Taking a Closer Look at the P2P Subpoenas

An anonymous reader writes "Cnet is reporting a federal appeals court on Tuesday scrutinized the details of a 1998 copyright law, wondering whether it permits the wide-scale unmasking of alleged peer-to-peer pirates by the music industry." The issue, of course, is the constitutionality of the DMCA subpoena process which is among the more evil components of the often-criticized law.

Comments

Re:Political Appointees

[I am Kobayashi]

"Judges are political appointees. If the political parties are paid off by RIAA, MPAA, etc the rulings will be in favour of the RIAA and MPAA. There are a lot of good judges out there, but $$$$ unfortunately wins"

But federal judges are lifetime appointees, and are fairly well protected by Article III from direct political influence. So while the judge's ideology and judicial temperment is largely decided by the party in power at the time of the appointment, the judge will be a judge whether her decision is popular or not with her party. Once they are appointed it is very difficult to remove a federal judge(thankfully).

Brownback's Own Press Release

[drpentode]

Also of note is a press release from Sen. Brownback's own office. The press release also discusses the senator's plans for the digital TV broadcast flag.

Re:poor guy

[Frymaster]

You KNOW this is someone's actual name. I feel so bad for him.

yes. he played guitar for the band "x" who were quite popular in souther california during the 1980's. (the band is still together, btw, and you can catch them nov 21 and 22 in l.a. at the "house of blues").

here is a photo of mr. doe

poor sucker.

Re:The problem with "John Doe" lawsuits...

[David Hume]

If they file "John Doe" they don't know who they're actually suing until they've already won (if they lose, end of story).

This is incorrect. The RIAA can obtain a subpoena to the relevant ISP immediately after it files the "John Doe" lawsuit against the unknown defendant. The purpose of the subpoena would be to identify the defendant. After the defendant was identified, the complaint would be amended to add or substitute the defendant, and the legal action would proceed. The court would not allow the action to proceed to judgment against an unidentified defendant who never received notice of the action or an opportunity to respond.

Re:The problem with "John Doe" lawsuits...

[ninewands]

Quoth the poster:

If they file "John Doe" they don't know who they're actually suing until they've already won (if they lose, end of story).

Actually, no ...

If they sue "John Doe" whom they suspect is a customer of RandomInternet due to the IP address recovered from Kazaa/Gnutella/whatever, they can issue a third-party subpoena against RandomInternet for its DHCP server logs to find out who had that IP address at the time in question. This is basic discovery under most jurisdictions' Rules of Civil Procedure. Then, having discovered the name/address/telephone number of "John Doe," they can amend their pleadings to name that individual as the party defendant.

However, it protects users' privacy and due process rights by requiring the plaintiff (RIAA) to file suit alleging a specific incident of infringement rather than allowing them to go on a "fishing expedition," which is what they (the RIAA) CLAIM the current law allows.

Of course, it's no better for the RIAA from a PR point of view, but I just don't think they give a great hairy damn what their customers and potential customers think of them. For this reason, I will continue to not buy new CDs.