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SBC Fights RIAA Over DMCA Subpoenas
NaDrew writes "SFGate.com is running an AP article about Pac Bell's Internet arm suing music industry over file-sharer IDs. 'The suit also called to question some sections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the federal law the RIAA contends supports its latest legal actions. A spokesman for SBC said the RIAA's use of the DMCA in its legal quest for online song-sharers butts up against the privacy rights of SBC's customers.
"The action taken by SBC Internet Services is intended to protect the privacy of our customers," said SBC spokesman Larry Meyer.'" So SBC, like Verizon, is concerned about the cost/hassle of complying with all the subpoenas it has been receiving.
They can probably get the subpoenas thrown out on a technicality quite easily. The rest of the arguments are a little trickier. Declaring laws unconstitutional can always be a problem.
"Pacific Bell Internet Services jumped into the contentious music-downloading fray late Wednesday, filing a lawsuit against the recording industry and questioning the constitutionality of the industry's effort to track down online music sharers." (emphasis mine)
:-)
Joyce's Law: As a US lawsuit goes on longer, the probability of its constitutionality being challenged approaches one.
Bash script for FP whores
Friday, December 3, 1999
In its first major ruling on privacy and defamation in
cyberspace, the Court of Appeals on Thursday held that an
Internet Service Provider (ISP) is merely a conduit for
information, as opposed to a publisher, and consequently
is no more responsible than a telephone company for
defamatory materials transmitted over its lines.
The Court unanimously upheld an Appellate Division,
Second Department, decision that dismissed a defamation
lawsuit brought against Prodigy Services Co., by the
father of a Boy Scout whose identity was usurped by an
unknown imposter. The imposter posted vulgar messages in
the boy's name on an electronic bulletin board and e-
mailed abusive, threatening and sexually explicit
messages, also in the name of the boy, to the local
scoutmaster.
If they aren't responsible for defamation, why file sharing?
Because when the ISP fails to protect it's users privacy, their customers will no longer trust them. They will move to another provider.
All of the ISP's know what is happening on their networks. Especially those providing broadband services, know that if the RIAA is successful in shutting down the P2P networks, it will remove a lot of the incentive for customers to pay for broadband. The cost of complying is probably minor compared to the cost of lost revenue from customers leaving those services.
What have they to gain from that?
Think about it. The ISPs who are challenging are mostly broadband providers. Do people need broadband to check email or surf the web a bit? Nope. People need broadband for filesharing. If filesharing is completely shutdown the need for higher bandwidth comes into question. I have known average users who say things like "$40/month for broadband isn't too bad b/c I can get free music."
Why exactly are the ISPs so concerned with the user privacy? [snip] Fighting the RIAA will cost them money, just to protect privacy? What have they to gain from that?
/t
One of two things:
1) It costs them money to comply with the RIAA demands. They need to have staff looking up ip addresses, cross referencing them with billing records, etc etc. If the RIAA starts tacking more and more requests into a single envelope that starts to get expensive.
2) Marketing. If you have a lot of broadband customers and the money to play legal games, then this is a great way to get some good publicity amongst a very attractive target demographic.
I guess i should throw in a third option:
3) They're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and their belief that a consumer's rights to privacy outweigh a company's *right* to profit.
#!/usr/bin/english
Your P2P app posts a list of songs you have to the public. They look at the public list. It's no different than setting up a bootleg cd market in the middle of town square, at least privacy-wise ;)
I have friends who download songs they hear on the radio.. then get a few more the radio would never play so they get a idea if the cd is worth buying.. then they usually go out and buy the CD.
Actually, this is the real reason the RIAA is scared of P2P. What your friends REALLY do, is listen to some of the other songs on the album, which are never played on the radio. When they figure out there's only one good song on the CD, then they don't buy it.
The RIAA survives by tricking people into buying 15 songs, of which only one is worth having.
...
Just because a law is in existance does not mean that no one has the right to challenge it's constitutionality, a practice that for decades has served well to overturn even the most ardunt of laws.
;)
Without people to stand up to such pathetic excuses of legal bindings, where would the United States be today?
I can only imagine the very faint glimmer of hope trapped in the minds of the people enslaved in that future society. But alas, that "future" is not yet here, and we can all rest easy. Perhaps.
