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..."

Comments

Poor Comcast

[Cylix]

When you play with the devil... you will get burned. So let this be a lesson for handing your customer's data over to the RIAA thugs.

On a lighter note, looks like the RIAA has really stream lined the process of putting the screws to the customer. Honestly, you can't get any faster then straight to debt collection agency! Looks like due process was really slowing down their efforts, but now that it has been nixed from the check list they are free to pursue their interests without that peksy court system in their way.

Too bad I can't just go around and asking debt collection agencies to gather up money for me. I'm sure someone would disagree with me if I randomly decided some poor bastard off the street owed me $3000 or face a very long trial attempting to prove that I don't.

Yee gads! I wonder if I can patent this as a business methodology?

Ominous...

Re:Poor Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if I can patent this as a business methodology?

Sure you can, but then you'll get sued by the RIAA because they hold prior art... : p

Re:Poor Comcast

[Andr0s]

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...

Re:Poor Comcast

[superpulpsicle]

Well if RIAA was smart, they'd really go the distance and research the hell out of the candidates before sueing them.

- Rich or at least well off
- non technical
- old enough
- Doesn't work at a computer type company with any major contacts
- Not knowledgable about laws

Re:Poor Comcast

[XorNand]

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!

Re:Poor Comcast

[sqlrob]

- Alive

Re:Poor Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

- Rich or at least well off

But more importantly, not rich enough to hire a lawyer!

Re:Poor Comcast

[Andr0s]

- Rich or at least well off
- non technical
- old enough
- Doesn't work at a computer type company with any major contacts
- Not knowledgable about laws

Umm... that -definitely- doesn't sound like a music pirate profile to me.

Rich? Buy original CDs, or better yet Vynyl.
Non-technical? Not too likely to posess enough 'net-savyness to download loads of mp3s or divxes...
Old? Not enough interest for tons of net-floated MP3s...
Doesn't work at computer type company - how is this relevant?
Not knowledgeable about laws? Rich, but stupid and without good lawyers?

LOL.

Re:Poor Comcast

[AaronBenage]

I'm sure someone would disagree with me if I randomly decided some poor bastard off the street owed me $3000 or face a very long trial attempting to prove that I don't.

IANAL, so I'm not sure. In this type of case, is a defendant guilty until proven innocent?

Re:Poor Comcast

[uberdave]

You expressly authorize Comcast and its suppliers to cooperate with (i) law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected legal violations, and (ii) and system administrators at other Internet service providers or other network or computing facilities in order to enforce this Policy. This cooperation may include Comcast providing available personally identifiable information about you to law enforcement or system administrators, including, but not limited to, username, subscriber name, and other account information.

Sounds like the subscriber doesn't have a chance, once the copyright cops get involved.

Re:Poor Comcast

[technothrasher]

Too bad I can't just go around and asking debt collection agencies to gather up money for me. I'm sure someone would disagree with me if I randomly decided some poor bastard off the street owed me $3000 or face a very long trial attempting to prove that I don't.

You can, and in fact companies do this all the time. I've had it done to me on several occasions. But the collection agencies are all bark and no bite (unless, of course, they've really got a solid claim against you, that's a different story.) All you have to do is just send the collection agency a nice certified letter back demanding all of their detailed records showing how they have a valid claim against you within 30 days so that you can begin your lawsuit against them, and they back right off. More info from the FTC

Re:Poor Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Reread clause ii.

Comcast is allowed to cooperate with "system administrators at other Internet Service Providers or other network or computing facilities."

That != "anyone who asks." I would argue that the RIAA does not meet this qualification. This clause is to allow them to deal with people who spam, threaten, harass, or otherwise harm others in dealing with a complaint. It's specifically tailored to responding to sysadmins and other computing professionals. Not someone involved in a business dispute.

Second issue with this clause in general "You expressly authorize Comcast to cooperate....in order to enforce this policy." Again, this isn't a blanket license--there is the need to show that the activity in question violates some OTHER aspect of Comcasts' TOS. Granted, this may be open and shut if the TOS expressly prohibit viewing copyrighted material, but that's not a clean win either.

Re:Poor Comcast

[Talondel]

You expressly authorize Comcast and its suppliers to cooperate with (i) law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected legal violations, and (ii) and system administrators at other Internet service providers or other network or computing facilities I fail to see how this clause is pertinent to this law suit in any way. The RIAA is neither an internet service provider, nor a law enforcement agency (no matter how much they want to be).

Re:Poor Comcast

[technothrasher]

What I don't get is why a collection agency would buy this "debt".

Because the agencies are all about volume. They buy lots of debts at steep discounts. They don't care all that much if the debts are valid or not, they just find the vulnerable people they can harrass and extort money out of them. Anybody who shows any kind of backbone gets quickly removed from the active collection pile. Too much work for likely little return. But if they're ignorant enough not to demand their full rights, their credit report gets crapped on as they get dropped.

Re:Poor Comcast

[wdd1040]

But the RIAA isn't a law enforcement authority. Thereby, they still have no rights to this information unless a law enforcement agency has a warrant and they are pending litigation (which isn't the case with this).

Re:Poor Comcast

[whoever57]

(i) law enforcement authorities in the investigation of suspected legal violations, and (ii) and system administrators at other Internet service providers or other network or computing facilities in order to enforce this Policy.

Sounds like the subscriber doesn't have a chance, once the copyright cops get involved.

Exactly which of the 2 groups of people is the RIAA a part?

Re:Poor Comcast

[InfiniteWisdom]

Most of their lawsuits are John Doe lawsuits, meaning they have evidence that copyright infringement is being committed, from what IP at what time etc., but not who the human behind it is. They can only find that info after they filing a suit so that they can subpoena the information from ISPs.

Re:Poor Comcast

[The_K4]

Well if the Comcast TOS has a clause about not pirating copy-righted works and the RIAA asks their ISP's sys admin to ask, one could kinda see part ii working....if they squint hard enough......

Re:Poor Comcast

[nepheles]

Yee gads! I wonder if I can patent this as a business methodology?

You couldn't patent it, there's way too much prior art.

Re:Poor Comcast

[B1ackD0g]

From that FTC site:

Debt collectors also may not state that:

* you will be arrested if you do not pay your debt;
* they will seize, garnish, attach, or sell your property or wages, unless the collection agency or creditor intends to do so, and it is legal to do so; or
* actions, such as a lawsuit, will be taken against you, when such action legally may not be taken, or when they do not intend to take such action.

After reading TFA, it seems like they violated that last point. Wonder how they got away with that.

Re:Poor Comcast

[modder]

That != "anyone who asks." I would argue that the RIAA does not meet this qualification.

Exactly.

Though something bothers me about reading this in their TOS, (though I imagine it's fairly standard practice) this means your info could be passed along to other admins of other service providers. This could be anyone who owns a switch you went through while you were "sharing files" or doing whatever else you were doing, right? Your information is then at the mercy of their policies.

Could the RIAA (or anyone else) then pressure these companies as a pretext to obtain user info through this admin clause?

Re:Poor Comcast

[innocent_white_lamb]

Debt collection agencies typically outright buy someone else's contract at a discount.

Not here. Any collection agencies that I have dealt with (and I used to deal with several in a "former life") worked on a percentage of 1/3 to 1/2 of the amount collected. The debtor paid the full amount to the collection agency and the collection agency then forwards between 50% and 66% of that amount to the client. The difference in their commission comes from a combination of volume and amounts.

Re:Poor Comcast

[murphyslawyer]

In this type of case, is a defendant guilty until proven innocent?

The presumption of innocence still applies, but just because you're assumed to be innocent it doesn't mean that you don't have to:

1) Show up for court

2) Retain a lawyer ($$$)

Lawyer fees can easily range into a few thousand dollars for a simple case. Also, since this is civil case and not a criminal case, the plaintiff only has to show that it's likely they were harmed, whereas in a criminal case it must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. This is why in trials like the OJ Simpson case he was found guilty in civil court but not in criminal court.

Re:Poor Comcast

[Foobar of Borg]

The point is that there is this little thing called due process that they are not following and apparently have no intention of following. They are using a debt collection agency without properly obtaining reasonable proof that a debt is owed. Which is what the GP poster is saying.

Re:Poor Comcast

[rastin]

That policy they are talking about is cooperation with law enforcement in their investigations. It says they may have to pass your info to sys admins when compling with law enforcement investigations. It does not say they will offer up, out of the blue, your personal information to a 3rd party because that 3rd party is interested in it.

Until congress passes a law allowing corporations to form private armies and investigative enforcers we are still safe, on paper at least.

Re:Poor Comcast

[shawb]

Since when has prior art stopped the patent office from granting a patent?

Re:Poor Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

1- RIAA is not a law enforcement authority
2- RIAA is not a sysadmin
In other words: Comcast is still screwed.

Re:Poor Comcast

[uberdave]

The company, Settlement Support Center, based in Washington state, was using information that the Recording Industry of Association of America had obtained in a Philadelphia lawsuit over the illegal sharing of digital music files

The RIAA obtainded the info in a lawsuit. Legal authorities were therefore involved, and Comcast was thus well within the Terms of Service releasing the information.

Re:Poor Comcast

[blckbllr]

This probably won't be seen by anyone but...

This is a complete misstatment of the law. For a definition of "prior art," please see 35 U.S.C. 102(b).

If person A recieves a patent, person A cannot be sued by person B because person B holds "prior art." Rather, person B can attempt to have the patent held by person A held invalid through a declaratory judgment.

-BB

Re:Poor Comcast

[Lord Kano]

USA Courts took privacy issues quite seriously.

The US legal system is schizophrenic at best when it comes to privacy. For example the Roe v. Wade decision was based on the unspecified constitutional right to privacy, BUT you stand no chance of getting a drug case dismissed because your privacy rights were violated.

LK

Re:Poor Comcast

[iamwahoo2]

According to the article, in this occurence "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"

Re:Poor Comcast

[enosys]

The "collection agency" is called Settlement Support Center. I thought that was an unusual name and wondered if it is a company set up for the RIAA lawsuits. I guess it is and it has a bunch of lawyers which can pursue lawsuits if someone doesn't pay.

Re:Poor Comcast

[B747SP]

This cooperation may include Comcast providing available personally identifiable information about you to law enforcement or system administrators, including, but not limited to, username, subscriber name, and other account information.

That's all well and good, but is that legal? It depends on the jurisdiction I suppose, but if its not legal to share that kinda of information where Comcast are, then the clause is worthless (to them - very profitable to their victims!).

