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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."
Definition of irony: a company formed from the dissolution of a monopoly talking about protecting it's customer's rights.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
Not that it's going to stop the RIAA per se, but it's at least nice to see some ISPs making the RIAA work a little harder and waste a few more resources to sue people.
I'm not against chronic lawbreakers to face the consequences of their actions, but I would think (hope?) that better challengers from ISPs would make the RIAA think twice about being more heavy-handed than they need to be, and encourage them to pick their targets for lawsuits more wisely.
Finally, someone has the balls to try to stop the RIAA. So much for their legal tactic of "let's sue and let them settle for only 10k and their first born son". It only everyone else would challenge their abuse of the legal system, they would have been foiled by now. What we need is an organization for the purpose of hiring lawyers to screw oer the RIAA. Imagine the settlements and awards you would get...
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
I suspect this has more to do with retaining customers already "file sharing" and avoiding bad PR than it does to be protecting customer privacy.
The USA was the first country in the world to address Cyberstalking as a serious issue & get laws effectively punishing the same. It is really sad to see the same lawmakers give such sweeping powers to the DMCA, wherein any tom dick & harry can walk in & say "Mr.X stole my copyrighted work, I need to serve him a subpeona" & this can be handed out by a clerk in the court, without any form of checking as to who the person requsting the subpeona actually is & what his/her intentions are... how dumb can you get ?
I sincerely am hoping that this ISP wins the case/the courts wake up & see what the actual picture is.
Somehow, I'm more willing to believe that the whole protection of privacy thing is a PR hoax and that they are really worried about the extra operational overhead necessary to hand the RIAA the information it needs. I mean, figuring out who had which IP and when in an ISP as big as SBC probably isn't a trivial task.
However, I think SBC is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Painting the RIAA as the evil organization trying to invade your privacy is definitely a good thing, since that's what they're trying to do.
And heck, who doesn't love the irony of using one underhanded business tactic to undermine another underhanded business tactic? RIAA wanted to get lawyers involved, and now they find themselves fighting 800lb gorillas rather than poor students.
There is a saying in the PR industry that goes something like this: "Every PR is good PR". The attacks that SCO has made against us has been one of the best demonstrations of this saying. Even though they showed a face of humanity that would make most criminals throw up, their stock went up substantialy and the officers made some serious cash.
Now look at what SBC is doing
IANAL, nevertheless I believe SBC doesn't stand a chance in court. They know it. Their General Counsel has huge balls but I think he knows that this is a great publicity. GREAT publicity.
At a time of software patents, monopolies held by incompetents and failing companies trying to kill Open Source, it sure feels good to see someone doing The Right Thing. Or at least it would seem.
After reading this story, I would switch to SBC if they covered my area ...
What about you?
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
The article said that Verizon kept its log files indefinitely where as others may have kept logs for 30 days meaning those other companies wouldn't be able to provide any information if legal battles took the courts over that amount of time. I wonder if companies like SBC start gaining customers because of these practices if other companies would jump onboard.
It's a good PR for them since they will gain nothing giving RIAA their customer list w/o a fight (even worse if people know about it). And they also have deep enough pocket to pay for legal fees which are more likly to be even when more ppl switch to SBC for their piece of mind and just to piss RIAA off.
I can't blame you for your cynicism - I share it in copious amounts, too. Any one of us could recount a dozen times a corporation has screwed someone over for the bottom line. However, in this scenario, I'm willing to give SBC the benefit of the doubt for now.
Of course SBC is banking on this helping their image with current and prospective customers. To think they are not at least glancing at the bottom line would be ludicrous. However, there is nothing tangible, at least in the short run, to be gained by going head to head with the RIAA. Yet, the risk is high. This is like pissing on the Don's shoes when the mob come calling for their protection money. There is no sure payoff here.
Perhaps, for once, a company actually does have its customers' rights in mind? Only time will tell. I'll keep an open mind until proven otherwise. Hopefully my brain won't fall out. Again. Damn cheap hats.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Dude, companies are not evil. Just the lawyers that run them are.
So, in your rejoicing of the possibility of both companies going bankrupt, you forget that lawyers (the greatest evil) are getting rich.
