Appeals Court Rules Against RIAA in DMCA Subpoena Case

JohnTheFisherman writes "My Way News is reporting that a Federal appeals court ruled that the RIAA can't compel the ISP to provide the name of the downloaders in their case against Verizon. In fact, the court said that one of the arguments the RIAA used 'borders upon the silly.' I believe most here will agree that this is great news." We've been following this case for a while.

Comments

There's a CNN story about this too

[GillBates0]

Here's my submission of the story:

According to this CNN story posted a few minutes back, a U.S. appeals court says that the RIAA's methods for tracking down those who copy its music over the Internet are not authorized by law. "The 1998 copyright law does not give copyright holders the ability to subpoena customer names from Internet providers without filing a formal lawsuit". Note that Verizon suffered setbacks earlier in it's case against the RIAA as reported here

Two comments:

[GnrlFajita]

First, this is good news but not great. The RIAA can't get subpoenas under these circumstances, but the court did not rule that provision of the DMCA unconstitutional, so the door is not completely shut.

Second, before you ask, this only covers one federal circuit (& the smallest one at that), not the entire nation, but in intellectual property matters what the DC Circuit says usually goes.

Some more info...

[Exmet Paff Daxx]

Here's the full text of the ruling.

Interestingly, this is the exact same appeals court that overturned the decision against Microsoft. It's good to know that there are cool, compassionate people in charge of the courts who don't listen to which way the prevailing "geek winds" are blowing on e issue or another but instead disspassionately apply the law. It appears that in their mind, the RIAA is as mistaken as Microsoft was innocent.