Verizon to Reveal Customers in DMCA Subpoena Case

JulisJ writes "NYTimes reports that Verizon will turn over the names of online subscribers accused of swapping music. This could be a big blow to the file-swapping community, even if you're swapping legit." There's also a story on News.com. See our previous story for background.

Comments

Big Blow to WHO?

[spiedrazer]

How could this be a big blow to those who are file swapping legit? If you are legit but the activity looks like you are a major illegal abuser, you will probably be investigated, but the chances of that are slim.

You 'Kids' need to understand that MOST file swapping is illegal, so the legit uses will suffer because of it.

My boss sent me this via email today ...

[SuperDuG]

I don't know why exactly it is that I was sent this article, maybe because he was bored and wanted to send it out to all the employees or maybe he thinks we're all pirates.

I think that the RIAA and MPAA have gone way too far. We don't need a private or secret police force in america, and we certainly don't need already super rich industries suing everyone with a DSL line to their home.

I'm truly begining to wonder when it is exactly that the public at large is going to stand up against this horrible abuse of power and perfect example of corruption of democracy and say, ENOUGH. This is getting very old very quickly and I'm tired of always hearing about the *AA lawsuits.

P2P is here to stay because people don't value the bilboard top $100 as worth $15 a CD, they value it as giving it the time to download the song. It's the same with anything else, entertainment is valued at what the consumer is willing to pay for it, it's the fact that these companies think that they're losing income. NO YOUR NOT, it's not that valuable to us and we're not going to pay for it so quit trying.

Is this concept really so hard to understand?

Will you continue filesharing?

[rkz]

After hearing this news many people are going to be discouraged by filesharing. This could be the end of people thinking they can get away with it.

So the implications will be:

1) People will stop sharing their files and leech

2) People will stop sharing and move over to services like eMusic/Apple.

3) Everyone starts using freenet!


The last option sounds the best, its the evolution of Filesharing like Kazaa was after Napster. The more they attack pirates the further underground they push them.

Re:where is it going to stop?

[blueZhift]

Where it stops depends on whether a backlash develops that hurts legitimate sales. If the people being dragged into court are clean cut kids from Wisconsin instead of the slimy guy selling pirated CDs out the back of his Chevy, then the backlash could be pretty strong.

I used to think that if they busted a few kids to make an example out of them, it might put the brakes on it. But file swapping has gotten too big now to really stop casual piracy. Besides, what RIAA is trying to do right now won't stop the slimy guy anyway. What will help is getting the price of CDs down and making legitimate, no strings attached, music buying/downloading easy and widespread. That makes sense to me, but some people just have to learn the hard way.