The DMCA and its ilk are tools driven to bring about a reality that no one wants to live in. If no one challenges the various aspects pertinent to how broadly the DMCA reaches into society, then there is no point in even discussing it here in this forum at all. Might as well just enjoy your coffee, shuffle along with the crowd to your nine-to-five job, and clock in another boring day.
Innovation? Deliberation? Thought? These concepts are unknown to most of the corporate figureheads who control the very media we rely on. Why play into their hands?
I want to provide a relevant url for anyone interested in seeing how a media system should act like:
http://www.indymedia.org/
Food for thought. Have a nice day.
user@host$ diff
You think that ISPs want to let their users suck 100% of their bandwith 100% of the day on P2P?
Yes and no. Why get broadband at all if I can't use the bandwidth? ISPs aren't stupid. They know one of the main drivers of Joe Blow getting broadband is p2p. If you remove that driver, then why should the average consumer buy broadband?
Why do you think that quite a few Universities have gone to throttling/closing those ports?
This has nothing to do with pay/month ISPs. Most college broadband is wrapped up in the tuition costs. My guess is that the tuition is not covering all the bandwidth that students were using.
Do you think that download caps and per MB charges over that cap are not to curb people from using P2P?
No it is not to curb people from using it, but to make more money on people using it. To the guy downloading it is still a good deal for him to pay $1/100MB(or whatever they charge) and get free songs for that price. ISPs in essence become a quasi-distributor of music without having to pay for the rights. They are making tons of money off people who p2p and don't want it to go away.
Right. More like, "We are disappointed that Pac Bell has a spine, and didn't roll over as asked."
I'm surprised some corporation hasnt pulled out some patent or copyright and hit the RIAA with stipulations of the DMCA. It can be done easily, I'm sure an audit of their computers would reveal that they have "pirated" software.
Why is it that when a (smaller) corporation decides to stand up for their customers' rights against a (larger) corporation, it's always spun as being unlawful?
Remember, Pac Bell is one company and its not small compared to other baby bells. RIAA is multiple record companies.
It's time the DMCA was given a hard look at by the people who have a clue in the legal community, and who have the power to affect change.
Yes but those politicians love their campaign funds. They dont want to give up those donations just to repel a questionable law.
What really irks me a lot is they are using a generic term as "pirate" to describe file sharers. Last time I checked no one wears an eye patch, has a parrot on their shoulder, privateer, and says "Walk the plank!".
Why would they all want to put all their eggs in one basket. By filing seperate actions the RIAA must defend against each of them. By doing it seperately they are costing RIAA a lot more money. Plus each of them gets their day in court. :)
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
GREAT points.
Until the DMCA has been ruled on by the US Supreme Court, it's Constitutionality is still open for question.
So far, no DMCA case has made it past the low levels of the Federal court system.
Now, don't be TOO optimistic... This court upheld the Sonny Bono Perpetual Copyright Act. BUT, that perpetual copyright coupled with the insane powers the DMCA grats a copyright holder may sway them...
IMHO, I wouldn't have that big a problem with the DMCA if copyright terms were short (say 10-20 years). The way I see it, the LONGER they extend the terms, the more liberal the terms would have to be in order to meet the Constitution's requirement for limits on copyrights...
One method of attack here would be a "due process" argument, that the DMCA's subpoena power violates the Constitution's prohibition of search and seizure, without "due process".
If the RIAA had to file actual lawsuits to get to discovery, before they could subpoena, that would stop this thing cold, as it would increase the hassle and expense 1,000x.
AFAIK, the DMCA has to be the only, if not one of very VERY few laws that allows a PRIVATE entity to curcumvent the requirement to go through courts in a lawsuit to get subpoenas... I don't think the Constitution allows for this.
Subpoena power is very scary. It should be supervised by a court.
Corporatism != Free Market
This is still something that has not been explained to me without it coming down to 'i like to steal music because it's easy and free' not 'i like to preview my music before I run out and buy the CD'
p2p in itself is an awesome technology. BitTorrent is one of my favorites, it solves that problem of things like Fileplanet that make yous sit through 70 ads for 30 min while you wait to download the latest 50MB patch to fix a game you like that wasn't released finished, but half finished because the hype machine kept it going for 2 years before it was ready (1.5 before it was released)
but Kazaa, Napster, Grokster, and any other method of distributing music that was taken from a CD that was distributed as a copyrighted material is just as bad as the guys that scan in the playboy centerfolds and post them to usenet. It's theft of property/right to make money.
