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

good news for the consumer

[micronix1]

it's nice to know that some major corporations are opposing the actions of the recording industry where the average person is usually powerless. what other internet service providers are chosing to fight the RIAA instead of just giving in?

Re:good news for the consumer

[hamster foo]

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. While I don't necessarily like the stance the RIAA is taking, I'm pretty sure they didn't have the financial records of everybody they have filed claims against.

I agree that they should change their business model, but I don't think that means they shouldn't persue people they deem to be pirating or infringing upon their copyrights. Would you say the same thing about people distributing tapes on the street? Should they just change their model and not persue stopping that form of piracy? From their standpoint, regardless of whether they change their business model to take better advantage of the internet, people distributing music for free are still, in their view, costing them money.

"they dont use thier windowsupdate site to check if your cdkey is valid"

I'm pretty sure I had Windows Update refuse to update my girlfriend's computer for that very reason the other day. And unless something has changed recently, most game distributors still go to lengths to include keys and other anti-piracy mechanisms in their products. So they are not just ignoring the piracy issue.

"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"

All these examples differ from the music situation in that every product you listed is perceived by the consumer buying it to be better than the alternative and thereby worth their money. That's a key point the product itself and not some service offered with the product is perceived to be better. The music industry really can't offer that for the average consumer. Most consumers can't tell the difference between a 192kbps mp3 and the same track playing from a cd. The consumers that can and care are already buying cds. Yes, they can offer services and ease of access and a lot of other things that I'm sure I can't even think of, but they can't actually offer a better product in most consumers eyes.

Having said all that, I doubt this will serve the RIAA well. I don't believe that file sharing is the major impact on the declining income of the music industry, and I doubt that the RIAA will profit in the long run from these actions. Perhaps they should just take this as a subtle hint that change is needed. Lower prices, better music, and easier access would go a long way to curbing their declining revenue.

Re:good news for the consumer

[hamster foo]

Prioritizing food, water, shelter, and clothing over the internet is hardly shortsighted.

I appreciate your point that the internet is a powerful tool for learning, and one that at some point kids should be exposed to no doubt. But giving priority to an internet connection over things they NEED is unreasonable. If you truly value internet access over feeding your kids, then I think you've found a lot more uses for it than I have.

At any rate, that's slightly off topic. Obviously, these families have the money to spend on broadband, which is the point. They are not in some position where they require our sympathy based on their financial status. They may earn some sympathy for being the little guy fighting the big bully, but certainly not sympathy for being allegedly poor, which is where a lot of the emphasis has gone in the coverage of these suits.

Bravo

[mcpkaaos]

In a world where the right to privacy is quickly giving way to nosier and nosier laws and regulations, it is quite refreshing to see a company with so much to lose fighting to maintain the privacy of their customers. Say what you will, but SBC is taking quite a risk.

Heh, I don't normally gush like this, but I have to say that I am honestly very impressed by this move. Unless this is just a ploy to gain more customers concerned with their KaZaA, er, habits. In that case, well, I'm still impressed. Brilliant marketing ploy!

Wait, SBC isn't actually OCP or anything is it? No? Okay cool. Power to the peop- er, to the customers!

Re:Bravo

[ksg]

SBC DSL may be annoying as hell to have with all the Yahoo! branding they attempt to stick on everything but thankfully they are willing to stand up the RIAA. I had my choice between SBC or Buckeye Cable for my broadband, looks like I choose well. *cackles*

Keeping Logs

[th3axe]

So, what if an ISP has a policy of trashing any logs with personal information? Maybe this is a selling point for smaller ISPs. They could track traffic for performance purposes, but once the info's in the DB, trash the data.

I can see the ad now: "Use PrivCorp ISP. We don't care what you do, and the RIAA won't find out either. You just need to pay by the meg."

Isn't there a way to spoof IP from a cable modem?

[iamacat]

Basically, request an address from DHCP and then use another one. Or spoof packets from my neighbors PC. Maybe some simple things are blocked, but I don't feel cable modem network is especially secure. At least its not using secure IP and everyone gets to see everyone's packets with tcpdump.

Anyway, if there are some known hacks, won't it be very easy to defend against RIAAs lawsuit by saying it wasn't you?

W00t for SBC corp!

