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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.
/me hopes I'm not one of them...
Do these people who are being identified know who they are? Does anyone know if Verizon contacted them and made them aware? If so, would Verizon liable if they packed up, deleted all the potentially infringing files and left the country?
IANAL, but can they still prove the individual's guilt if they wiped there hard drive?
"Oh someone must have spoofed my ip! I don't trade music, I swear!"
Polaroid. See what develops!!
So, they didn't even listen to see what the file was before sending out the letter.
I wonder... was the professor singing one of their songs, singing one of his own songs, or was it just a lecture?
On the internet, no one knows you're a frog.
doesn't this fit under illegal search and siezure?
I am pretty sure, but not certain, that you have the right to view the search warrant to see if it is valid. Now since your internet provider gets the warrant they have they right to look at it, but since they are not searching your property its legal for them to take whatever your IP has on you. But isn't any information that the IP gets on you illegal since it was an illegal search and seizure of sorts or did we sign away all of rights to privacy when we signed their EULA thing?
...how much this is going to effect their subscriber base. I would leave them for sure if I saw my ISP doing this kinda stuff. :P
No I didnt spell check this post...
Yes, it doesn't work the same way that Kazaa does or Napster did, it is more like a parallel world wide web, but I certainly don't think that the Napster-inspired UI paradigm is the "be all and end all" of P2P user interfaces.
Some people complain that Freenet's anonymity make it too slow, yet I have been able to get entire 900MB movies from it at about 90k/sec (over a 160k/sec downstream connection), and do-so consistently and reliably.
The Freenet developers are working hard to improve Freenet's speed too - as we speak they are working to migrate over to the vastly more efficient java.nio networking library which should dramatically reduce Freenet's CPU requirements.
Further down the line, they have been working on a radical rethink of Freenet's core routing algorithm, called "Next Gen Routing", which should make Freenet much faster when it comes to retrieving information.
Anyone worried about this issue should go to the Freenet website and help them with a donation ASAP.
The case immediately exposes the four defendants to legal action.
The nytimes.com and news.com articles don't say anything about why these 4 guys are being singled out. What about all the other millions of guys out there using P2P to swap music? Are they just trying to make a guy feel left out?
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
I also wonder, in the process of pushing pirates underground, that all this will do nothing but consolidate file sharers to one network, and promote MORE file sharing due to all the press, as well as discussions on what Apps will effectivly hide you from your ISP...
Polaroid. See what develops!!
The professor? Chances are with this precedent, the RIAA will just demand all the names of people they _think_ are trading illegal files. Knowing the ISP, they'll probably hand over the names, and disconnect your service in the process for violating TOS. The ISPs will just assume everything is true.
:)
Since the RIAA didn't even bother CHECKING the files first, who knows how many people are going to get screwed this way. I'm sure there are Pro-RIAA zealots out there who PURPOSEFULLY put out fakes. Well I guess there is a brighter side. Those guys will get nailed too
at msnbc, where this story is running also, (http://www.msnbc.com/news/922214.asp?0dm=C12LT) they state at the end "Meanwhile, both sides (RIAA and Verizon) are closely watching for legislation coming soon from a Republican lawmaker that would require copyright holders to file an actual legal case against a suspected infringer before they seek the subscriberâ(TM)s identity via a subpoena."
Anyone know who is proposing this and what it entails? Any other details?
-DarDack
"Life is not fair"
I know this may be out of left field, but could I not copyright my identity? What's to stop me from copyrighting my name, address, phone number, email, IP address, etc? If my ISP were to reveal my identity, I could then initiate the same process that the **AA is initiating against file swappers. This way, anyone who infringes on my privacy by either sending my spam, telemarketing, revealing my address, engage in identity theft, or revealing my identity to people/organizations I don't want would be guilty of copyright infringement.
Just a thought.
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Unlike ordinary "John Doe" subpoenas, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows copyright holders to subpoena information without first seeking a judge's blessing, making it an easier and cheaper method for tracking down alleged copyright infringers.
That's not correct. Had Verizon responded by shutting off the offending material, it could not have been compelled to reveal the subscriber's information short of RIAA filing a John Doe suit.