You can write anything you like in a contract, but if its not legal to do what the contract says you will do, a court won't uphold the contract.

Comcast could (and truth be known, Microsoft probably do) include a clause that says "In consideration of The Service you will deliver to us the genitals of your first born son on the third night after the first full moon following his first birthday". Unless they happen to stumble into a jurisdiction where trade in body parts is legal, they're shit out of luck as far as collecting on the deal goes.

Lots of people put wild and crazy stuff in contracts "because they can". Most times, all it takes is to point it out to the customer and say "Look, you signed... genitals please, now" and the customer will, ahem, swallow it. Occasionally you get a more astute punter who recognises that what they've been asked to do "just ain't right" and pushes back.

Let the fun begin.

Re:Poor Comcast

[Sique]

In a not RIAA related case I just wrote a letter to the debt collection company asking if they had a phone number or email address I can reach, because their 800 number didn't work. I got another letter back, where they offered me payment by rates. I responded again and said: I just want to talk about the debt you are collecting, and I can't do because I can't phone you, your 800 phone number doesn't work to me.
I have never heard from the company since.

Re:Poor Comcast

[RichardX]

You have. You just quoted part of a message he wrote.

Re:Poor Comcast

[Ryosen]

The clause exists so that admins that are investigating hack attempts against their system can identify you for legal action.

When you download music, you are not gaining illegal access to any electronic system owned by the RIAA. This clause would not be sufficient grounds for an ISP to surrender your information.

Re:Poor Comcast

[gorbachev]

So it's not a collection agency at all, but a RIAA's outsourced extortion division. The extortion attempt is not a collection agency trying to collect on a debt, but a bunch of scummy lawyers trying to intimidate her to settle the case before going to court.

Re:Poor Comcast

[pete6677]

Never talk to debt-collection scumbags. All communication with them should be done in writing, since it's much harder for them to later deny having said something. Since they ALL lie, you'll definitely need to protect yourself. That being said, they probably knew you were going to protest and decided to stop trying to collect, preferring to move on to people who just send the check as soon as they get any bill.

Re:Poor Comcast

[PepeGSay]

After reading TFA, it seems like they violated that last point. Wonder how they got away with that.

the last matter is a purely legal question. So, if they are confident they can win the lawsuit then the last item is of little regard.

Re:Poor Comcast

[Eskarel]

If you RTFA or even TF Summary, you'd note it explicitly says no court authorized the release of the clients information. If there were a subpoena they would have court authorization(even if it were just some clerk stamping a form).

They might even be able to get away with not having a subpoena by that clause if some law enforcement agency asked them directly, but the RIAA is not a law enforcement agency, and without a court order they don't have the authority of one either.

If any clause came into affect it's the second one, but that's not a particularly good defense in this case as, though you can stretch it almost infinitely far, if you stretch it too far a court is likely to declare it invalid. It's even probable(though IANAL)that for a system administrator to reveal information obtained this way without involving some sort of law enforcement agency and a warrant might be illegal, or at least a violation of the non disclosure portions of their employment contract.

Re:Poor Comcast

[geekee]

So it's ok to hand over info about a spammer, but not a copyright infringer?

Re:Poor Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Criminal vs Civil law, asshole.

Re:Poor Comcast

[HAKdragon]

Hmm. I am not a Comcast customer...

I know you're not a Comcast customer because you're online instead of suffering with their randomm DNS outages /rant of a fustrated Comcast customer.

Re:Poor Comcast

[mcc]

But the RIAA isn't a law enforcement authority

Yet

Re:Poor Comcast

[CodeBuster]

The last time I checked the RIAA is neither an ISP nor a Law Enforcement agency, although they would like to style themselves as such when it comes to pursuing twelve-year-olds for their lunch money. As for Comcast, their privacy policy reeks of corporate hypocrisy. It should be abundantly clear, after reading that agreement, that privacy and security are important to Comcast only insofar as they do not interfere with profits or fail to decieve the customers with the illusion that they [Comcast] are "looking out for the privacy of their subscribers." This is the same type of flawed corporate reasoning which attempts to place a finite and limited value on a trustworthy relationship with customers and investors.

Re:Poor Comcast

[laughingcoyote]

Well the RIAA, whatever they might like to think, is not a "law enforcement authority". Neither is it an "Internet service provider, network, or computing facility". And likely, the person who contacted them was a paralegal or something of that sort, not a "system administrator".

It says nothing about giving data to an "RIAA member", or anything that in a more general sense covers the RIAA, so this clause doesn't get 'em off the hook.

Re:Poor Comcast

[Boogaroo]

Sounds about right. I had a call from a collection agency and the debt sounded bogus. I really should have stopped talking to them then, but I refused to agree to anything at the time. I looked up my rights and asked them to send me proof on the second call. Their response was "Oh, you owe it all right, now what payment option do you want or would you prefer us to take you to court?" Obviously they weren't giving up. I didn't bend and they stopped calling.

In the end, they sold my "debt" off to another agency and I got a letter from agency #2 telling me what I "owed" them. I sent a letter back demanding proof of the original debt. Never heard another thing from them. I read of several people who had their debts shuffled from agency to agency and some who'd even paid the debt and still had to deal with the exact same thing later from another agency. I wonder how many of these bogus "debts" get sold off to another unsuspecting collection agency after the first couldn't collect...

Re:Poor Comcast

[mpe]

So it's not a collection agency at all, but a RIAA's outsourced extortion division. The extortion attempt is not a collection agency trying to collect on a debt, but a bunch of scummy lawyers trying to intimidate her to settle the case before going to court.

It's also probably a "shell company" with no actual assets of it's own. Thus protected against being countersued.

Re:Poor Comcast

[mcrbids]

I know you're not a Comcast customer because you're online instead of suffering with their randomm DNS outages /rant of a fustrated Comcast customer.

Back in 1998, when I got my home DSL line from Pacific Bell (now SBC), it had a fixed IP address, and required no software to install. I still have the same line, same fixed IP address.

I had constant problems with Pac Bell's DNS, and Email relaying was intermittent and usually slow.

So, I got a cheezo (and I mean CHEEZO!) old pentium, Red Hat 6.x, and set up my own Email/DNS/NAT gateway. I worked at it, until I felt familiar with the *nix command line while doing all this. That computer, hardware upgraded a few times, and now running RedHat 7.2 with progeny updates for security patches, runs today, and is routing the packets this post is submitted on.

I was new to Linux. Time went by, and my skillset steadily improved with frequent hits to here, Root Prompt, Linux Today, the local Barnes and Noble for a big, fat book every few months, and whatever else strikes my fancy.

Now, years later, I get paid quite well by several companies to provide these exact services - Email, DNS, etc. as well as various Database and Web-based softwares.

Take your frustrations, and turn them to your advantage. It's a path. Walk it, work to be the best, and it'll pay nicely. Oh, and I never have problems with SBC's DNS or SMTP relays, since I haven't used either since 1998!

Re:Poor Comcast

[Beardydog]

Our entire nerd commune was without interwebs for several hours, before I realized that my ancient PPC was still online, and told everyone else in the house to switch over to OpenNic. I was deeply surprised to hear a week later that a lot of people were still having trouble.

Re:Poor Comcast

[Flamsmark]

no, dead would do: it's much easier to sue an estate: they tend not to defend themselves so well.

Re:Poor Comcast

[i wanted another nam]

I just patented that statement. The royalty is $500 per letter. Pay up, bitch.

Re:Poor Comcast

[Nacon74]

"Sure you can, but then you'll get sued by the RIAA because they hold prior art..."

Yeah, but the RIAA would get sued by the mob, who used and perfected this method long before it became a ligitimate corporate tactic. :P

Re:Poor Comcast

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This is a complete misstatment of the law.

True, but only until the RIAA hires a senator or two to sponsor legislation that says otherwise.

Re:Poor Comcast

[Sj0]

If your analysis is correct, then this whole witch hunt is a red herring.

Re:Poor Comcast

[drinkypoo]

Comcast doesn't offer static IPs. I have a mail server on a dynamic IP but it's much less than an ideal solution. I cannot get DSL where I live, and it's slow anyway. I do run my own BIND 9 caching resolver, though.

Re:Poor Comcast

[khrtt]

When you play with the devil... you will get burned.

And if you play with matches... you will go to hell??

Re:Poor Comcast

[Stelminator]

Since when has the law prevented the RIAA from suing someone over frivolous claims?

It all depends

[mwsmith824]

Depending on the TOS she agreed to, they might not have needed anything from a judge. Do I think it's criminal to release that information without a warrant, sure. But I've seen stranger things in TOS's and EULAs before.

Re:It all depends

[ThisIsFred]

Isn't the purpose of a warrant to have a safety net from illegal searches and seizures of personal property by the government?

Re:It all depends

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Well, car rental companies kept writing into their service agreements the right to track you via GPS and fine you for speeding, but courts have repeatedly ruled against the rental companies. You can't enforce an unconscionable contract.

Re:It all depends

[PDXNerd]

According to the privacy agreement:

We may disclose personally identifiable information as provided for in the Cable Act when it is necessary to render, or conduct a legitimate business activity related to, the cable service or other services we provide to you. These kinds of disclosures typically involve billing and collections, administration, surveys, marketing, service delivery and customization, maintenance and operations, and fraud prevention, for example.

Is theft a kind of fraud? Fraudulent use of stolen goods??? I don't know, but I bet the court lands on the side of the RIAA and Comcast.

Re:It all depends

[WD_40]

In this particular case, the "search and seizure" wasn't at the hands of the government, but yeah, I get your drift.

The RIAA totally sidestepped the pesky legal system and went straight to fscking up people's credit reports. This really worries me. The RIAA has just further alienated me as a 'customer.' Not that I would ever buy an RIAA album again ever anyway.

Re:It all depends

[Null_Packet]

I realize this may draw alot of IANAL comments, but can someone cite some code (any state) that actually requires a warrant to hand over private/confidential data?

Re:It all depends

[Lord Pillage]

I'm proud to say I've never bought a CD in my life, and hopefully never will.

Re:It all depends

[Lord Pillage]

Is theft a kind of fraud? Fraudulent use of stolen goods???

Someone here is a troll and it isn't me. What was stolen? As far as I know, downloading music is only copyright infringement. When was the law changed to make it theft?

...I don't know...

This is the only part of your post I agree with. You don't know.

I think someone's been watching too much RIAA propoganda.

And anyway, this post is hardly insightful. If you were trying to make a point you could at least research the conditions of the "Cable Act". Without that, the whole thing is pointless.