[zealotasd]

SBC's general council has obviously had some council! They are not disagreeing with the RIAA; merely conditionaly agreeing with the RIAA upon proof of claim. For those of you sovereignty-type people, perhaps you would piss your pants to discover that while SBC is conditionaly agreeing to the RIAA, that subscribers to SBC are actualy vulnerable by acting in a Public/Body Corporate capacity and that SBC is not Private as it is governed by the FCC. The content of the RIAA's claims is not meritless, yet neither has the RIAA provided oath of office to represent the copyright and patent holders of the allegedly "infringed" data being processed through SBC's securitities (their data network services). Perhaps a lesson in copyright law should warrant that copyrights only apply to commercial actions. Using copyrighted and patented property is not against the law in the realm of non-commercial; be weary of using copyrighted software in a corporation, as corporations are inclusivly commercial in their nature. So, this leaves us whether SBC is liable for their (think commercial) corporation transporting copyrighted and patented tangible property to its subscribers. Be afraid for SBC...non-commercial use, need not apply unless by the RIAA's administration of force and intimidation has taken effect.

Question for slashdotters: are you a secured party?

SBC

[CySurflex]

I little OT but it comes around:

I'm an SBC DSL subscriber. Tonight I got a letter from a laywer suing SBC for class action lawsuit, claiming the service wasn't all it was claimed to be, and demanding one month free service or $20 for each participant. At first I thought "oh cool" and started filling out the form to be part of the lawsuit. After filling it out completely, and even addressing the letter, I realized I really was pretty satisfied with their service, and that this seems a little bit of a frivolous lawsuit. I tore up the letter and threw it out thinking "i'm not going to support a stupid lawsuit like this that will end up raising DSL prices for consumers".

After reading this story - I'm glad I did. Go SBC!

Why not

[stewwy]

Don't know about the law in the states, but can the Isp not ask the RIAAssholes for a reasonable fee for doing the work of identifying their customers? I know your ale to ask for compensation in the UK for copliance with the data protection laws ( such as they are :( ) ...... I suggest a fee to the RIAA of $10,000 per identified customer

Re:privacy value

[dknuth]

I distinctly remember MS in the mid-90's standing up to the Fed Gov't over giving up their MS Exchange encryption keys or they wouldn't be allow to export their Exchange software (so the federales could snoop the new medium at will). No look what legal crap the've been in since. IBM gave up their Notes encryption keys without hesitation and Gates was critical of them for that.

This might not be heroism, but marketting

[Stevyn]

People who pay the money for bandwidth are a desire for internet providers. The ISPs who give up information at the drop of a hat look like wimps who have no loyalty to their customers. But this ISP might have a good idea hear. Spend some money on the lawyers so the customers think they're behind them. The RIAA will win eventually, but this is cheap and effective advertisment. I know I sound really cynical here, but I think there is some truth to it. But if I'm wrong and these people really want to make the RIAA work for something that morally yet legally isn't there, then right on!

Remember: P2P isn't money lost down the drain, it's shifted to high bandwidth providers.

SBC's ad is even better

[glamslam]

from the article:

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.

Ouch. That might come back to haunt them.

Re:SBC's ad is even better

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Please don't mis-use the word "monopoly".

The RIAA is an association. It doesn't sell music or organize the selling of music. Its members form the vast majority of publishers of copyrighted music, but to say the RIAA has a "monopoly" in that respect would be like saying the American Association of Supermarkets has a monopoly in food distribution, or that the AAA has a monopoly in car ownership.

As there are four or five large music publishers, and hundreds of smaller ones, it's fair to say there no company has "an effective monopoly on the distribution of copyrighted music". More's the pity in some ways, if one did, it would be easier to regulate them, to take them to court for anticompetitive abuses, and to negotiate with them to provide alternative means for the redistribution of the content they publish.

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.

Posted AC because I don't particularly want to have an argument with the nutters who claim anyone who has any problems with the "RIAA is bad and eats children" claims is a "RIAA stooge".

Re:Google's little laugh

[casuist99]

I don't know what your searches have been returning, but ever since I read about this and tried it for myself, I've had no problem finding the kazaa-lite links from a simple google search. I understand what everyone is talking about, but I have no problem myself. Besides pr0n and illegal mp3s, I very much understand the uses of p2p software like Kazaa. Hats off to SBC for at least trying to make the RIAA prove their case as a point of law. Hope it works.

