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SBC Refuses To Name File-Sharing Users
securitas writes "The New York Times reports that Internet provider SBC Communications has refused to identify computer users accused by the RIAA of file-sharing copyrighted material. SBC is the largest high-speed DSL provider with over 3 million subscribers. It continues to refuse a response to the 300 subpoenas served by the RIAA despite a ruling against Verizon earlier this year. 'We are going to challenge every single one of these that they file until we are told that our position is wrong as a matter of law,' said James D. Ellis, general counsel for SBC. He continues, '...We've got a long heritage in which we have always taken a harsh and hard rule on protecting the privacy of our customers' information.' Mirrors in Tuscaloosa and Lakeland."
As usual, the google link thwarting the NYtimes registration:
Click Here
All of you who were *ahem* caught "sharing" MP3s of popular musicians and are subscribed to Time Warner's internet service.. well you all are going to get it up the ass. Time Warner is not only an ISP, but an RIAA member.
I was reading the article and this really struck me
:)
A record industry official pointed to a past print advertisement from SBC's Pacific Bell unit that read, in part: "Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like. Go MP3 crazy. Try new music. Build a song library. Whatever."
"Sure beats going to the record store," the advertisement concluded.
-- snip --
Matthew J. Oppenheim, the trade group's senior vice president for business and legal affairs, said the ad was important because it suggested a strong motive for SBC's position. "SBC believes that free music drives its business,"
Hmmm... I guess they would make quite a bit of money from the excess bandwidth charges from people who download heaps of music. Certainly that would be a strong motive to take this stance, money is a strong motive for a lot of things.
Also.. it may be unrelated but their share price is up $0.35
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I agree completely, especially when you look at the record of SBC's customer happiness factor in general, and some of their less-than-ethical business practices here in Ohio (so bad that even the state got mad).
This is a wonderfully pleasant surprise from SBC.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Companies of SBC:
Pacific Bell + Nevada Bell = Pacific Telesis
Illinois Bell + Indiana Bell + Michigan Bell + Ohio Bell + Wisconsin Bell = Ameritech
Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET)
Southwestern Bell
Pacific Telesis + Ameritech + SNET + Southwestern Bell = SBC.
Sounds to me like SBC is more like a partial re-assembly of the original monopoly.
Not that I don't respect SBC big-time for this decision.
(Source of data: US FCC, http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/armis/carrier_filing_histor y/COSA_History/sbtr.htm)
In the Chicago area, SBC just took over our phone service a few years back. They screwed everything and jacked up the prices. The people at SBC engage in some of the most underhanded busniess practice this side of the ENRON debacle. I do have to say that I am quite impressed by this move, though. But look for the hidden motives. Publicity is the name of the game here not some sense of loyalty they have to thier customers.
This is the same company that will sell local phone service customers' information unless the customer requests that they don't...even if the number is unlisted and even if the customer has subscribed to SBC's Privacy Manager service whose only function is to keep companies from buying the customer's information and calling them!
And even with your unlisted number...even with your Privacy Manager...even if you got in before the deadline and asked them not to sell your information...SBC'S TELEMARKETING DIVISION CAN STILL GET YOUR NUMBER AND BYPASS PRIVACY MANAGER!
SBC is doing this to get its name in the press. I don't have a problem with a company trying to make money but caring about customers is the last thing on their list.
I know verizon is still fighting RIAA. And i know that comcast and some other cable companies said that they would cooperate with RIAA.
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Comcast has had the most subpeonas sent to it by RIAA and they are #1 on thier hitlist. Real people are bieng affected here. For example there was a case with the mother of 4 who doesn't even have enough money for an attorney.(you think she will be sending her kids to college if riaa bankrupts her)What does RIAA gain out of it?? Some extra revenue so the ridicuosly wealthy singers can support thier drug habit and thier trips to space.
http://www.techtv.com/news/culture/story/0,2419
Verizon is dead set against it.
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/3075
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/04/25/1614244.
RIAA can't keep fighting all these companies and the negative publicity its recieving...P2P network will get more sophisticated and secure...as many as said in the past RIAA needs to change thier business models..thats the only way to combat piracy...piracy has been around for as long as there was any type of trade...even coporations/organizations larger than RIAA have to deal with piracy but they do it by changing thier business model...gaming companies(ie blizzard) started offering online subscriptions which make the user more inclined to buy the game instead of pirating it...M$ started offering...well thats sort of a bad example...but even they dont use thier windowsupdate site to check if your cdkey is valid...RIAA often argues that "you can't compete with free" but that is wrong...people buy botteled water...they buy gorumet coffee from startbucks instead of the free cup they can get at work...hell people even buy M$ windows over linux...anways what i'm trying to say is you can compete with free if the incentive is there...riaa needs to change thier business model and offer these incentives....