Verizon made a different claim. It said, "I'm just an innocent ISP. Someone else owns and is in posession of those servers." RIAA then quite reasonably said, "Well then you have to tell us how to get in touch with them so that we can serve them the same DMCA notice." Verizon said, "Nuh uh!" and the current legal battle ensued.
Basically, Verizon thought they saw a hole in the law and were trying to take advantage of it. The safe harbor portion of the law says that in order to be protected from copyright infringment claims, Verizon would have to take down any infringing material a customer put on their server at the owner's request, UNLESS the customer wrote a counter letter claiming that the material was non-infringing. If the customer wrote such a letter, Verizon could leave the material up and still not be liable for any infringement, however they would have to pass the letter back to the complainer and the letter was required to include the customer's contact information.
Not explicitly addressed in the law was the understanding that the IP addresses assigned to various companies was a matter of public record, stored at the various IP registries, so a copyright owner could directly determine who owned a particular server.
Verizon went to court and said, "That IP address is delegated to someone else, and just because the IP block delegations to me are published doesn't mean I have to publish who I delegate IP addresses to."
In essence, the court said, "Horse puckey! The IP address registry says that's your IP address. If its not, you have to say whose it is. And you better hurry up before we decide that it was yours after all and you lose your safe harbor protection!"
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
If I put up a web page on my machine or in the FTP headers and such, on my IP saying that site cannot be accessed by the RIAA, its affiliates or anyone working for the RIAA for any reason and that doing so constitutes illegal intrusion into my system, would that make the RIAA liable for accessing my system illegally. Is there any kind of electronic tresspass law which people could use to make it illegal for them to send their web crawlers and such over your website and such?
Given that I don't host their crap on my site, what gives them the right to eat up my bandwidth constantly by randomly searching for mp3's? (My personal webserver has been crawled by a suspected RIAA bot about 15 times this week) I know they are doing this as they have Embarrased themselves in the past by searching harmless systems.
This makes going over my log files when I need to a real pain too when I have access logs showing some damn bot pouring over every file name on the system.
So do those of us who are sick of them using these abusive tactics have any recourse to go after the RIAA for intruding on our systems with annoying bots? I for one am tired of them cataloging my web server and trying to FTP in anonymously every 10 hours or so just because I *might* have something of theirs posted up.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Just out of curiosity, I wonder what would happen if somebody used the RIAA's tricks as a defence. I am not a lawyer (yet), but I've heard that the RIAA puts up fake music on p2p networks in order to frustrate file swappers.
An argument could be made that searching for songs is really just a search for the publically distributed mp3 files the RIAA is releasing to the Internet. (I was looking for the RIAA sanctioned madonna MP3 file with her talking about stealing. It's not my fault I happened to accidently download one of her mp3s).
On that note, I wonder who uses p2p networks to swap 'legit'? I suppose when I download an mp3 off the Internet that is already sitting in my CD collection (this happens often), that is 'legit'.
You 'Kids' need to understand that MOST file swapping is illegal, so the legit uses will suffer because of it.
It reminds me of when I was 13 years old, and was at the stereo store waiting to plunk down some of my hard earned paper route money for a duel cassete deck (these things used to be expensive), and the sales person went on a long lecture about how if I used this to make copies of my freinds tapes I'd be ruining it for everyone, and if I did that, someday you wouldn't be able to buy duel tape decks.
Yeah.
The Internet is generally stupid
If someone should happen to post it, perhaps she might receive a few new catalog subscriptions... perhaps enough to flood a city block?
Why not post some other interesting RIAA office addresses? It might make sending subpoenas and cease and desist notices more interesting if they have to wade through an ocean of Spiegel catalogs to do it.
Denial of service indeed.
" 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."
What if I'm one of those people that has a vast cd collection that I want to convert to MP3s so I can queue up several hundred songs on my computer without swapping CDs and I'm also to lazy to encode them all myself so I download them. Is that legit?
Or if I sat my big ass down on my favorite CD and broke it.. is it legit to download that one? Or to take that further, what if it's an old casette that sounds like crap now.
Personally, I think all of those are legit but there's no way for Verizon or the RIAA to know if you fall into one of those categories when you download a copyrighted song.
