Slashdot Mirror
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...
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
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...
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
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?!'"
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.
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)
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
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.
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