In the meantime, if you want good, legal, high-quality indy (non-RIAA) mp3s, try http://www.dmusic.com. Nice stuff.

Interesting.. i'd love to see an ISP do this

[Ckwop]

Thanks for the link

I would love to see an ISP use Oblivious Transfer when assigning an IP to each on of its customers..

That way, this situtation would never have happened since the information the RIAA wanted could not have been obtained from the ISPs since the ISPs wouldn't know who they assigned IPs too.

Simon

Re:Interesting.. i'd love to see an ISP do this

[Syrrh]

Why? Why does there "need to be some form of ability to track someone"? You're not trackable in your car
That's almost a good comparison, but take it a little further. When you're driving along, nobody cares what your license plate is, but if you pull a hit-and-run, it's there as a way to track you down. On the net it's a little different because you do have the ability to protect yourself, but through security is beyond the ability of average users.

I'm not sure if a blind address allocation is a good idea or not. Sure, it'll be highly desirable as a hacking source, but how much of a threat would that really amount to? Given the nature of how people act when they think they're anonymous, it'd be a disaster, but it's hard to tell for sure. With anonymity also comes the threat of retaliation, so they might behave a little better. You'd definitely want to have heightened security for such a network, at the very least a clear warning that the network is not intended for casual users.
DOS attacks would still call for ISP intervention, but that could be as simple as a flood-detecting firewall that reclaims the abuser's IP and locks their connection for a few hours. Just because there's no logging doesn't mean they can't keep track of the current IP assignments.

Seriously

[Salsaman]

Or just maybe the CEO of SBC has 3,000 illegal MP3s on his hard drive?

Probably not, but a bet anything you like that many of the execs. there have kids with hundreds of mp3's they've downloaded. They are probably worried in case one of their own names appears on a subpoena (or maybe this has already happened, that would explain a lot).

Obviously they are protecting...

[FullCircle]

Obviously they are protecting both their image, i.e. future sales, and their current revenue stream.

Seriously, how many people need dsl to check email and browse? Nobody.

P2P is the killer app that drives the internet these days.

Oddly enough, AOL, SBC and other broadband providers may actually do us a great service by protecting our rights (and possibly helping grant a few new ones)

How many other companies have enough money to both successfully fight the RIAA in court and lobby (pay for) changes in law?

These are the companies we need to rally around instead of bashing at every chance.

Hey, RIAA, Check This Out.

[E-Rock-23]

Hello. My name is Eric Jacobson. I'm a freelance computer consultant from Houtzdale, PA. And I am a filesharer.

I currently use iMesh, version 4.2, to share files over the Internet, which I get access to through Pennswoods.

Currently, I'm sharing the following eight files:

Songs by the rock band Tempered Edge:
Fade Away
Slip Into Never
Pull The Trigger
Madness Follows Me
I Need You
It's Alright
Picture This
Footsteps.

These songs are copyrighted, and I am offering them up, free of charge, to anyone who wishes to download them. The trick is, I'm the singer for this band. We own our own copyrights. We are not signed by any label, major or independant.

Come and get me...

Some thoughts

[incog8723]

The ridiculosity of this is getting out of hand. ISPs should not be responsible for this, any more than common carriers should be responsible for listening in on the voice transmissions on their copper or fiber for potential terrorist threats. This country is lost.

The *issue* here is that if litigation is going to be the order of the day, then small ISPs will be SQUASHED. If the burden lies upon the ISP, then it will loosen competition, so that only the largest ISPs (Verizon, the baby Bells, the common carriers) will be able to defend these ridiculous lawsuits. The ISP should NOT have to worry about its customers' activities. They are providing a SERVICE... nothing else.

Let's use an analogy. Imagine the year 2300.

Imagine a cell phone with close to perfect translation (A/D, with a bandwidth and sampling rate greater than CD). I send a song that I like to Joe Blow, for his opinion. Obvious copyright violation, under current laws.

Imagine now, that the common carrier of the phone service is responsible for the mutiny of the masses. The economic model devised by excessive and frivolous litigation raises prices on technology services in GENERAL.

