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."

Comments

Why are they doing this... bandwidth charges?

[a.koepke]

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 :)

dissolution?

[danielsfca2]

formed from the dissolution of a monopoly

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)

Re:Heh.

[p24t]

You mean people with RoadRunner service? The very same service that uses "fast music downloads" as part of their advertising?

Mind you, they don't specify anything about the music downloads. They don't say that some music downloads are illegal. 12 year old girls are supposed to know all this stuff.

Re:good news for the consumer

[CodePyro]

I know verizon is still fighting RIAA. And i know that comcast and some other cable companies said that they would cooperate with RIAA.

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/0,24195 ,3 484600,00.html

Verizon is dead set against it.
http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/30754 51
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/04/25/1614244.s html ?tid=158

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....