complaint, the DMCA authorizes a publisher to subpoena the identity of an alleged copyright infringer. "...RIAA believed a computer on Verizon's internet service was distributing to the public for download unauthorized copies of hundreds of copyrighted sound recordings..."
Was the verizon subscriber targeted because he was downloading RIAA music files, or because he was publishing (offering for download) RIAA music files?
Enquiring minds want to know? I expect a retraction (or a re-write) of the Reuters quote any time now. I suspect the RIAA FUD campaign is working too well, inadvertently causing some journalist with average integrity to because a part of their FUD engine. Can a publisher assert copyright infringment charges against a posessor (rather than a publisher) of an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Wouldn't it be funny if all the file were fake? Ie they either used that Kazaa cheating program which makes it seem like you have more files then you do, or they just renamed some text files Brittney_Spear_mp3.
:-). Actually she said they were both very nice, and she mentioned to the RIAA guy about downloading music. The one thing he said besides explaining about some madeup revenue losses is that in the coming year aka now, the RIAA was going to go full tilt against private citizens who share their files on peer2peer programs. Now I know this is a big "no shit", but this was from someone in the thick of it and he said suits against individuals was going to become VERY common as opposed to suits against just the networks. So take it FWIW, but if your still sharing mp3's on Kazaa etc you may be in for more than you bargined for.
Also true story. My girlfriend was at a wedding recently in Washington(I couldn't make it). On both sides of her were two lawyers. One worked for MS the other for the RIAA. She said they were lucky I wasn't there
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
In recent weeks I have had KaZaa open 24/7 for sharing. Not 600 files, I share over 3000 files, simply to thumb my nose at these zealots.
With this said, let us take into consideration a suit by the RIAA against me, given that they get my name and information. A cease and desist letter? Sure, I'd probably cease, but what if I continued to share?
I'm a senior in college. I own a crappy car, rent an apartment, and have quite low income. So what then? What will they get if they sue me? Nearly nothing. They can have my student loan, my car, and my apt. Kick me off my ISP, I'll find another.
The RIAA seems to not understand that civil lawsuits mean nothing to those who have nothing. This means most college students. This means most of the file sharers.
Do you think I'd be downloading all the free music I want if I could afford it? (Yes, probably, but I'm just making a point)
the question is not about anonymity to avoid prosecution. the question is about who should be forced to cooperate at what cost for what crime. verizon or any other isp now needs to comply with potentially millions of subpeona automatically generated through viruses and worms by RIAA. they must not make mistake, lest they get sued by users for violating their privacy. this is a huge burden on any isp. in the past, it was presumed that isps just carry information and they should not need to comply with such subpeonas, but now that has changed.
What in your opinion should be done to people who are obviously using the Internet to break copywrite laws?
It's NOT OBVIOUS that a copyright law is being broken.
That's my whole point.
Assumptions are being made and being treated as fact. For just being suspected of violating copyright law the RIAA now has the power to start collecting personal information about who you are.
That's equivalent to me going to your bank and telling them I suspect you of fraud and to give me your bank account number and contact information.
That's the kind of precedent that's being set here.
Do you want anyone with a suspicion to be able to gather sensitive, personal information about you like that?
Like, "Vote for me, and I'll get rid of that damn photo-radar." Democracy works sometime.
Copyright violations can be either criminal or civil. It is much easy to prove a civil case.
Sharing of MP3s from CDs that you own is a copyright violation. This was made clear in the my.mp3.com case. It does not matter if either or both parties own the CD. The possible penalty for sharing a registered copyrighted work is $30K per work (per song offered, not per song downloaded).
The $30K figure is for statutory damages. Statutory damages can be awarded even if it is not shown that any one actually made any money or that the owner lost any money or even that the violation was willful. If the copyright owner can prove any of these, the amount can be higher. Statutory damages for willful copyright violations are up to $150K per work.
Sharing because of a misconfigured P2P setup may not be willful, but is still probably a violation. The final determination is, of course, up to the judge or jury. Adding warnings like, RIAA keep out! could help the RIAA show that the violation was willful. The disclaimer that you propose is basically what my.mp3.com tried and they had to pay huge amount in damages.