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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.
Its a good thing user privacy isn't worthless to everyone; just the government and microsoft.
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?
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.
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!
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
I wish these guys served DSL where I live. It would mean I could get rid of the 'emergency Plan B' device I keep in my bedroom, one of those magnets they use to move cars.
I mean, it's great, and it's sure to work, but the switch is so close to my light switch.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
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.
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."
"It's real and we can touch it, so least we know where we stand." - Jack Burton
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.
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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*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
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.
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'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!
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.
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.
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
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If you can read this you're probably not dead yet.
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
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.
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.
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...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
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.
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."
l e?AID=/20030916/ZNYT01/309160363
...
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/artic
> 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
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.