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Comcast Sued For Giving Customer Info to RIAA
maczealot writes "The first legal missile has been fired at ISP collaboration. Comcast, the top U.S. cable TV network operator, is being sued by a Seattle-area woman for disclosing her name and contact information, court records showed Thursday." From the article: "...no court authorized Comcast to release names and addresses of its customers, or notified his client that her information had been given to an outside party..."
I suspect that ISP's have handed over personal data in a lot of cases, without court order. That is probably a break of their own TOS. But, the only thing that will happend, is that every damn ISP adds a clause to their TOS saying that they're free to do whatever they want with your information, including giving your address to a known spammer...
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Hmm. I am not a Comcast customer, but I might have a look at their TOS and EULA, purely out of curiosity... Even though this comment might invoke snickers and snorts (from me, as well as from others), I was under impression that USA Courts took privacy issues quite seriously.
Thus, unless Comcast's EULA/TOS clearly and specifically states that Company doesn't find itself obligated to protect its customer's privacy rights (which could easily bring them to their knees, because it'd open door for a myriad of 'naughty things' such as mail reading, web site visit logging and other privacy-invasive actions), the abovementioned action on Comcast's part, of giving out customer information to another company (Last I checked, RIAA wasn't US Government agency with power to demand such information outside proper court channels) is in blatant and violent offense of privacy laws & rights - which again, doesn't bode too well for them.
Bottom line, unless Comcast simply buys off the plaintiff with an out-of-court settlement, this could be grizzly...
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Uhm, not to rain on the parade right now, but the suit just got filed. No one has won (or lost) yet. So all of this is just speculation...
If we're speculating, and this woman wins her fight against Comcast revealing her information to the RIAA, that means a victory for privacy advocates? Does it mean that Comcast loses, and has to foot her fine to the RIAA? Or does it means the RIAA loses the ability to sue her?
If Comcast wins, what does that mean? Does this mean they are legally liable to know and track ALL of their users, and know what they are doing 24 hours a day 7 days a week? Does that mean they have to start handing over music-swappers to the RIAA, movie-watchers to the MPAA, kiddie-porn people to the FBI, tax-fraudsters to the IRS, etc?
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
Dawnell Leadbetter said that she was contacted by a debt collection agency in January and told to pay a $4,500 for downloading copyright-protected music or face a lawsuit for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Wait, what? She was given a bill for simply downloading (not SHARING) music? And she was told "pay us NOW or we will litigate you into oblivion" ? So, the company flat out said "the value of this music is $X, but if we take you to court it will become $Y" ? Call me crazy, but something about this story doesn't add up.
1. Open my own "collection agency"
2. Find name/address of random broadband user, preferably one with under-18 children. Maybe I can find some random comcast IPs and then ask them for the personal info.
3. Send them a bill from the "collection agency" for the "settlement" for the copyrighted material they have downloaded (I challenge you to find a household fitting step #2 that can prove they haven't downloaded anything copyrighted, ever) under threat of lawsuit.
4. Profit!
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IANAL, but something doesn't quite sound right here. Debt collection agencies typically outright buy someone else's contract at a discount. If I owed $10k to my credit card company and stopped paying my bill, they might sell my account to a collection agency for half that much so they don't have to deal with it. Now, if the collection agency is unable to collect a dime from me, they're out $5k unless they opt to sue me and can collect that way.
What I don't get is why a collection agency would buy this "debt". There is no contract between the RIAA and the woman. How can they possibly expect to collect? If they sue, what basis do they have? Either this story has some facts wrong, or the RIAA offered a very steep discount to the collection agency. If the later case, this really, really concerns me. Now the RIAA can collect money without even having to incur legal expenses!
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Doesn't rest of the world have decent music to offer? So listen to that for the next few years. I recommend U Srinivas renderings. Boycott RIAA/MPAA backed offerings and maybe someone more humane will take their place after they go extinct.
Is it really legit. or legal to waive your legal rights via a TOS agreement? Especially one that you didn't sign?
On the other hand, do we *really* have a right to privacy when it's the cable co. that is making the records, and therefore, their property to do with as they please?
If I have a place of business, and I set up a CC camera system recording all entries/motion in my shop to a hard drive, (and have a sign up saying all activity is being monitored by cameras) can it possibly be illegal to do with that footage as I please?
I'm not taking sides, as I can see both arguments, but I just wonder what the legality really and truly is, and then what would actually hold up in court...
I had a sucky sig.
The real story here is the fact that a collection agency is trying to collect money from this woman, not that she is sueing Comcast over alleged privacy violations.
How did the collection agency get involved? The information in the news story says nothing about it. Did she settle with the RIAA (the story implies she did not), but then not pay? Or did RIAA just hand over the "bill" to the collection agency without a settlement or a court case?