Granted, the majority probably don't fall into those categories but some people do.
This development is significantly more serious than the lawsuits currently filed against P2P software developers, such as the one against Streamcast. First, there is a set precedent of the RIAA winning suits against individual persons - take the university students that were sued earlier this year, for example. Regardless of if the P2P suits are won - after all, there can always be another P2P app developed and posted online somewhere (just ask Justin from Nullsoft about that) - if individuals themselves are faced with the threat of multi-million dollar lawsuits by the RIAA for swapping music files, who is going to take the risk? Is the threat of settling out of court for tens of thousands really worth risking an illegal download of a song that could be purchased for .99 cents from a 'legitimate' provider?
Does this mean that so-called 'legitimate' music file services, such as those provided by Apple and RealNetwork, will become the preferred method of obtaining music online?
What does this mean for ISPs who provide broadband? How many of you have seen the Comcast commercial, where they pitch the fact that you can quickly download music files as part of the reason to switch to cable internet access? (the ad is of a guy burning a CD for some girl he just went on a date w/...) I know for a fact many consummers are moving to broadband simply because they can download music, movies, videos - for "free". While I doubt that there would be an exodus of cable/dsl subscribers leaving their service to return to dialup, if file sharing were no longer 'safe', so to speak, what impact would this have on future sales of broadband internet service? On some level, Verizon has to understand that file sharing's survival has an impact on sales of their DSL service - while I'm sure they are trying to protect the rights of their customers, they have to also be aware that the elimination of P2P as one of the broadband 'perks' is a blow to the appeal of their product.
Should ISPs include some kind of 'legitimate' file sharing service as part of their broadband plan?
If the RIAA believes these kind of injunctions are going to somehow stimulate sales of CDs, they are sorely mistaken - removing the on-demand, popular method of previewing an artist's recorded work prior to purchasing will only hurt CD sales, not strengthen them. The best thing the RIAA could do to stimulate music sales is to prevent crappy music from getting recorded in the first place...
i am at work but my home computer is on right now swapping songs.
what are they going to do? cut off my access?
i go to another isp.
are they going to sue me?
show me my illegal files. they are all on an external usb drive. oops, no more drive.
prove i traded files with a certain name/ ip?
someone hacked my account. my ip changes every time i login. prove it's really me.
and if they do, i will proudly go down as a martyr for the cause of intellectual property common sense. if those legions of lawyer assholes want to make me a fallguy for the fucking riaa, so be it.
the corporatization of intellectual property has gotten to the point where innovation is stifled in the name of maximizing corporate profits.
intellectual property laws should FOSTER creativity, not squash it. i would be proud to be turned into a bankrupt cause celeb for the sake of publicizing and casting a spotlight on a bankrupt morality.
some of you think no one will care. well, guess what, more and more people are caring every day about individual rights being trampled in the name of the bank accounts of large corporations. i am completely unapologetic about my file swapping and i will be proud to be sued by these mother fuckers if what i get in return is the image of the little guy getting screwed by corporate interests broadly publicized.
first rule of public relations: there is no such thing as bad pr. any noise that is made over this case is good pr for the cause of individual rights versus corporate greed. fuck them. go ahead and sue me assholes.
my file swapping is going on right now and will not be stopped. i will switch isps, i will switch file swapping programs. and there is nothing you can do to stop me.
and oyu can take "me" to be the individual in pursuit of intellectual property common sense.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I changed my name to reflect an expresion of my innerself. As I feel this is an unique expression I do not want others copying it and infringing on my art.
How bout that?
-- taking over the world, we are.
Yep, another slashdot idiot who does not understand economics 101. The fact of the matter is that, if someone can get something for free, they will not be willing pay money for the product in question. This is why we have anti-shoplifting laws; and why, yes, we have anti-piracy laws.
Strangely enough, the Apple iTunes music store seems to be doing surprisingly well. People don't want to steal but they are tired of paying the prices the record labels are insisting on. Funny how the price of Music CDs hasn't kept pace with the price to produce them, eh?
The Record Labels are getting what they deserve, the "Oh, new technology! Goodie! More money for me!" way of thinking is catching up with them.