Lawyers get what they want -- always. Everyone else gets screwed.
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05
At no point are they saying that what their customers did is legal. All they're saying is they want a judge to OK the subpeana.
Cooper_007
--
If you can read this you're probably not dead yet.
Bah. Privacy and Piracy even sound the same (when I'm tired). This is about having it both ways. The /. mob opinion is like a lawyer's argument:
/. opinions are just completely nonsensical.
"File sharing is not wrong, but even if it is wrong, it's still helping bands more than it's hurting, and even when it does hurt them, the labels have no right to sue the services, just the specific offenders, but even if they do catch a file-sharer, they have no right to sue them unless the offender just happens to volunteer his name and address."
Whenever politicians ignore the suggestions that are popularized here, people always accuse them of being crooked and in the hands of industry. No one ever admits it's because the
-a
I realize this isn't the main point of your post by any means, but I'd like to point out that there are LEGAL and legitimate uses \ needs for broadband.
:)
I'm a remote contract artist working in game development. I work fulltime hours from home and have to be on call constantly and able to quickly and reliably send and receive my assignments at a moment's notice. I'm working for two companies right now, one of which is developing a full game in a very tight six-month development cycle, so having constant, fast and reliable connectivity is a must.
Even more importantly than simply sending and receiving assignments from my bosses, I have to log into the SourceSafe (a central repository for all the latest project files) several times daily and download the latest version of however much of the project I need, usually ranging from 1mb to 600mb.
Keeping current with the rest of the team remotely is VITAL in my line of work, and it would be impossible to do on dialup. By the time I downloaded half or even a fourth of the project, it would probably be updated by then and I'd have to download it all again. Without broadband, I'd be shit out of luck and out of a job.
I guess by a very broad definition that this does fall under 'file sharing' but it's almost certainly not in the same sense that you meant it.
beyond just downloading music. I'll list just a few of them, all relivant to me personally:
1) Always on access. I use the Internet as a seemless part of my computer. I just look at it whenever I feel like it or need info. I don't thik about "logging on", I'm ALWAYS on. I like it that wany and don't want it any other way.
2) General fast access. My computer these days is fast. Most programs load in under 5 seconds and everything works quickly. I want the Internet to be responsive like that too. I don't want to wait 20 seconds for a page to load, I want it loaded immediatly.
3) Games. Many online games (first person shooters mainly) function better with lower latency. Also many like to have more bandwidth than a modem can provide. I want to have these games preform as well as possible.
4) User-user file transfers. I frequently need to share data with friends, or to or from my work computer. To do this over a modem would be very slow (we are often talking hundreds of megs here for audio and such). To do so on CD is technically inconvienent (requiring getting in a car) for people locally, and very slow for people out of city/state/country. I want to be able to easily and quickly get data to and from people.
5) General purpose file transfers. I find I download lots of things like patches for applications, product demos, video (like from iFilms) , technical docs, user guides, etc. I don't want to sit and wait 20 minutes to get a little user guide for a product, I want it quickly.
6) Multiple users. I have two roomates, we all use the Internet. If the three of us tried to share a modem it would go from slow to intolerably slow. To get 3 additonal phone lines and 3 ISP accounts is finincally inefficient. However one broadband account costing less than the 3x modem service works just fine.
7) Servers. I want to run my own server. It is of use to me in many ways. Well this requires a static IP, an always-on connection, and a fair bit of bandwidth. A modem connection provides none of these.
Those are just the 7 reasons off the top of my head that are teh most important to me personally for having broadband. #1 and #2 are the biggies for most people. Like my mom, sh'es an art teacher and not very technically adept. She just uses the Internet for shopping and getting information. None the less she has a cable modem and wouldn't have it any other way. She likes having it always on in the background, able to use it on a whim, and she likes things to move quickly, at near realtime speeds.
Last I checked, the vast majority of music is free and legal to download. We have just become accustomed to this idea that we have to pay for it or we've violated someone's copyright.
Many many many artists make their copyrighted materials available for free. For the RIAA to point to this newspaper advertisement just shows that they know they have a effective monopoly on the distribution of copyrighted music that you are supposed to pay for.