Something's fishy in the story. Either details were left out, or RIAA is up to something really fucked up.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Wait a second.. two 800 pound gorilla companies, who might ostensibly be considered competitiors (The RIAA and Comcast are both involved in distributing media content) are working together to gain additional control over a marketplace.. I know there's a name for this.. what is it again.. oh yeah, it's:
Collusion: In the study of economics, collusion takes place within an industry when rival companies cooperate for their mutual benefit. Collusion most often takes place within the market form of oligopoly, where the decision of a few firms to collude can significantly impact the market as a whole.
Collusion is largely illegal in the United States due to antitrust law, but implicit collusion in the form of price leadership and tacit understandings still takes place.
(The above is courtesy Wikipedia.org, reprinted here under fair-use terms)
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What really bothers me is how a lot of folks are equating the RIAA with law enforcement agencies. It's a private company that seems to have an easier time getting information than the FBI does. WTF is wrong with that picture? On second thought, maybe we could tell the RIAA that Bin Laden used Kazaa to download some Britney Spears mp3s... I bet they could get his whereabouts in 15 minutes flat.
The problem is there isnt a court ordered investigation, the information was released to a PRIVATE company 'just beacuse'.
Once this is a legit, police run investigation with a legit warrant, then comcast has some ground to stand on in releasing this information to the COURT.
But just because some company thinks there *might have been* a violation isnt a reason to release anything, especially not to a private company.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You cannot legally "threaten" someone with the specter of legal adjudication, since legal adjudication is the proper and legal civil means of resolving a dispute.
In fact, the "threat" of a lawsuit is a virtually necessary step in bringing a case, since the potential defendant must be given reasonable opportunity to settle the dispute prior to a filing.
Your credit card company cannot sue you for your bill. They have to present it to you first, then you have to fail to pay it within the specified, and reasonable, time, then they have to notify you of your failure to comply with terms and "threaten" legal action if you do not pay.
If you still do not pay, then they may sue you. Suits are not supposed to "come out of the blue."
Redress of grievance through the courts is a right, and the process is one of impartial adjudication of liability. Where is the "threat" in impartial legal judgment?
The courts want lawsuits to be threatened, because they'd rather you looked at your credit card company's lawyers and think "Oh, shit, I better just pay what I owe, huh?" instead of making every $10 debt into a court case. Even after a suit is filed the courts will do everything they can not to hear the case and get the parties to settle before trial.
Of course you and I know where the real threat lies, in the crippling expense of showing that you don't owe anything, assuming you don't, but the law cannot make that assumption, since its role is in making that determination in the first place, no?
So do you think the RIAA should just sue her and then make the threats, after she's already deep in the system and deep in debt to a lawyer?
Of course we know this person has no contractual debt up front, the supposed monies owed coming from a violation of law and not from contractual agreement. So, to date, there is no actual "debt" in the legal sense. That would only occur through adjudication and a judgement, or a future contractual agreement to acknowledge the debt, which is what is being sought.
Note that the suit filed by Dawnell Leadbetter is against Comcast, not the RIAA or the "debt collection agency" (i.e. "Law Firm." Who woulda thunk that law firms threaten law suits? It boggles the mind.)
She was ratted out. She's going after the ratter, quite possibly in hopes of getting enough money to pay the $4500 which she knows she's going to have to pay, because she knows she violated the law (which doesn't at all mean that the RIAA are not fucking bastards. Don't get me wrong on that point. See my yesterday's post on using copyright to control the distribution channel).
Comcast squealed when they were under no obligation to do so, let Comcast pay her tab.
Frankly I hope the ploy works, so that ISPs all over the land will start saying "Not without a fucking warrant you don't."
KFG
When did the Movie Industry and the Music Industry become the police of the internet? They are even working to get ISPs to regulate port activity and bar users who uare using too much bandwidth. So what if all that bandwidth I'm using is for legit purposes such as hosting my own website. Sounds like the MPAA/RIAA might hbe doing some shady business with the tech industry.
On top of that, what give a company the right to store someone's personal information on their servers for these IP bullies to review. If I was {insert big tel-com co here} I would NOT be storing such sensitive information, nor would I allow any information be disclosed to any organisation that wasn't OFFICAL government law enforcement. So whose side are the ISPs on anyways?
Perhaps this lawsuit is long overdue. And so too I hope the MPAA/RIAA get what they deserve too... a boycott and multiple lawsuits by hundreds of people over the issue of privacy and IP bullying.
The lady in question did not sue the RIAA, nor dispute the charge. Her two teenage kids probably did do exactly what they are accused of. Nowhere in the article does she say she is going to contest that.
She should. If it truly was a collection agency that contacted her, it's a simple matter for her to send a letter right back to them demanding verification of the debt. There's been no court case establishing said debt, and I don't see how she could owe the RIAA itself anything. A member company, perhaps, but the RIAA is a separate corporation. I suppose the member company(ies) could have assigned the "debt" to the RIAA, but I don't think the collection agency would have a very fun time trying to prove the debt exists, and when they can't, the real fun can begin where prizes can get up into the thousands and thousands of dollars.
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