If you're interested, you can read about the lawsuite here and here.
If you don't do a lot of file sharing why do you need broadband? To have the convenience of never having to tie up the phone line? Forget it - I can wire this entire rural village with "broadband." We don't get any other form of broadband out here but if no one changed their online habits I could funnel every one of those wireless users through a 128K ISDN line and no one would complain.
File sharing is the only reason to have broadband. Well, actually, buying movie downloads would be a great application, but Hollywood refuses to go there. And legally downloading music would be another great app, but thanks to our antiquated legal system kept fat by dollars from hundreds of lobbyists, we won't have that, either. the thing is...
"Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like. Go MP3 crazy. Try new music. Build a song library. Whatever."
I can point you to a half dozen russian sites where, for $20 a month, you can get on legal on-demand MP3 downloads of just about any popular artist. That includes lots of Russian artists you've prbably never heard of, but it also includes Britney and Madonna and Christina and all the rest. These sites are operated completely legally, paying royalties to the russian licensing agency (ROMS) responsible for copyrighted "multimedia" works. So, technically, the above statement is 100% true and can be done legally and in a very cost effective fashion (how about a dime a song for 256kbps?).
But you're not likely to hear about this from Hollywood. Doesn't anyone wonder why Hollywood isn't throwing giant canninption fits over these sites offering legal downloads (for years now) to anyone with a Franklin in their Paypal account?
Hollywood isn't going to mention these legal services because they would risk further losing control of the market. Imagine if word got around that you could go online and pick any CD you want, select the level of quality you want, and download it from a completely legal website!
It's the elephant in the room. The record industry zoots don't want to talk about it, the lobbyists and lawyers don't want to talk about it, and the only way they know to keep the discussion stifled is to throw around the red paint of piracy. You think the record industry wants this case to actually go to court? And have their entire case mooted when all this becomes a matter of public record?
It's a little long to type up here, but I can give you the jist of the article. Basically it describes a way of getting all the active MAC address (of Windows machines) on your subnet by performing a portscan on Netbios (port 139), and using those (ifconfig in linux or perhaps MAC address cloning on you linksys router) to register an IP thru DHCP.
Since most Cable ISPs require the MAC of the connecting device to be registered, you need a vaild one. Any thing you do with an IP registered under an assumed MAC gets blamed on the person with the MAC you stole.
Thats the theory anyway. Could be traced, but probably enough to get you off the hook.
I think the case has to already have been brought for the destruction of the logs to be illegal. So if the ISP was started with quick destruction of logs in mind, it should work. In fact, Easynews is a Usenet ISP which tries to keep as few logs as possible to protect its customers.
As with many articles of the like, it only works in certian cases. The cable ISP I used to have didn't care one bit about any MAC address on your network, all they wanted was your CM's MAC. That was registered with your line, no other CM would work on your line unless you caleed to change it. Their DHCP server would then dole out the number of IPs you paid for (default 1) and no more. The router then wouldn't accept traffic from or send traffic to anything but those IPs.
SBC have two reasons to fight this: Customers want to be able to use P2P, regardless of whether it's legal or not, AND it will cost SBC a lot if they keep having to spend resources on dealing with RIAA requests all the time. If they make it hard for the RIAA now, it can only be a PR win for them at the same time as it might make RIAA decide it's better to concentrate their efforts elsewhere. Also, if SBC had cooperated now, you can be the RIAA will start pushing for fun stuff like mandatory log retention etc. to make it easier for them to gather evidence. No ISP in their right mind would like to have something like that forced down their throats.
Anyone else have any info on this?
-- Nate
Its not like a certain company named after a fruit launched a service where you could purchase songs online and then download them for $0.99 a song or anything...
...exactly this IS my plan B; opening my hard drives and embedding thermite into the unused space between the circle-shaped discs and rectangle-shaped outer cover. There's usually space at the far end from the read/write heads.
As for making thermite, it's not very hard grinding common iron rust and aluminum dust together, is it? Based on the atomic weight of Fe2O3 + 2 Al => 2 Fe + Al2O3? The trick is to ignite the stuff, you need something like burning magnesium. And, in the case of hard drives, you need to press it to a solid form from the dust to embed in the casings.
(As for anybody stupid enough to try this from this post -- DON'T. Thermite burns at over 2,500 degrees C; droplets of melted IRON is usually fretting about violently when thermite burns. This is the only time ever I've seen iron melt. Thermite is so violent it fits right into the saying "Death is what happens to stupid people who try dangerous things.")
Then again, that is why I want to encase it in my hard drives: out of harm for me, but certainly not for the data I might want to destroy. Anybody have pointers to how to solve these problems?
At first I was lauding SBC.... until I read the part of their advertisement on Downloading songs. SBC realizes that if a case can be brought against many of their subscribers for downloading mp3's - then by extension they were facilitating theft knowingly by advertising how to do it
Who says that SBC was suggesting that people do anything illegal? Since when is downloading MP3's illegal?
I can go to mp3.com and legally download more mp3's than my hard drive can hold. If I had Windows, I could get on Kazaa and also (legally) download lots of mp3's.
Of course, I suppose I should mention that there are mp3's out there which are copyright violations, and you should be careful of those. Especially if what you listen to is pop music crap.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
They've appealed the ruling mentioned above.
It's nice to have big business on the people's side every once in a while (even if they're doing it for business reasons, it's still nice). Especially when it's my company (thus the Anonymous...).
I'm not sure if this is a troll, but I'll bite.
/. (we are here, amid the trolls) disagree with. The RIAA should be no different than anyone else in that they should have to go through the legal system to bring about lawsuits.
If I owned a business, I would not turn over customer data without a court order. The DMCA gives certain groups the ability to get such data without a court order. That is what the reasonable people on
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
"One exception to the above: a subsidary of the RIAA, whose name temporarily escapes me, is responsible for collecting the fees and redistributing them for all music played on radio where the station operator hasn't negotiated directly with the copyright holders. That's the only place the RIAA could be said to have a "monopoly" in any meaningful sense of the word. But that's barely relevent here."
Your post was otherwise excellent but the above absolutely needs to be corrected.
Radio royalties are collected by two non-profit agencies, BMI and ASCAP. BMI and ASCAP are run by and for composers, songwriters, and publishers. And they are not part of the RIAA.
As there are two independent agencies that handle this in the US, I guess one could call it an oligarchy, but if one is of the "RIAA is bad" mindset, then BMI and ASCAP are definitely the good guys. Again: they are non-profit agencies run by and for songwriters, composers and publishers for the purpose of getting radio royalties to the composers, songwriters and publishers.
Collecting radio royalties is one of many things that they do in support of the individuals who work hard to create the music (royalties based on public performance, such as in bars and restaurants with live bands or jukeboxes, is just one other thing they do). These royalties, too, go to songwriters, composers and publishers, not the RIAA.
In anticipation of the next question, "aren't the publishers the record companies, so doesn't that mean that the RIAA gets more money, RIAA DIE DIE DIE DIE," the answer is: typically not. In this context, publishing refers not to the actual recording of a piece of music, but the rights to the music and lyrics. This includes, but is not limited to, printing the lyrics in the liner notes, quoting them in a book, covering a song, and using an original song in a commercial (for which multiple rights holders may have to be consulted -- including the owner of the recording, which is often a record company). Nowadays, the publisher is a smallish company, often just one or two people. One can sell or transfer their publishing rights; perhaps the most famous example is Michael Jackson's buying of much of the Beatles catalog. Michael Jackson owns the publishing rights. Here's more info.
By the way, typically for a song to be available on a legal download service, approval must be acquired from both the owner of the recording (the record company) as well as the music publisher. This is why you might see eight out of ten of an album's ten tracks available on buymusic or itunes -- for the other two, perhaps the songwriter or the composer simply did not give permission. This is one reason why getting legal services with large catalogs has been so tough... all those permissions to obtain. This is precisely why many folks have advocated extending the concept of compulsory royalties for downloads -- under such a system, the download service would not need to seek the composer's permission before making the song available for download, as long as the composer was paid a fixed fee set by law.
Even more information is here and here.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I see this suggestion every time the issue of handing over logs comes up.
In a general case, this won't happen. You need to keep logs around. For abuse resolution and tracking down offenders. If you bill per hour for dialup access, you need to keep radius logs. If you charge for IP services, you need to keep logs around to you can figure out who to charge. Anything related to billing you need to keep around for at least a month (and usually 2 or 3) to bill and audit properly, and to handle billing disputes. What do you do when you get rid of access logs after 3 days, and a month later your customer calls you up and says wtf is this charge on my bill?
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