In short, carriers should not be responsible for investigating the deeds of their customers! It's heresy! This seemed VERY clear 10 years ago. To stifle a technology that is so clearly beneficial is LUDICROUS. Copyright laws exist for a reason... to ensure that the owner makes money. Now that the ability to copy almost anything is ubiquitous, and people have demonstrated time and time again that they have no respect for the law, it would seem that copyright law should be REFORMED. If the majority of people don't agree with the law, change it!

I think most people here would agree that once you buy a CD, or a song from the internet, you should be able to listen to it a BILLION times if you want, and PLAY it for any ONE of your friends that you deem fit to hear it! I sometimes wonder... Does it matter whether I invite a friend over to hear a new album, or whether I stream the audio to him by changing the audio properties in Volume Control (in Windows) to stereo mix, so that rather than selecting microphone, you select WAV out?

I'm totally confounded by the greed in this world. Artists deserve to make a living, and I fully support them, but it ain't gonna happen if they're affiliated with the RIAA. The RIAA is a child molester, pure and simple.

Copy of my email to SBC's Public Affairs office

[mactari]

I get so fed up with RIAA FUD that "trading music == illegal activity, no matter what". There's a pretty pointed bit in the linked story, above, about an SBC advert that said, in part, "Download all the music you like. And all the music you sort of, kind of, maybe even a little bit like."

That doesn't mean the users are being told to do anything illegal (admittedlty nor does the ad educate users in how to trade legally, but anyhow...). Here's my letter to SBC (disclosure -- I do own SBC stock):

===

Mr. Bingol:

I wanted to comment quickly on a quote I read in an article on SBC and the RIAA today.

From: http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl e?AID=/20030916/ZNYT01/309160363

> 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." ...

> An SBC spokesman, Selim Bingol, said the advertisement was irrelevant. "It's ludicrous to suggest that an ad that has not appeared for many months has anything to do with today's debate," he said. "We are opposing these subpoenas because under the R.I.A.A.'s interpretation, they are a threat to consumer privacy and safety."

Though I agree with your statement, I'd like to point out that the ad says nothing that explicitly insinuates anything but a legal venture on the part of your customers. Services such as Furthurnet (http://www.furthurnet.net) offer legally downloadable music files from bands that allow taping and trading of their shows -- everywhere from The Black Crowes and The Grateful Dead and Phish to some much more fringe bands (like "The Screaming Cheetah Wheelies") that people might be interested in downloading.

There *are* gigabytes of free, high-quality, and legal music out there. Putting together a song library over the Internet is certainly a great use of the services you provide your customers, and doesn't "cost" the RIAA a dime in "lost revenue".

Thanks for your time, and best of luck with your work.

Ruffin Bailey, SBC stockholder

Maybe it isn't noble intentions...

[squarooticus]

...but it's a good example of Ayn Rand's philosophy, which is that selfishness leads to practical efficiency and maximal outcomes. My hat's off to SBC for doing the right thing, whether it's for the right or wrong reasons.

Assuming this is a lie...

[b-baggins]

>>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.'

OK. Assuming the above statement is a lie, since these companies will sell your information in a heartbeat to telemarketers, the question to ask is: What is the REAL reason SBC is holding out?

Lesson in keeping log files?

[schmiddy]

Looks like SBC is probably set to lose this one, if the Verizon case is any precedent. However, maybe the big ISPs could learn a valuable lesson from all the RIAA lawsuits -- since I'm sure they don't like having to dole out information to RIAA subpoenas or DMCA notices, why not just destroy logs after a short period, say one day? Better yet, compress just the basic pertinent information and hire a corporation in, say, Madagascar to store the logs. Make the claim that you don't have the storage space or whatever. Then, if the RIAA wants the logs, they'll have to deal with an out of country entity... GOOD LUCK! Plus, the logs would still be available in case it was a serious case, such as child pornography or something. Just a thought.

i would gladly give spammers a safe haven

[waspleg]

if it meant real anonymity for the rest of us

your comment is much like the logic of gun control and fails for the same reason; people who use their connections for illegal things and are smart about it wll continue to not get caught while all the legit people suffer...

I'd switch, but...

[eGabriel]

I used to use SBC/Southwestern Bell for my phone service, and their customer service was consistently the most rude I had ever encountered. They'd disconnect me if I was a day late on my bill, refuse to answer questions about certain parts of my service, and call me EVERY DAY to ask if I will switch back.

Maybe it is different on the DSL side of the company, I don't know, but the phone company was just a nightmare to work with.