SBC isn't doing this for altruistic reasons, but the results could be good.
Ya know, it's really getting old hearing of these cases of people that are soooo poor they can't afford to buy this or that, but somehow manage to find it in their budget to pay for a broadband connection. I have little sympathy for the financial situation of a mom with 4 kids that's having a hard time making ends meet or a mom with a 12 year old living in public housing who somehow find the money to spend on something as frivalous as a broadband connection.
That is probably the most short-sighted post I've ever read. I would eat less to provide my kids with a broadband connection if I had to. Reason? Simple.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.
I have been poverty-struck myself, and am just now crawling out of it (arguably, in fact). I want my kids to be able to live without poverty, and in this day and age, access to the internet is an excellent way to provide my kids with resources they wouldn't have if I took your shortsighted point of view. With these resources they can find help with their homework, pursue whatever intellectual flights of fancy they have, network to other individuals, and leverage computing power into marketable skills that may well put them in a higher income bracket than I'm in. A broadband connection for a poor family is an investment into the kids' future, and a worthy one at that.
Combine said broadband connection with the educational power and readily-available Free Software, and you might have a winning combination. We'll see about it, though.
My oldest kid still isn't school age, but she's already learned enough reading and enough about KDE to find movies she wants to watch. In the next month or so, I intent to sit down with her and show her how to use KDE to do things, play games, and so forth, and make sure the edutainment package with KDE is installed. Not bad for a 4-year-old, eh? With your shortsighted point of view, this wouldn't even be available as an option for her.
Like what I said? You might like my music
At first I was lauding SBC for not bowing to RIAA's demands - I thought "Finally, Someone standing up for the Legal system, and the correct use of it.
That was 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 - this is going to be one of the most interesting legal fights in a decade.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Nice, except for then the ISPs become script kiddie heaven.
There needs to be some form of ability to track someone, for those few cases where "really bad things" are done.
I'm sure nobody here would like spammers given anonymous IP addresses in a net block.
However, given that we do have identifiable addresses, it's good to see that policy in the ISPs is FOR the end user, and against frivolous acquisition of their data.
Like most things in life, the solutions aren't black and white, they're shades of grey, and require common sense to come up with something that's a happy, or at least workable compromise.
Good to see that at least the ISPs seem to be following the common sense path this time against the RIAA Inquisition.
"There needs to be some form of ability to track someone, for those few cases where "really bad things" are done.
I'm sure nobody here would like spammers given anonymous IP addresses in a net block."
When "really bad things" are done, it usually falls to the real law authorities (police, FBI, NSA etc..) and they have procedures to get proper subponeas and get the information.
The thing is they are not talking about an anonumus block. SBC is basically saying that the RIAA is not following due process. Not only that but the RIAA is a LOBYING group, not a duly appoint police force. This is turning into a case of someone driving by your house, seeing a light in the window, walking up to that window and seeing you watching a video tape that you don't own, guessing you don't own it and didn't properly rent it, and then saying to a judge that the want all your information so they can sue you because they were in the item you were watching.
If the RIAA wants to do this, they should lobby to OFFICIALLY become a police force for the record industry and have to follow the proper procedures. Copyright Infringment is a CRIME, and thereby a lobbying group should not be the police in these matters. IMHO, the should give the IP addresses they have got to the proper authorites to deal with. Then again, the authorities have bette things to do than go after a 12 year old kid.
Just my $.02
Just realise the reality of the situation..... There is no reality.
They will of course loose in the end since our conutry is going to hell when it comes to rights/freedoms, but its good to see they are trying to protect their customers privacy.
I am NOT supporting illegal practices and hiding behind the 4th amendment, but using just the DMCA to demand records is wrong, you should be getting a court order to do the request...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"...the
I know what you mean. It's like Americans' views on the Iraq invasion. They're saying it's fine, they're saying it's not fine.
Or it's like politicians' views on the death penalty. They say its a good thing and then they say its a bad thing.
Oh... no... wait a minute "Americans" and "politicians" are not a single organism, but collectives housing many differing views.
Just like "/.'s" views on filesharing.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce