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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."
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 $0.35
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Companies of SBC:
Pacific Bell + Nevada Bell = Pacific Telesis
Illinois Bell + Indiana Bell + Michigan Bell + Ohio Bell + Wisconsin Bell = Ameritech
Southern New England Telephone Company (SNET)
Southwestern Bell
Pacific Telesis + Ameritech + SNET + Southwestern Bell = SBC.
Sounds to me like SBC is more like a partial re-assembly of the original monopoly.
Not that I don't respect SBC big-time for this decision.
(Source of data: US FCC, http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/armis/carrier_filing_histor y/COSA_History/sbtr.htm)
I know verizon is still fighting RIAA. And i know that comcast and some other cable companies said that they would cooperate with RIAA.
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Comcast has had the most subpeonas sent to it by RIAA and they are #1 on thier hitlist. Real people are bieng affected here. For example there was a case with the mother of 4 who doesn't even have enough money for an attorney.(you think she will be sending her kids to college if riaa bankrupts her)What does RIAA gain out of it?? Some extra revenue so the ridicuosly wealthy singers can support thier drug habit and thier trips to space.
http://www.techtv.com/news/culture/story/0,2419
Verizon is dead set against it.
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/3075
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/04/25/1614244.
RIAA can't keep fighting all these companies and the negative publicity its recieving...P2P network will get more sophisticated and secure...as many as said in the past RIAA needs to change thier business models..thats the only way to combat piracy...piracy has been around for as long as there was any type of trade...even coporations/organizations larger than RIAA have to deal with piracy but they do it by changing thier business model...gaming companies(ie blizzard) started offering online subscriptions which make the user more inclined to buy the game instead of pirating it...M$ 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....
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.
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.