As always, IANAL.

Re:It all depends

[shawb]

While I have bought several RIAA CDs before they started being a royal PITA, since then I have only bought CDs from non-RIAA members. This basically means local bands, plus a few select other outlets. On the plus side I've been listening to a lot of good music lately!

Re:It all depends

[Avantare]

That might be true. But what about this spin? WASHINGTON - Responding to outrage from consumers whose personal information has been stolen from companies, Congress is primed to pass new laws to try to prevent break-ins and to require businesses to confess to customers when private data is taken. How is this any different?

Re:It all depends

[Col. Klink (retired)]

This is why the courts make and recognize the distinction between "theft" and "copyright violation". The RIAA and MPAA would like you to believe they are one in the same because it leads to the conclusions you suggest, but "copyright violation" is not "theft" and the courts have told the RIAA this explicitly.

oh noes!

[carrett]

does this mean that all the warez d00dz using comcast are in deep deep trouble?

Re:oh noes!

[nizo]

That depends on if comcast can keep their DNS/network working long enough for any of them to actually finish downloading something illegal.

Re:oh noes!

[UWC]

Any word on what the whole DNS problem is? I ended up manually setting my router to use 4.2.2.1 for a DNS server. Network speed seems fine. My most recent use of BitTorrent was, believe it or not, a Linux LiveCD, and I was getting a little over 400KB/s on that, though I had upload rate limited because 30KB/s up completely saturates the paltry upstream limit they impose.

Re:oh noes!

[northcat]

Not warez. Music. All this is against music sharing. Not much action has been taken against warez (at least comparitively to music).

Re:oh noes!

[nizo]

I dunno, they are claiming it isn't related to the whole DNS cache poisoning, but other than that I haven't heard anything. I still find it amusing that once I was finally able to reach their customer service webpage, they had a note that "Some customers are experiencing network problems". Yeah quite the helpful place to put that message.

Re:oh noes!

[UWC]

Ha, wonderful. Not only do they offer no help and put that lack of help in a location rendered hard to reach with the current problems, but their powers of understatement seem nigh unparalleled. I'm going to make a stretch and guess that "Some" most likely means "Most" or "Almost all" or even "All" and that, based on my experiences, the "network problems" are pretty much just the DNS problems. Unless the DNS problems in our areas are somehow caused by network problems in other areas.

Re:oh noes!

[Nyder]

The BSA sent a letter to Millienum Digital Cable (Seattle) telling them that he had shared the Spider-man 2 PC game using Bit-torrent. They then turn his account off and told him they will turn it back on when he signs a statement agreeing not to share copy-righted material. He told them to fuck off and switch to another.

of course, that is when he asked me to show him how to do the binaries in the newsgroups. Millienum has excellent newsgroups. I mean, great retention, alot of the right groups. but anyways, goes to show, not only was "bit-torrent" not safe, and "warez" aren't safe.

he said the game sucked (which is does) and had deleted like 2 days after he had got it. I don't know if they gave BSA his name and stuff, the letter didn't say that.

You hear that?

[nightsweat]

It's the sound of a thousand TOS agreements being rewritten in every ISP/broadband provider across the country.

"Well you agreed to it when you clicked "yes" on that 400k text file."

Re:You hear that?

[DeathFlame]

RTFB

(Read the fucking blurb)

Re:You hear that?

[lcsjk]

Perhaps he is writing from Florida or Maine. From there, The Seattle area may include California.

A few years ago I was on an interview trip to South Carolina. My headhunter called me and said that since I was "so close" to Alabama, that I should look into a job he had found there. I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

Re:You hear that?

[Shky]

IANAL, but I do believe that (at least in Canadian contract law), if it's an unusal term (and something like that probably would be considered one), the TOS or whatever contract would have to direct attention to that term, so that it couldn't be missed. So at least you'd know what you're agreeing to, instead of the surprise somewhere down the line.

Re:You hear that?

[lilmouse]

Seattle, California, it's all the same thing when you're trying to read slashdot at the same time as branching code in SourceSafe (ugh). :-D

--LWM

Re:You hear that?

[Nyder]

Having been born in Seattle and lived here my whole life I have this to say. We were a nice place until California moved here in the 90's.

I'm guessing...

[Senjutsu]

that if they've gone so far as to file suit, they feel they have at least some leg to stand on, be it some element of the TOS contract or consumer privacy laws applicable to her state.

Re:I'm guessing...

[ZenShadow]

Tell that to SCO. :-)

Re:I'm guessing...

[Senjutsu]

SCO gains things (like publicity, time to peddle bogus Linux licenses, and funding from truly clueless investors) by dragging an essentially unwinable case out in court. I don't think this woman gains anything by filling an unwinable suit; her only hope is to gain via winning.

Therefore, it's logical to conclude that her lawyers believe there is some legal standing on which the can pin their claim. They haven't a hope in hell of recovering their undoubtedly high fees if she loses.

Re:I'm guessing...

[modder]

"privacy laws applicable to her state."

Out of curiosity, is any acceptance of a TOS or Usage/License Agreement able to override or waive any privacy rights granted to you by law?

That must be some fancy fine print.

Re:I'm guessing...

[ZenShadow]

Do I *really* need to suffix all of my messages with disclaimers for the humor-impaired?

--S

Re:I'm guessing...

[insert 3 letters]

IANAL, but as far as I know,it depends. There are laws passed that are designed to apply no matter what a contract says, others can be avoided by contract

Re:I'm guessing...

[geminidomino]

This is slashdot.

So, "yes"

Ok everyone, two things and quick!

[Weaselmancer]

1) Where is the EFF? They need to be in on this.

2) Is there a place to donate directly to her legal expenses?

Let's get together on this one everyone - this one is important.

Re:Ok everyone, two things and quick!

[Marthisdil]

Again - it's not like they couldn't have told the RIAA (or anyone else for that matter), who's connection was using the IP address the RIAA inquired about, and where the cable equipment is located at. Since it's Comcast's hardware, they can tell them the address, etc, IMO, and withold her name. Show up at her door, say "hello, who are you? Oh, here's a subpeona to show up here for these allegations. Have a nice day" And be done with it.

Re:Ok everyone, two things and quick!

[Loether]

I agree! Come on people let's help her out! I'm willing to forward the money I recieve on to her. Make all checks payable to cash or just email me the amount you would like to donate and your credit card numbers.

Re:Ok everyone, two things and quick!

[Punboy]

They have to have a name on the subpeona, so they'd have to rush off and get one made after getting her name. But ya, good point.

Re:Ok everyone, two things and quick!

[Nef]

I'm not sure about this particular woman's case, but I know I am a Comcast subscriber and I OWN my equipment for that specific reason. Now, you could argue that because I connect with my equipment via their Head-end, that gives them the right, but (and this is a big but) I don't recall anywhere in the TOS/AUP that states they have the right to divulge my information (meaning the address where the equipment used for the alleged infringement is located) to anyone aside from a government/public agency going through the proper channels.

Re:Ok everyone, two things and quick!

[sqlrob]

John Doe identified by IP Address 192.168.1.1 on 1/1/2005 at 3:00 AM

That should be enough to get a subpeona to get the detailed info.

Re:Ok everyone, two things and quick!

[arbitraryaardvark]

Her lawyer is
Lory R. Lybeck
7525 SE 24th St Ste 110
Mercer Island, WA 98040

EFF is where they usually are, at www.eff.org.
You are right that eff does lots of good work on exactly this issue, protecting the anonymity of internet users against abusive discovery practices. I doubt she has a strong case meriting eff involvement, but that she sued sends a good signal.

I do not happen to have the home addresses of the collection agency officials handy, maybe someone else can dig that up.

Re:Ok everyone, two things and quick!

[Punboy]

ya, but 192.168.1.1 would indicate that the RIAA was spying on her internal network, which would land them a MAJOR privacy suit. :-p

What's in it for Comcast?

[d2_m_viant]

I'm curious as to why an ISP would even be compelled to do such a thing. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the courts have ruled that ISP's are not responsible for the actions of their customers. It would seem that Comcast would have no interest either way...so why would Comcast bend customers over like this? Is it worth losing a $49 monthly fee from each customer who leaves because of this?

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[nightsweat]

Comcast provides content. MPAA has interest in provision of content as does the RIAA. MPAA and RIAA make life difficult with their members for Comcast next time agreements need to be signed for things like entertainment on demand.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[aichpvee]

Comcast charges like 55$/month and they don't give a fuck if they lose one or two customers, since their government-sanctioned monopoly on cable in their service areas (the largest in the country, btw) is going to ensure they still pull in the outrageous profits no matter what they do.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[ignipotentis]

Is it worth losing a $49 monthly fee from each customer who leaves because of this?

You haven't spent much time speaking with comcast's customer service... have you?

Oh well, they are a corporation. They have A LOT of customers. They do NOT care about the few geeks who will leave due to some idealistic reasoning. I agree with you, they should see this as bad. Howerver, I'm sad to say that they don't.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[ThisIsFred]

It's definitely financial suicide. First, every customer they turn in is no longer a customer. Second, I'm sure that some competitor would be very eager to have that list of customers for direct mailing.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[Punboy]

"...so why would Comcast bend customers over like this?"

Maybe after reading through her web access logs, and seeing all the porn, they thought she liked being spanked.

...you're suppose to laugh now.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[deltatype0]

Is it worth losing a $49 monthly fee from each customer who leaves because of this?

I've dealt with every major ISP now except Roadrunner (this being Cox, Comcast/ATTBI, SBC, Verizon, and the former @HOME) at least once tech support wise. They were nicer back then when broadband was fresh and new and fast overtaking dial-up. Now it's a race to see which one can charge high prices, low service, and monopolize small regions of your state. I had to deal with Comcast on several occasions when I lived in Massachusetts, being in a small town outside of Springfield, the only broadband provider, was Comcast. With no competition from any DSL company and few people who wanted to use dial-up, they decided to charge us roughly 55/month for then 1.5-2mbps down/256kbps up. When my modem kept dropping and reconnecting and I knew it wasn't my computers or routers, I tried calling them and chatting online tech support at least 3 times. Not only can they succeed in not being able to solve the problem but they won't even offer to FIX the problem such as replacing the modem.

Now living in Central Connecticut I use Cox, which marginally isn't much better, however their service is pretty stable and their customer service responds a lot nicer than Comcast ever will. Sadly the apartment I'm moving to next will likely have either Comcast or maybe Speakeasy DSL, though Speakeasy advertises less bandwidth for the same price that Comcast is supposeally promising more (6mbps down/384kbps up for Comcast versus 1.5mbps down/384kbps up for Speakeasy, @ 49-59.99/mo) The other alternative is SBC/Yahoo DSL, which of the four people I know with it, they hate it.. a lot!