Aside -- I guess I missed the part where P2P got illegal. Was there a ruling that file swapping with "friends" became illegal? (Wasn't that the whole crux of P2P in the first place?) If I am sharing my music only with friends I know, am I doing it illegally? What is the definition of "fair use?" Not being facetious here, I just must have missed (or more likely misunderstood) it.
Stop laughing. Yes, you! I'm serious.
What was music like before recordings? People wrote songs, to be sure. Other people published the sheet music under copyright. People played the music and sang the music. Some bought the sheet music, others played by ear and remembered the words. The people who wrote the music didn't get rich, but some of the publishers did. (Sound familiar?)So if Congress says, "Copy away!" and the recording industry dries up and blows away:
How is this a bad thing? Think about it with an open mind and see where it leads.Will there still be music? Yes.
Recorded music? Maybe.
Will the people who write the music starve? No. (They'll keep their day jobs.)
Will the publishers starve? Not if they can be retrained as burger flippers. [Joke!]
Will there still be professional performers? Yes.
Will you or your kids learn to play an instrument and sing? Quite likely.
Will you enjoy getting together with friends and neighbors for a "Music Night" every week? Probably more than you enjoy sitting alone in your room wearing headphones.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
True about what they need to do, but I think it's too late. Kids won't pay for what they got for free. It would have to be ridiculously cheap (like 5 cents a song) for it to stop piracy.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Where it stops depends on whether a backlash develops that hurts legitimate sales.
No, that won't work.
RIAA: What? Our profits are down? !@#$ Pirates!!! Quick, we need to buy some more laws!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I just read about Earthstation 5 - no idea who they are (prehaps the RIAA in disguise!), but this program claims to be
Well, it sounds interesting - I'm not going to try it though *G*
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"The technology will move faster than the court systems," said Jorge A. Gonzalez, the founder of Zeropaid.com, a repository of information for file-sharing software. "The new programs being developed are going to mask users. By the time Verizon has to start turning over a lot of names, the identities of users will be unknown."
That about sums it up. Filesharing isn't going to disappear, it will just get smarter. Eventually, we'll start pulling the same measures as email, although they might be more effective in P2P: tarpitting, blacklisting, etc etc
In the meantime though, why not move to Canada. I've yet to hear of such a case here (possibly offset by the crappy CD-tax?). Anyone else heard of RIAA attacks here up North?
Mind you, I'm not saying the following represented a GOOD thing... it undoubtedly resulted in one or more extra drunks on the road...
Once I was at the local bowling alley at closing time. I was the least drunk of the group, and even I didn't want to drive. So we hung around the parking lot, trying to avoid the issue, when we noticed a guy visibly staggering, by all appearances falling-down drunk. He then proceeds to get into his car (new, though I don't recall exactly what type), and after missing the keyhole several times, starts the engine, BUCKLES HIS SEATBELT, and puts the car into gear.
Needless to say, he is immediately stopped and made to do sobriety tests and a breathalyzer the instant he leaves the parking lot. He passes all of them. The absolutely irate police are forced to let him go, as they can't even ticket him for a seatbelt violation! Meanwhile, everyone else has left while all cop eyes were on the Designated Drunk (who was, of course, completely sober).
Pissing off cops may not be a very good idea, but it's still legal if done properly.
Right after that, the cops hustled us into our car and made me drive it back to the nearest person's house (about two blocks) though I *did* have some alcohol in me. I didn't know if I should do it or refuse. Luckily, they weren't trying to set me up for anything, they just wanted us to go away, and we got back without incident.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
The difference is that private property and the rights that accompany it (my hat, my toothbrush, my car, my underwear) preceed the existence of government--or even the concept of government. Governments enforce this right through laws that establish penalties for theft. Stealing is a crime against the person, according to nature of man.
Copyright, however, and the right of exclusivity that accompanies it, was created by the government, though the enactment of a law. There is no precedent right that is being enforced by the law. Even though the law provides remedy to the copyright holder in cases of infringement, the crime is a crime against copyright law, rather than against the person.
--When you buy proprietary software, you don't get better software. What you get is the right to complain about it.