Just because we think RIAA is screwing the artists, and RIAA is keeping CD prices artifically high, or whatever justification of the week is tossed out, you're still stealing the music.
It's not like Napster/Kazaa negotiated contracts with the artists that allowed you the user to download music seperate and outside the distribution structure. Its not like the artists are fighting RIAA by not signing contracts for music, heck they're jumping at the chance for a record deal with 'the industry' and are happy they get the $0.08 per CD or whatever measly amount it is.
When you download a song off of kazaa or whatever the p2p du jour is, you're stealing. There isn't a justification for this other than some made up BS. You aren't 'fighting the man' because 'the man' is someone that is out to make a buck. they're not 'trampling your rights' in an attempt to enforce their valid and legal copyrights.
If half the energy was put into going after our lawmakers to get things like Copyright lenghts, patents, and all the things that have been legally approved by our legally elected representatives and making them change this, we'd get something done.
Instead we're going to make a bunch of lawyers rich, a bunch of parents whos 12 year old kids are downloading and hosting millions of songs turn off the internet because it corrupted poor johnn and jane, and we're going to get it so that anything outside of port 80 requests to certified websites will be reported as piracy activity and they'll use the PATRIOT act to hunt us down.
73 iTunes Music Store songs purchased and counting.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Look at it in a slightly different light - and ignore RIAA for the moment. If RIAA manages to coerce the bigger ISPs into turning over records of their customers, the smaller ISP's are going to follow suit. Why? Legal Precedence.
Now, assume RIAA has pulled this off, and sues the hell out of all the P2P filesharers in the USA. (Hey Pres. Bush - RIAA is out to really screw up your economy - there suing 25% of the US population into poverty.) By getting the information from the ISP's under the DMCA, you can bet it wont be long thereafter until other companies start tossing out subpoenas for other "violations." SCO? Microsoft? The way is paved, thanks to RIAA.
Then, it gets worse. The government starts, and other businesses get involved to. And soon - an individuals right to privacy is gone, and the ISP's of the US have become nothing expect a research faciltity at the mercy of courts and lawsuits.
I helped build an ISP some years back. We did it for 2 reasons - money (of course) and to give the people in the area which we lived access to information on the Internet, anonymously if they wanted. And I suspect a fair number of the smaller ISPs out there were started by people who remember back when the net was anonymous and you didnt get your life poked and prodded by marketing agencies, sales companies, RIAA, and who knows who else, because you felt like finding a tip on how to set up Slackware!
I am totally against the DMCA, but how much of a chance do you think SBC has of winning?
Suppose they don't have any chance of winning. Which do you think is a better PR move -- simply rolling over, as some ISPs did, or dragging their heels in favor of their customers publically every step of the way?
If you like trading music and are about to get broadband, which company would *you* sign up with?
May we never see th
Huh? That breakup, 20 years ago, was targetted at AT&T. Even if one buys into the notion that "the government" can somehow manage to hold a grudge for two decades, why would they hold it against SBC? Their beef was specifically with AT&T. They forced AT&T to spin off a bunch of smaller, autonomous companies to conduct local operations-- the baby bells. Additionally, SBC is a consolidation of a whole mess of former baby bells and NON-bell operating companies, so they have little relation to a court action from back then.
Does "the government" despise Chevron? Exxon? Any of the other former Standard Oil companies? Same thing there. The government really doesn't care!
People need to quit thinking of the government as an entity with human feelings and sensibilities. It may be full of humans, but it's just a faceless, mindless machine.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The DMCA would be a terrible law even if copyright lasted only one day. Here's the issue: the DMCA criminalizes "circumvention devices" -- things designed to break past copy protection or access restrictions. Selling, trading, donating, or even talking about such is considered "trafficking". And this provision does not expire.
Thus, even if a work is in public domain, if someone has put it behind any sort of access control -- say, a dumb ROT13 password scheme -- it is illegal to access the mateial (despite your legal right to copy it). Under the DMCA, copyright has been superseded by something far more insidious and far more immortal. This is of course the wet dream of both magecorporations and totalitarians.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The RIAA has much more experience in fighting in the courtroom and washington with concern to file sharing.
The baby bells have been playing the political game longer than the RIAA has even existed.
The telecom industry is heavily regulated. Believe me these boys know how to play political games.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.