Someone needs to do something to cut costs on broadband, improve service, and end these strangleholds on some regions of the country.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[sumdumass]

i'm in the central ohio area and we have road runner. Your experience isn't much different from mine when i had simular troubles. At first they told me my problems were because of windows XP and when i told them that was impossible because i was using windows 98 they suggested i upgraded to windows xp because it has better netorking support. After that debacle they told me my router was effecting it but i didn't have a router at the time. Then after looking in the cable modems diagnostic poages i found that some signal strentghs were way off i called motorolla and they told me some stuff about them.

I returned my call to roadrunner support armed with this new inofrmation and easily went past the level one tecks and stumped the level 2 techs then after gettign ahold of a level three tech, my problem was solved with a new cable modem. Now i automaticaly ask for level two tech support if i ever have a problem. The first tier support people are low paid teleworkers that do little more then read form a screen. The second tier actualy have some knowledge and the third level tends to be engineers of some sort. I know a little about networking and the way cable networks operate. I suggest asking for level 2 support as soon as the call is placed and you will see better results instead of doing everythign you already though od again because the computer screen says to.

I almost think that in some ways, the reasons for level one support is to get you to accept the shortcommings of thier service.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[advnick]

Everything is in it for ComCast, by handing out some info some bandwidth wasting p2p'er gets owned by the RIAA... I run an ISP, and let me say, there is almost nothing more annoying than the bandwidth wasted by people downloading movies/music.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[Doppler00]

$49 monthly fee? What are you talking about? It's up to $60/month for cable internet access. (for those of us who don't watch cable TV).

I think possibly the reason Comcast is interested is because they are probably going to be pushing their own music/video services over the web in the future, and they want the RIAA's backing. A recent promotion provided a "free" subscription to Rhapsody. Of course, all they offer is a few radio stations, which are completely void of content compared to Shoutcast. Really, the only thing they want to do is sell you DRM music through this tool.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[ubergeek65536]

Their relationship with the recording industry and hollywood may not be as strong as Time Warner (AOL) but I presume they want to keep cozy just in case that aquisition opportunity comes along. Luckily I live in Canada. (The courts won't make ISPs give out personal info unless someone ended up dead.)

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[vdub12]

You know your an ass. We pay for the dam banwith. I am sick and tired of ISP's that offer high speed internet and then get pissed if you use it. To us we are not wasting it if we are using WHAT WE PAY FOR.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[advnick]

You don't pay for jack, the ISP I run pays $9500 a month for a 768/256 pipe. I serve high-speed internet for responsible adults, not media-stealing children. The TOS says no file sharing allowed.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[pete6677]

That's because he was running a competitive business. Comcast, unfortunately, is a monopoly in most areas.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[pete6677]

It's not your customers' faults that your business model is apparently broken. No ISP I've ever dealt with says no file sharing. Why can they turn a profit but you can't? Yes, I know, I'm probably feeding a troll here.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[loraksus]

Your boss probably would think different if he was the only one within 300 miles allowed to install air conditioners.
Comcast doesn't have to care about losing the "geek" customers because the only alternative is dialup in most areas.
If Verizon's new fiber to the home thing works out, Comcast might have something to worry about, but right now, there really isn't any competition.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[Gwyn_232]

This is why the US needs a good data protection law (not a collection of precedents, which is what is seems to rely on at the moment). If a UK company repeatedly flouted the Data Protection Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act (which is what Comcast seem to have done in this case), they could eventually loose the right to hold personal data about anyone. Also, suing them wouldn't be necessary, all you'd have to do is complain to the Information Commissioner. They'd soon start caring then.

If you want to stop this sort of thing from happening, you need to start campaigning for a similar law.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[vdub12]

For real dude if you don't want people to use the 768 pipe then don't give it to them. Put a cap on your speed and then people we go to another company that will not wine about using what they pay for. so if I share personal home videos with the rest of my family using my high speed internet according to you thats a waste of bandwidth, Well since I pay for it I guess thats to bad for you. If you don't mind me ask what ISP is it you work for. I would just like to know so in the future I can avoid the problems of dealing with you.

Re:What's in it for Comcast?

[advnick]

Can you idiots READ? 9500$!!!! Its in a remote location, if other ISPs can afford to have the appropriate bandwidth for file-sharing, good for them.

Interesting turn...

[vidarlo]

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...

Re:Interesting turn...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

In many states that does not matter. The TOS agreement will not take precedence over state privacy laws that require any business to disclose to you any instance in which they hand over your personal information to a third party and in some cases need approval beforehand (note in some states I think this has to be on a case by case basis, you can't sign something that says you can hand it over to anyone anytime.) It's crazy how sometimes privacy laws actually, you know, protect people's privacy.

Thank god for america...

[racecarj]

Where one lawsuit can easily cancel out another.

Re:Thank god for america...

[Punboy]

Yes, thank god. Because of this our justice system works very well, save the ridiculous suits like the SCO Vs. IBM fiasco.

Re:Thank god for america...

[Spy der Mann]

like the SCO Vs. IBM fiasco.

Please, use quotes.

Wrong: SCO Vs. "IBM fiasco".
Right: "SCO Vs. IBM" fiasco.

otherwise Billy might misquote you saying Linux is a fiasco. "A slashdotter said it! A slashdotter said it! I swear!"

Re:Thank god for america...

[ehiris]

Anyone knows that the best defense is an offense.

Some organizations like the RIAA just think that they are above the law and nothing can touch them.

Which Law?

[ThisIsFred]

What law is the basis for this legal action? Is this a law specific to her state of residence? Is it an anti-spam law? I'm not aware of any federal law that says ISPs are legally-bound to keep private their customer's names. The only laws that I can think of along these lines specifically deal with medical records.

Don't get mad at me, just tell me what is the legal basis. Show me the law with the specific wording, not just interpretation of intent or precedent. I'm interested.

Re:Which Law?

[Suppafly]

I'm pretty sure there are federal laws that apply to everyone saying that you can't disclose people's nonpublic personal information. If you read those privacy letters the bank sends you when they change their TOS, they usually elude to the difference between public information and nonpublic information, I doubt they do this of their own free will.

Re:Which Law?

[Holi]

not just interpretation of intent or precedent

Do you know how much law in this country (USA) is based on precedent. You don't need a "law with specific wording." if precedent has been set in a similar case (not sure if it has or not) then that can give them grounds to sue.

Re:Which Law?

[blueadept1]

Well, here in Canada, all corporations have a legal obligation to keep customer's information private, unless you say that you are fine with them sharing your information for various purposes, or if they have a clause in the TOS.

Unless Comcast has already changed their Terms of Service, I fear that this may have been lost already, as it states under "Violation of Acceptable Use Policy":
"This cooperation may include Comcast providing available personally identifiable information about you to law enforcement or system administrators, including, but not limited to, username, subscriber name, and other account information."

Re:Which Law?

[kizzbizz]

Exactly right.

The legislative system is backloged enough, if every case had to have a specifically worded law describing it then either A. Nobody would ever win a law suit (And we KNOW this isn't the truth) or B. The law books would be larger than the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and that thing's huge.

Re:Which Law?

[Holi]

Next time you Google something try and use the right query. I don't see what California Privacy Laws have to dfo with a suit filed in Kent County Washington.

Re:Which Law?

[Arathrael]

The RIAA and a debt collection agency aren't a 'law enforcement authority' or 'system administrators at other Internet service providers or other network or computing facilities'.

Re:Which Law?

[spiritraveller]

Simple negligence
Public Disclosure of private facts
Slander (if they can't prove that she really was using that ip address)

There's probably a hundred different legal theories you could come up with for this, depending on the specific details.

The article is pretty scant on details.

Re:Which Law?

[Anonymous Coward]

Violation of contract:
http://comcast.net/privacy/#disclosure
We make every reasonable effort to protect subscriber privacy as described in this Policy. Nevertheless, we may be required by law to disclose personally identifiable information about a subscriber without his or her consent and without notice in order to comply with a valid legal process such as a subpoena, court order, or search warrant.

She's complaining they didn't notify her or ask for her permission, AND they did not have a court order.

Re:Which Law?

[Punboy]

Next time you bash someone, try and use the right county. I don't see what the non-existent Kent County has to do with King County. ...you really are supposed to be laughing now.

Re:Which Law?

[Holi]

All right so thats funny.

At least I got the right state.

Re:Which Law?

[vrimj]

The state of washingtion has a tort of action for invastion of privicy. The Washingiton Supreme Court says so :"So that no further confusion exists, we explicitly hold the common law right of privacy exists in this state and that individuals may bring a cause of action for invasion of that right." Reid v. Pierce County, 136 Wn.2d 195, 961 P.2d 333, (1998).This includes intrusion in to seclusion and public disclosure of privite facts. Neither theroy is a great fit here, but either could be strached a bit.
The reason you don't see many lawsuits for invasion of privicy (even though it is in the restament) is that it is usually had to show economic damages. In this case she has that part covered. The issue is likely to center on the question of duity, did comcast have a duity to protect her personal infromation.

Re:Which Law?

[ThisIsFred]

Right. The grandparent answered my question. A contract is a two-way street. Comcast is likely going to lose. I don't think she'll have trouble at least getting her legal costs vs. the RIAA out of this.

Re:Which Law?

[mrsev]

Not ture. Many many countries do not use legal systems based on precedent. They have law books no bigger than any other. Precedent rquires that you study huge volumes of case law. The countries with precedent tend to be anglo-saxon in origin. Those without are based on Roman type legal system. (I know this is a generalisation..please do not start a thread!)

Your comment about specificaly worded law is crap.

law book in "Roman" system: You can not divulge private information without consent, unless comanded by a warrant from a judge!

Law book plus case law in anglo-saxon system: You can not divulge private information without consent, unless comanded by a warrant from a judge!

But in "mrsev vs. universe, in 2005" It was decided that your IP address and real address are not private information.

But in "EZsue vs. John Paul II, in 1955" It was decided that your street address is private information unless held in public directory.

But, mlud, "EZsue vs. John Paul" was ruled not to apply to north facing appartments in sub-tropical regions on the firt tuesday of the lunar month."

but....

but but but.

But..

Im not making judgments about the two systems but dont pretend that "Roman" law is worse than the US system. At least with Roman law you can know what a law actually is!!!!

Re:Which Law?

[kindbud]

I'm not aware of any federal law that says ISPs are legally-bound to keep private their customer's names.

Doesn't have to be a federal law. Could be a state law. States can pass laws, too, you know. Washington state has it in the state constitution.

No person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law. (Wash. Constitution Art. I, sec. 7)

Show me the law with the specific wording, not just interpretation of intent or precedent.

Hey Fred, I got some news for you. ALL laws are interpreted. No law is 100% perfectly clear in all cases. We rely on precedent and interpretation to decide what laws mean to the case at hand. This is not some recent innovation or "judicial activism" (whatever that means). This is what jurisprudence IS and always has been.

Re:Which Law?

[Macadamizer]

I'm pretty sure there are federal laws that apply to everyone saying that you can't disclose people's nonpublic personal information. If you read those privacy letters the bank sends you when they change their TOS, they usually elude to the difference between public information and nonpublic information, I doubt they do this of their own free will.

But someone's name, address, phone number, email address, username on a website, IP address, none of these would qualify under any state or federal law as "nonpublic information" -- this is all public record stuff. What they mean by "nonpublic information" is information that could be used for identity theft -- your name, combined with a date of birth, social security number, driver's license number, bank account numbers, those sorts of things. Look up some state identity theft statutes on findlaw or something and see what states consider "public information" and "nonpublic information."

Hell, even the college you went to and dates of attendance are "public information" in most states.

Re:Which Law?

[Macadamizer]

Im not making judgments about the two systems but dont pretend that "Roman" law is worse than the US system. At least with Roman law you can know what a law actually is!!!!

Not disagreeing -- but just to be precise, the two law systems are the civil law system and the common law system. Civil law jurisdictions, which are most countries in the world (and the state of Louisiana in the U.S.) rely on codes, whereas the common law jurisdictions rely on caselaw -- but it's not that cut and dried, because even in Civil law systems you have precedents (because you can't write laws that deal with everything up front -- sometimes you get caught with your pants down, and need to draft something on the fly), and all common law systems have statutes as well (and Louisiana uses Civil law for its state law, but is still bound to follow Federal common law, so it's a real hybrid!).

Civil law systems tend to be somewhat more predictable and easier to understand, but common law systems tend to be more adaptable and flexible. Both have advantages and disadvantages, which is why virtually all jurisdictions in the world have some elements of the other system.

Re:Which Law?

[Porter Doran]

The Rights of the people are theirs until some law explicitly takes them away. You seem to think the people have no Rights until some law explicitly provides them. Your thinking is atithetical to humanism and democracy, and is in similar vein to thinking that all are guilty until a court proves their innocence, or that all property is government's until a tax agency "forgives" the people that debt, in some portion.

Re:

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

It's like a billion voices of reason all cried out at once, and then were silenced.

Deja Vu

[BrynM]

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

I know I've heard of something like this before... There's a word for it... Never given a chance to exonerate herself of the "charges". From acusation to credit damaging collection agency without even a notification... Threat making folks plying her with further threats... Oh yeah:

extort - verb
obtain by coercion or intimidation; "They extorted money from the executive by threatening to reveal his past to the company boss"; "They squeezed money from the owner of the business by threatening him"

Re:Deja Vu

[kfg]

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

Re:Deja Vu

[geekee]

"I know I've heard of something like this before... There's a word for it... Never given a chance to exonerate herself of the "charges". From acusation to credit damaging collection agency without even a notification... Threat making folks plying her with further threats... "

If the charges were handed over to a debt collection agency, it's probably because she ignored the original letters from the RIAA. She has her day in court if she wants it. If any threat of legal action for a wrong committed is extortion, then your right extortion was committed. Otherwise your comment is more /. bs.

Re:Deja Vu

[DarkAce911]

but there is no debt or contract between her and the RIAA, why is the debt collector involed? IF I send you a letter demanding 3000 grand or I will take you to court, I can't just tell some collection agency you owe me 3000 grand now.

Somebody has some explaining to do and its not just comcast.

Darkace911

Re:phew . .

[geminidomino]

Nice troll.

"Crimes" get reported to Law Enforcement. Contrary to what they, and apparently you, beleive, the Asses of America are NOT Law Enforcement agencies.

Comcast knows its customers?

[standards]

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.

That's funny... given Comcast's poor reliability this week, I find it shocking that she'd be able to upload or download anything.

Re:Comcast knows its customers?

[VoidWraith]

Funny that I solved that issue myself... And yes, its most definitely a DNS problem. The servers DHCP has been assigning are crap. I changed back to the servers they had given me to use a very long time ago, and they work wonderfully. No, I'm not telling what they are, because I don't want the chance of getting them swamped. =P

Re:Comcast knows its customers?

[maelstrom]

Just so you know, any publicly facing DNS server can be used for this purpose, and in fact its probably a good thing to have one as a tertiary server, so if all of comcast's stuff goes down, you are still functioning.

Cheers.

Re:Comcast knows its customers?

[whoever57]

I haven't noticed the problem myself, but that is probably because I run my own DNS server.

No problem to solve for my home network!

Re:Comcast knows its customers?

[ticktockticktock]

Know of any good public DNS servers?

Can I say "So What?" now?

[Mad_Rain]

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?

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Cylix]

If she wins, she can get some cash and pay off the RIAA. Maybe even have some change left over.

In the future, it will slow down the extortion machine, but the law suits will continue to go.

They are going to do everything they can do until someone pushes the line back a bit, but in the end it will not stop them.

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Elshar]

It probably means that since they did not have a warrent or a subpeona or some kind of court order allowing them to gather the 'evidence' that it might very well be thrown out.

I'm also suprised that noone has thought to look at the possible wiretapping laws in regards to gathering data this way. I mean, you couldn't just hook into a local pbx and listen into people's phone calls to see if they're making deals to pirate stuff. Why would they be able to gather evidence by joining a torrent swarm or on a p2p network, or sniffing network traffic? It should amount to the same thing, imo.

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Delta2.0]

I'm not a legal expert but if she does win the case then the information the isp released would not be admisable in court. It would probably be like an ilicit drug case where the officer discriminated against the person while making the arrest. The drug would not be admitted into court, and the prosecutions entire plan goes down the drain.

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because if they join in a torrent swarm, they are "participating" in the conversation, not tapping it. Now, I would make a defence that if they were in the torrent swarm then either A: they were infringing copyright themselves or B: since they were legitimately able to join the torrent (and provide an upload), that file is no longer illegal, because they were participating in the download. i.e. since the copyright holder/person representing them gave it to me, it's a legal copy.

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Elshar]

Exactly. So by participating, they either made the sharing legal, or they were doing the equivilant of wiretapping.

I think part of the issue is that its all farmed out anyhow. The *IAA doesn't even participate at all in any of the filesharing things, a intermediary company does, and sends its reports off to the company it was hired by. So we're both probably wrong in the end.

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Deliveranc3]

Violating someone's right to privacy is significantly more valuable than coywright infringement.

IF she wins she should be looking at 5-6 figures.

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Richard_at_work]

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 the woman wins and the court rules that Comcast acted illegally in handing over her information, then all that simply happens is that the RIAA has to go to court twice - first to have the court order the ISP to hand over the information required and then the RIAA would sue the ISPs customer for copyright infringement. That is what is supposed to happen now, but when Comcast handed the information over, they basically jsut assumed that they would have been ordered to hand the information over anyway (which they probably would have, the RIAA can provide the grounds for a case, and IP addresses, dates and times and evidence of copyrighted materials being transfered is more than enough basis).

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?

They arent legally liable for anything. They handed the data over voluntarily, thats it. If they won the case, then they would be legally allowed to hand it over voluntarily in further cases, regardless of the circumstances of the aledged crime commited.

Dont make the mistake of thinking that its Comcasts (or any other ISPs) job to defend you when someone accuses you of wrongdoing.

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Mad_Rain]

They arent legally liable for anything. They handed the data over voluntarily, thats it. If they won the case, then they would be legally allowed to hand it over voluntarily in further cases, regardless of the circumstances of the aledged crime commited.

See, that's where I think this case could get interesting - at some point, I imagine that there will be a lawsuit where Comcast will have to fight with the RIAA about "well, you gave us their contact information, why not share your logs about what your users are doing? If you don't let us see those, we'll sue you next for criminal facilitation (or some other BS)"(It's probably the beer post-work and taxes at this point, but) At what point does this become a slippery slope for Comcast?

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Richard_at_work]

At what point does this become a slippery slope for Comcast?

When their users started commiting illegal acts over their network? :) In other words, about 5 minutes after Comcast started business.

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[pete6677]

The issue of common carrier status (which is what ISPs operate under) has been addressed by the courts numerous times. Comcast would face no legal problems by refusing to turn over subscriber data without a court order.

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Legion303]

"I'm also suprised that noone has thought to look at the possible wiretapping laws in regards to gathering data this way."

For the 500th time, wiretapping laws only apply to law enforcement.

And it's fucking spelled "warrant."

Re:Can I say "So What?" now?

[Elshar]

Alright, score one point for Mr. Angarie! :D

Re:Denied

[Arathrael]

Because illegal methods aren't justified by being used to combat illegality. The ends do not justify the means.

The question is whether an ISP releasing personal details in this context is illegal, but the answer to that isn't obvious.

Heh.

[ErZo]

It's kinda weird it took so long, really.
Didn't ANYONE think of doing this before?

Besides, I ask you /.'ers; HAve you ever been so bored (excited) about something, that you read the whole Terms ? For example, your will arrive in 1day and 10h, what would you do? :D

Re:Heh.

[bbc]

"It's kinda weird it took so long, really.
Didn't ANYONE think of doing this before?"

Copyright infringement is first and foremost a civil offence. There is a "price tag" attached of up to 250,000 US$ per "incident". Being sued means you cannot claim to be innocent until proven guilty; you have to prove you did not do it. Find a judge who got out of bed in a foul mood, and you will find yourself at the wrong end of the verdict.

As has been mentioned before: if you want music, you'd better steal in the form of CDs from the record store than download it in the form of MP3s from the P2P networks. (Which is of course exactly the way Big Copyright wants it.)

Re:Heh.

[justchris]

It's kinda weird it took so long, really. Didn't ANYONE think of doing this before? Probably, but considering the number of actual Subpeona's the RIAA has delivered to Comcast and other ISPs, probably no one else had the necessary legal excuse to sue.

Fined for downloading?

[almostmanda]

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.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[geminidomino]

She could sue for that too! I hope her lawyer knows about the "Fair Debt Collection Practices Act" that prohibites threats to collect a debt.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[Anonymous Coward]

Statutory damages. What she is liable for is not the same as the value of the item taken.

There's at least some logic here--if you shoplift a CD from a music store and get caught, do you think all you have to do is pay what the CD would have cost and you're home free? That implies there's no penalty for theft, which isn't the best of systems. Hence the concept that intentionally stealing an item of value has the potential to cost more than the actual value of the item.

This is the big hammer that the **AA is swinging against downloaders these days.

What puzzles me is that all of a sudden she got a bill from a COLLECTION AGENCY. Huh? I was under the impression that debts could not be placed for collection until the debtor was notified of the debt, given the opportunity to contest the debt, and be notified that the debt was going to be placed for collection.

I didn't think the "Proceed directly to the collection agency. Do not pass go. Do not make any attempt to collect $4,500." was a kosher process for handling a debt (even a disputed one).

Re:Fined for downloading?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question I want to know is...

How did the RIAA know she had downloaded said files?

IANAL. TINLA.

If she downloaded them from an RIAA agent, the agent, by making them available to her, also gave permission on behalf of the RIAA to download them... so they are legal copies. (estoppel prevents the RIAA from suddenly deciding they are now illegal copies)

If she *didn't* download them from an RIAA agent, then the RIAA must have been tapping her wires... an illegal act in and of itself because the RIAA is not law enforcement and cannot serve warrants. If this is the case, it is illegally and improperly collected evidence and will not be permissible in court.

A third question... if an agent of the RIAA downloads a copy from you (i.e., you're uploading), did they not authorize the new copy in the first place (see objection #1)? If they don't download the copy, can they be sure the file name is analagous to the actual song? And to download the copy, their agent has to approve the creation of the download (by starting it) and therefore the upload to the agent becomes legal.

Seriously... I cannot for the life of me figure out how the RIAA collects evidence that will actually get into court... either the RIAA agent has authorized a copy to be made (and so the copying is not illegal) or the RIAA has used illegal methods to wiretap a computer (and therefore the evidence is inadmissable). In the first case, you have no case because there is no crime; in the second, you have no case because there is no court-admissable evidence.

Could someone please enlighten me?

Re:Fined for downloading?

[BigZaphod]

Sure it does. It adds up to $Z.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[MAdMaxOr]

> "MP3 is lossy compression - my copies are not copies but derivative works"

Every copy of anything macroscopic is a degraded version. It's hard to imagine a court ruling that copyright law doesn't apply because your xerox copy of someone's book was smudged or otherwise imperfect.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[01000011011101000111]

IANAL But, simple, afaik (most) judges don't know much about computers. REFUSE to allow them to play the song in your possession in court (because to do so would either require them to have use of your hardware without permission or them to give u a license to publicly play the music), then give them two printouts - one of the raw (Wav or whatever, uncompressed) audio, and one of the mp3... Guess which is the smaller stack? "Your honour, the prosecution are claiming that these two are one and the same - as you can see, they are not..." Also, smudging is accedental - MP3 is deliberate sampling and removal of frequency information... not the same thing.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[Anonymous Coward]

(IANAL obviously)

The first two are legitimate questions, and I think they're not going to be answered until they sue someone stupidly who's willing to take it through the system. Effectively, you need the same type of restrictions that are put on police officers who run stings for prostitution or drugs (ie, they can't explicitly offer it to you, you have to ask, etc etc)

However, uploading is a little easier... For one, if their agent approves the download, it doesn't make your upload act legal, especially since they're the copyright owner. Remember, here were're really talking about civil copyright violations, not crimes, so they can't violate their own copyright by downloading their own music. And the "the file name might not be what it is" is probably not a legitimate defense, especially if they're actually downloading the files to check them (though just by checking name, file size, and maybe even md5 sum if they really wanted to, it would be pretty easy to show it's almost certain to be the same file).

I've always been very dubious about the legal standing of the download cases, though... I don't really see a way they can truly prove their case without explicitly scanning the files on your computer and then checking to see what CDs you actually own, which of course they're not about to do. Uploading, however, is far easier.

>>>A third question... if an agent of the RIAA downloads a copy from you (i.e., you're uploading), did they not authorize the new copy in the first place (see objection #1)? If they don't download the copy, can they be sure the file name is analagous to the actual song? And to download the copy, their agent has to approve the creation of the download (by starting it) and therefore the upload to the agent becomes legal.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[Luthair]

There's at least some logic here--if you shoplift a CD from a music store and get caught, do you think all you have to do is pay what the CD would have cost and you're home free? That implies there's no penalty for theft, which isn't the best of systems. Hence the concept that intentionally stealing an item of value has the potential to cost more than the actual value of the item

Not really a valid comparison, as I understand it fines for criminal behaviour don't go to the victims.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[adavies42]

IANAL either, but AFAIK, exclusionary rules for bad evidence only apply to the government. She may have a *separate* claim against the RIAA for illegal wiretapping, or indeed be able to press criminal charges, but she can't get the evidence excluded from her trial/suit. The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to private citizens.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[metamatic]

I found out a collection agency wanted $5k from me. First I knew was when it turned up on my credit report. In two years, they had made no attempt to contact me at the addresses shown to be active on said credit report. I had to waste my time and money writing, printing and mailing documents telling them to go away because the alleged debt was incurred in a city I'd never been to, on behalf of a company who should have known that I was actually a customer of theirs on the other side of the country the whole time.

If you try to contact the collection agency or credit rating agency, they'll try to make you jump through all kinds of hoops. The best thing is to go straight to the FTC and download their template for an affidavit, write one up including all the relevant proof, send it in via certified mail, then just reply to every subsequent letter with "Read the affidavit and stop harassing me" until they get the hint.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[odin53]

If she downloaded them from an RIAA agent, the agent, by making them available to her, also gave permission on behalf of the RIAA to download them... so they are legal copies. (estoppel prevents the RIAA from suddenly deciding they are now illegal copies)

But did the RIAA agent really give permission to download the files? That's a pretty big jump to make. Certainly the RIAA agent never gave explicit authorization to make such a copy, and making the files "available" on a p2p system doesn't implicitly give authorization to anybody and everybody to copy the files.

Libraries make books available to library users, but the copyright holders don't necessarily authorize the users to make full copies of the books. Musicians may give free concerts in Central Park, but they don't necessarily authorize anybody's recording of their performance. People who leave files in poorly protected or unprotected parts of their servers don't necessarily authorize crackers to come into the server and grab the files.

Cute argument, but far from a slam dunk.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[bbc]

"There's at least some logic here--if you shoplift a CD from a music store and get caught, do you think all you have to do is pay what the CD would have cost and you're home free? That implies there's no penalty for theft, which isn't the best of systems."

Do not conflate copyright infringement with theft. Theft is a crime--it is something that society would like you to stop doing.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[bbc]

"including, but not limited to "MP3 is lossy compression - my copies are not copies but derivative works" - I can't be held responsible until the person who *ripped* the movie/mp3 is found and prosecuted (otherwise, how are we to know that he wasn't licenced to produce a derivative?)"

I may not know much about the legal system, but I am pretty sure judges just love to throw your sort into PMITAP.

As for why your defense does not work: copyright law forbids you to make a copy, whether it is a derivative or not. Unless you can come up with proof that you were allowed to make or download that derivative, you will lose.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[BlacBaron]

IANAL but,

I've considered this argument myself and came to the possible conclusion that the RIAA is infact not the copyright holder, and only working on the behalf of the copyright holder to protect their copyright.

As such they have no right to distribute the files, but they won't be prosecuted because they're the ones who have been given the responsibility to prosecute.

I also believe as these are civil cases there is no entrapment issue available to them.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[mirqry]

It doesn't make a differnce if she downloaded or uploaded the files. Either way she is making a "copy" of "copyrighted" material.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[Qzukk]

You forgot the third option, that she was using a system like bittorrent where her activity in downloading the file was publically broadcast, and could easily be tracked using the tracker (well, what else would you call it? ;) without approving or otherwise participating in the transfer, or tapping her wires or anything.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[Alexey Karamazov]

>>Musicians may give free concerts in Central Park, but they don't necessarily authorize anybody's recording of their performance.

-------------

I wonder about this... let's just say for the sake of argument (and to clarify this a bit) that I just happened to be in that particular park at that particular time with some audio recording equipment because... oh I don't know... I'm sampling ambient sounds so that I can put together a 'Sounds of Central Park' cd. So I'm out there minding my own business, in a public area, making recordings of whatever happens to be audible at the time, and there just so happens to be music playing.

Am I somehow obligated by law to cease and desist the recording that I had been doing simply because the band that's playing might try to sue me for unauthorized recording of their 'intellectual property' (or whatever PC term you want to use for it)?

Sounds a bit silly to me. Any thoughts?

Re:Fined for downloading?

[TWooster]

Ianal.

Like many defense arguments amounting to semantics, the RIAA wouldn't have a leg to stand on for this. If P2P networks, are, as they claim, only used to transfer illegal files anyway, the moment they "set up shop" on a P2P network, there's implied consent. They are advertising the presence of their files.

This is the same as the RIAA having links to their audio files on a website, for the public to see, saying "click here to download!" (With not so much as an click-through license.)

They are offering the files in what amounts to an opt-in, free-for-all network. When a file is requested, they give it. This isn't cybercrime, and it isn't misusing the offer of the file.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[ElectricOkra]

Until the courts rule definitively on whether or not a digital copy is covered under 'fair use', I don't see how the RIAA can sue someone for downloading anything. Granted, they are suing in civil, rather than criminal, court so they only need a "preponderance of evidence" when presenting a case, but they would still have to prove that, at some point, I hadn't paid for a copy of that song. Which is of course, something they cannot do. Sharing files is different story because you are making available copies of copyrighted material, which is illegal. Simply making or owning a copy is not, in and of itself, inherently illegal. Of course, this is all just window dressing around the fact that she was presented with a threat of a suit from a collection agency on behalf of the RIAA, thereby skipping the courts altogether.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[paragon_au]

Your agurment though isn't cute. Its just plain stupid. Its the same as saying as a defence "I just put the files on the internet. Told everyone where to get them. And allowed them to download from my server. I never actually gave them permission to download the files. So I didn't do anything wrong"

Re:Fined for downloading?

[odin53]

Your agurment though isn't cute. Its just plain stupid. Its the same as saying as a defence "I just put the files on the internet. Told everyone where to get them. And allowed them to download from my server. I never actually gave them permission to download the files. So I didn't do anything wrong"

This doesn't even begin to address the primary issue: whether the download was authorized or not. No matter what, the downloader did the copying, and the copyright holder has the right to control the copying. It's up to the downloader to argue that the download was in fact authorized, since certainly a holder like the RIAA would argue it wasn't. And it's really a factual issue, so it's not a "defense" for the RIAA to say "I just put the files on the internet. etc etc", it's just another piece of evidence a jury or judge would have to consider. If the downloader says it was in fact authorized because of the nature of the p2p system, etc. etc., then fine. But they'd have to argue that and provide evidence to support the argument, and like I said, it's not a slam dunk.

Another way to look at it is this: if you want to encourage people like Jack Valenti to support p2p systems and convince them that p2p systems have substantially non-infringing uses, you shouldn't say that these uses are automatically solely completely free -- essentially, that copyright holders who voluntarily put their works on p2p systems do so at their risk because they put their works up in the public domain. Copyright holders must be able to control their rights regardless of the medium. In other words, just because a copyright holder puts his stuff on a p2p system shouldn't mean that the holder automatically authorizes willy-nilly copying, and that courts should assume or infer this simply from the fact that the holder put the file on a p2p system. The worst-case result of such a ruling might be that the only successful (i.e., widely adopted) legal p2p systems would have onerous DRM-type restrictions that would make everything a lot worse than it already is.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[odin53]

If P2P networks, are, as they claim, only used to transfer illegal files anyway, the moment they "set up shop" on a P2P network, there's implied consent. They are advertising the presence of their files.

This is the same as the RIAA having links to their audio files on a website, for the public to see, saying "click here to download!" (With not so much as an click-through license.)

They are offering the files in what amounts to an opt-in, free-for-all network. When a file is requested, they give it. This isn't cybercrime, and it isn't misusing the offer of the file.

The "opt-in, free-for-all network" is exactly the nightmare that the RIAA is trying to paint for the public and for the courts. This is exactly WHY the RIAA has a leg to stand on. They would say, "even if there are theoretical noninfringing uses, for practical purposes, the current p2p systems are set up for infringing uses -- see, it's a free-for-all with users assuming they can download whatever they want. We put those files up for authorized users to download -- Tom, Dick and Harry are the authorized users -- but Sally the defendant here downloaded them too. And now she's saying that you, the court, should assume that we gave her permission! The systems don't give any control to the copyright holder. Perhaps they'd be OK if there was a sort of DRM mechanism that would allow a rights holder to more finely control the copying, but in its current state, the systems have to be stopped before any more damage is done."

I don't think that would be helpful to keeping p2p systems viable. It would also make DRM a lot worse than it already is.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[odin53]

It's a fair enough argument to make, but like my original point, it's not a slam dunk, and it's a fact that needs to be proven. Also, I'd bet that a similar situation has come up in the past, and I suspect that the copyright holder has won, depending on the nature of the copying. For just one example, if you're really only sampling ambient sounds for a Sounds of Central Park cd (which is another thing you'd have to prove), why do you have to be allowed to distribute the sounds that happened to capture an otherwise copyright-protected performance? Why can't you distribute samples of another day's sounds, without the performance, or sounds with performances that you were authorized to record?

Certainly it all depends on how much of the performance is recorded and distributed in the sample cd, whether you're doing it for commercial purposes, etc. Recognize this? it's an argument for fair use, which is an affirmative defense to copyright violations. In other words, in the situation you describe, the copyright holder would have the right to sue you, and you'd have to proffer the defense.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[swilver]

What if she was doing the exact same thing? ie, not participating in the transfer, just gathering statistics...

Re:Fined for downloading?

[mirqry]

But if she has a song on her computer, even if she isn't sharing it, and she does not have the original purchased copy, she is listening to a song that she knowingly did not purchase a license the listen to. I fully agree with you that the RIAA has to prove that she didn't pay for the song. But most people here are under the impression they shouldn't get in trouble for have 5,000 songs as long as they don't share them.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[ElectricOkra]

but without the ability to prove which ones are illegal, they shouldn't be able to accuse her of anything... your argument that she has 5,000 songs so it's obvious that she's involoved in illegal activity smacks of profiling... If I added up all of my vinyl, cassette and CD tracks, it would be quite a bit more than 5,000... if I transfered all of those to my HD, would I a be a criminal as well..?

Re:Fined for downloading?

[mirqry]

They didn't pick her name out of thin air. The only way they coudld know that she downloaded songs was for her to be connected to some kinda of p2p network that they were watching. And I think a large number of songs plus regularly connecting to a p2p network, possibly searching for song titles is the way they saw what she was atempting to download, is enough of a reasonable belief she may have songs that she doesn't own the license to.

Re:Fined for downloading?

[ElectricOkra]

#1 We don't know that they didn't pick her name out of thin air...

#2 Large number of songs plus regularly connecting to a p2p may raise suspicions, but it doesn't *prove* anything. That's why they are skipping the courts with this because they know they can't prove it. They are simply saying, "We think you're doing something so we are demanding money or we will make your life miserable."

#3 The point of all this is that the RIAA is demanding personal information about someone from an ISP without any proof of criminal conduct. They are acting with police powers here, whether or not she breached any copyright or not. That's scary...

Re:Fined for downloading?

[mirqry]

Neither one of us knows all of the facts to decide what is going on. My original reply was because the original poster sounded like he was under the impression that someone shouldn't be in trouble for downloading illegal material, only for sharing it.

Re:And when she's found guilty...

[geminidomino]

"Home address" is still personal information.

If they want to turn the info over to the cops because she's committing a crime, fine. That's their job.

*AA is not Law Enforcement.

Re:Denied

[Holi]

In doing this it would seem that ISP's would lose all hope of ever becoming Common Carriers instead of Enhanced Service Providers. They could at some later point be required to log their customers actions, something I am pretty sure they do not want to do.

Re:How many Slashdotters

[ackthpt]

...read that and thought "Oh, shit, hope my data wasn't on there"

I've been pissed for a while because Comcast (love em or hate em, they carry the networks I want on cable) can't service my area. Guess this would be a one of those moments where I'd be glad. As RIAA/MPAA go, they'd just have to find some match somewhere of anything you have on your site or downloaded which looks even remotely like a song or movie title and their Bucket o' Lawyers would rip off a form letter to Comcast advising them to shut you down.

let's hear it for 56K! poot!

Comcast is having a bunch of problems recently...

[antdude]

like its recent major DNS outages. And Comcast wants to buy Adelphia? I don't think Adelphia people will be happy with that if Comcast can't handle its own issues.

It's been said before, but...

[Valiss]

"I don't get it. We sue the fuck out of our customers and they STILL won't buy our products."

Re:It's been said before, but...

[01000011011101000111]

"When will you guys in marketing learn? Over here in R&D we've known for aaages that the only way to sell products is by locking them down with so much copy-protection they're unusable!"

Re:It's been said before, but...

[Short Circuit]

"Then you need to redefine who your 'customers' are."

Re:It's been said before, but...

[biffyboy]

So how come no one is actually taking responsibility for their pirating of music? The RIAA isnt necisarily going about this the right way, but alot of people seem quite able to justify copyright infringment when it suits them to do so. Downloading music without paying for it is illegal even if you intend to go buy the album if you like it.

Re:It's been said before, but...

[sconeu]

OK, has the RIAA been taking lessons from Darl, or vice versa?

Re:It's been said before, but...

[01000011011101000111]

I will pay for music downloaded illegally, when the record labels give me personal POBoxes for each artist so I can send them the money directly. I would not have used the CD's, so there's no manufacturing costs on my copy. I wouldn't listen to the MTV ad or the other blurb, so theres no advert costs - in fact, no expense to the record company at all besides the artists fees. I'll pay them direct ty. (Also, hopefully this way I can ensure Lennon's share of royalties for stuff like revolver would go to his kids, and not Yoko Ono - or indeed, M Jackson (He bought out a lot of the beatles copyright ages ago didn't he?))

Re:It's been said before, but...

[Short Circuit]

Your reply is offtopic...I didn't say anything that you refute, or even address. And I don't even disagree with everything you've said. But for those items I do disagree with...

First, you think nobody's taking resposibility? Look at all the people who've settled, rather than go to court over it. If paying excessive fees isn't taking responsibility, I don't know what is.

Second, Not all music is under licenses that make it illegal to download without paying. Take a look at the stuff on Ampcast, for example. Or stuff in the audio section of the Internet Archive. Or the stuff on Ourmedia.org. People have the right to make their own works available for legal free download--and some do.

Re:It's been said before, but...

[Valiss]

He bought out a lot of the beatles copyright ages ago didn't he?


Yes.

Re:It's been said before, but...

[biffyboy]

Haha sorry it was just a general thought that came up when I read your post. I understand that there is free music you can download, and thats cool. I just dont like how the RIAA's evilness justifies the fact that people still are infringing. As for the people who settle, do you think they would have stopped if they didnt get cought? What about the people who still download? Anyways like I said in my first post, I just find it interesting that alot of people will justify their illegal activities to make them sound not-so-illegal. I kept downloading after the lawsuits, (Im canadian, I Was told Im invincible and so I believed it). I dont know why I just realized that its a dumb fight, and if Im downloading illegally then I cant be in the right, no matter how wrong the other side is.

Re:It's been said before, but...

[Hatta]

if Im downloading illegally then I cant be in the right, no matter how wrong the other side is.

You are confusing legality and morality. There are plenty of perfectly moral things that have been prohibited by law. In these cases it is the law that is wrong and those who enforce it who are the criminals. Whether downloading music is one of those cases, is debatable, but just because something is illegal does not make it wrong.

Re:It's been said before, but...

[Travelsonic]

Downloading music without paying for it is illegal even if you intend to go buy the album if you like it.

Bullshit, if this is true, then why are sites like DMusic allowing artists to put up their music up for free then?

Seriously though, this is a phrase just asking for it. I mean, the actual issue is not whether payment or lack of makes downloading illegal, or whether or not the copyright status = copyrighted since indie artists for example allow downloads of their songs for free, but still copyright them for example, but the issue really is permissions. In my example the artist gave permission, in the case here that is doubtful, but it doesn't matter to your interpretation of the law since it would be illegal anyways!

Re:phew . .

[geminidomino]

First of all, Mr. *AA Shill, I don't download copyrighted material without permission. Secondly, I could give a fsck about the GPL (I release my work under a license that is essentially the BSD license with a clause that prevents GPL/CC-SA/etc-ing).

If comcast makes the report DIRECTLY to the authorities, and the COURTS notify the appropriate license holders, I have no problem. The problem is that this is a violation of DUE PROCESS. You know, that whole Constitution thing.

Re:oh man..

[ackthpt]

I hope she rapes the hell out of comcast financially for this one. Send a clear signal.

She'll get something, her lawyer will get a big chunk of it, then Comcast will pass it on to their subscribers.

You live in Disneyland or something?

Re:awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello Mr AC,

Could you please provide evidence that this woman committed copyright infringement.

Yours,
Another AC

RIAA might come in

[northcat]

If this case goes against Comcast, then other ISPs will get intimidated. That'll be bad for RIAA. So, maybe, RIAA might demand an unreasonably high amount from that woman (for downloading copyrighted music, RTFA) or sue her pants off, so that she can't go ahead with the comcast case. Maybe even ask her to "settle" so that they'll drop anything they have against here if she drops the comcast case.

Re:RIAA might come in

[Spad]

If she's smart then should the RIAA sue her directly she'd ask the judge to pospone the case pending the outcome of her legal action against Comcast.

Question is, if Comcast are ruled to be at fault and therefore illegally providing the information to the RIAA, does that then invalidate the information if used as evidence by the RIAA in a case against her?

Comcast cable service policy

[I_am_Rambi]

Here

Could have a good arguement that this includes cable internet. Looks like comcast (since not ordered by court) is in the wrong here.

Re:And when she's found guilty...

[Holi]

Actually your home address is usually very public information. If you own your property then that information is available to anyone from the counties records.

I think I have a new business model

[Darth Muffin]

Yee gads! I wonder if I can patent this as a business methodology?

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!

Re:I think I have a new business model

[LiquidCoooled]

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.

I think that kind of action would trigger other kinds of alarm bells.

Re:I think I have a new business model

[Feztaa]

preferably one with under-18 children

*whew*! As a father of 19 children, it's good to know that you won't be coming after me.

(I challenge you to find a household fitting step #2 that can prove they haven't downloaded anything copyrighted, ever)

You're right, the moment that 18th child is born, all downloading ceases.

Re:I think I have a new business model

[Flamsmark]

'I challenge you to find a household fitting step #2 that can prove they haven't downloaded anything copyrighted, ever' ever heard of presumption of innocence under the law? or fair use: much copyrighted material is d/l-able?

Re:I think I have a new business model

[dphapsu]

This already is a buisness model. 20 years ago my then wife developed a cocain addiction. By the time I found our we were in dept $50,000. Divorced her, settled with creditors. Took me 5 years to pay everything off. The point is for years after I had payed everyting collection agencies would still call me and want money. Talked to my lawyer and apparently some collection agencies randomly pick credit reports that show an outstanding dept and use that information to extort money from the poor slob. As we all know it takes years if ever for your credit report to clear even if you have paid/settled.

Poor Comcast? Poor Me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Comcast...

Here's a list of their terms. (I'd provide the text, but Comcast may revise this Acceptable Use Policy (the "Policy") from time to time without notice by posting a new version of this document on the Comcast Web site at http://www.comcast.net (or any successor URL(s)).

Re:oh man..

[Skye16]

And then some customers will get pissed off, tell Comcast to go fuck themselves, and their revenue decreases yet again. If this were to continue happening, their rates would be so high that people switch to _whatever_ else and they would go out of business OR stop being a bunch of pricks, suck up the loss and try not to do it again.

Then again, this one law suit probably isn't going to damage them enough to do any of that, but if more people ripped into them...maybe.

There must be more to this story...

[n6kuy]

How could they bill her for products or services she didn't obtain from them?

If I go to my local record store, and they give me free copies of albums they've illegally replicated, the RIAA is gonna bill ME?

They need to go after the illegal distributor, not the end user.

Re:There must be more to this story...

[01000011011101000111]

It's taken the government more than 50 years to come to that conclusion on drugs, and they're still not there yet - I'm not holding my breath for the *aa/gov't to start supporting users and hitting suppliers any time soon...

Re:There must be more to this story...

[mirqry]

If she is listening to music that she doesnt have a license to listen to, she shouldnt be charged for the license if she is caught?

Re:And when she's found guilty...

[geminidomino]

Public if you know the name. Otherwise, you have to go through the local government (county clerk, sheriff's office, etc, depending on your local setup).

Re:And when she's found guilty...

[geminidomino]

A Private citizen does not (legally) have the infringer's Name, Address, CC Number, SSN, etc... whereas it was given to Comcast with exception that it would not be abused. This is abuse.

expand your "music" tastes

[adbudha kusu]

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.

Re:expand your "music" tastes

[LesPaul75]

I'm wandering off-topic a bit, but...

I was just thinking about this the other day. I hate the RIAA more than most, for sure. But I also happen to like the music that's on the radio. So I'm stuck with a decision: 1) Buy the CDs of the music that I like, and watch like 99.999% of that money go to the RIAA, or 2) Download the music for free. Neither option is good, because the artists themselves don't get my money either way. So I thought about maybe downloading the music that I like, then sending a donation to the artist. But that's just a big hassle, and not many of the big-name artists bother to put a "click to donate" button on their pages. I don't want to jump through hoops every time I find a new song I like.

So, I'd like to boycott the RIAA. But the real problem with doing so finally dawned on me -- I don't know else what to listen to! I've been so brainwashed by just letting the radio tell me what to listen to that I'm trained to just like whatever's popular.

Ok, now, pull up a chair, because here comes the real epiphany. If you want to defeat the RIAA, you have to organize the effort. You can't just tell people, "Hey, don't listen to that RIAA Britney Spears crap." It won't work, because the RIAA's product is literally everywhere, constantly bombarding the air waves all over the world. It's just too easy to find something you like. What the anti-RIAA crowd needs is a single, well known, popular source where all the brainwashed zombies like myself can go and just zone out and listen to GOOD independent music. Give us the "Rick Dee's Weekly Top 40" of independent music. Give us the same catchy songs over and over and over again, 24/7. Seriously. If you can do that, I'll leave the RIAA and never look back. And so will lots of other people.

Re:expand your "music" tastes

[skingers6894]

Good points.

Go and have a look at emusic.com my latest favorites have come from there.

They will let you join up and get 50 free downloads. After that you can subscribe and download songs for about 25c each or less.

My latest favorite albums have come from there, including stuff from Nick Cave, John Cale, Jethro Tull, 20 minute loop and others - all DRM free.

Check out the editor picks and cross reference with reviews elsewhere on the net - you won't be disappointed. Plus the first 50 are free.

Re:expand your "music" tastes

[Travelsonic]

Dmusic.com is your friend. RIAA free music is abundant here as well as emusic.com.

Stay focused...

[Krypto420]

Don't forget the point here people.... I didn't read anything in the article about her getting off from the lawsuit with the RIAA. I think she has a right to sue Comcast for giving out her personal information to ANYONE, let alone someone that wants to use that information to sue her. While the article seems to focus on the fact that it was the RIAA, it could have been anyone/any company.

This is not intended to be flamebait, but I'm not sure that the RIAA is guilty of any wrong doing. They asked for her info and Comcast gave it up. While I don't how that will affect the case that the RIAA has against her, if the facts in the article are indeed true, it seems only fair that she receive some restitution from Comcast. If that ends up being the case and I were her, I would pay off the RIAA and end the ordeal. In the end, she will most likely come out ahead ($$) from this whole debacle.

Re:Stay focused...

[bbc]

"This is not intended to be flamebait, but I'm not sure that the RIAA is guilty of any wrong doing."

I think you mean: "This is not intended to be flamebait, but I'm not sure that the RIAA is guilty of doing anything illegal."

Re:Stay focused...

[Vip]

Isn't it that if you gain knowledge and/or evidence through illegal means (or means deemed illegal) then they cannot use that info against you?

So, should a judge decide that her info was given illegally, the RIAA will not be able to sue her.

Vip

Re:Grandparent is modded down as troll

[geminidomino]

Crap, I really should learn to quote what I'm replying to when responding to AC's.

Ok, honestly, I should really learn to stop responding to ACs at all.

Mea Culpa.

Re:Denied

[xkenny13]

Because illegal methods aren't justified by being used to combat illegality. The ends do not justify the means.

The question is whether an ISP releasing personal details in this context is illegal, but the answer to that isn't obvious.

It isn't? Every post, every Email, every crappy Photoshop job I create is by definition, copyrighted.

If I suspect you are downloading my copyrighted content, can I ping Comcast and get your personal information?

Re:Comcast is having a bunch of problems recently.

[WillAffleckUW]

so that's why I've been having problems recently ...

I'm not unhappy they're being sued.

From Comcast Service Depart:

[OldManCoyote]

I called the Comcast service department (1-800-Comcast) and ask about this story. They have denied ever hearing about it, but they did mention I could be put on a non disclose list (which I then added myself to). They are also sending me their contract and policy concerning disclosing my personal information to any outside 3rd parties. Lets all call and crack the whip!

Re:From Comcast Service Depart:

[tivoKlr]

I just called and asked to be placed on the 3rd party non-disclosure list, and asked for a paper copy of the information as well. Let's see what it turns out to be when it gets here...

Re:From Comcast Service Depart:

[Valiss]

I just called and they told me they have NO 3rd party non-disclosure list and acted as though I was insane. Any thoughts? Is there something else I should be asking for?

Re:From Comcast Service Depart:

[mikeb39]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on here... What's this non disclosure list? If you specificly ask for it you get to have your information protected? Wtf?

Re:From Comcast Service Depart:

[Admiral Ackbar 8]

I called and told the lady on the phone what site to look at for the story. She gave me legal's number: 886.281.2100. She also said something that was quite scary, she said that they "contracted" with that company (read: RIAA), and that the woman in question was doing something illegal (against that company). That is why they turned the information over. Cost be damned, Speakesy here I come.

Re:From Comcast Service Depart:

[justchris]

What you have to understand about Customer Service in any large corporation is that they're usually the last people to know what's going on. Because they actualy speak to customers, management has to make sure everything is properly worded before it goes out. Chances are no one in Customer Service will know anything about this until Monday, or if they here it from a caller or read it in the news. As an employee of Comcast, I can tell you, the privacy list that they are putting you on has nothing to do with 3rd parties. It means Comcast will not contact you with offers and will not forward offers from 3rd parties it partners with to you. Per company policy, Comcast does not sell any personal information to 3rd parties. They never say anything about giving it away though. And, of course, if they're subpoena'd by a court, no list they put you on is gonna make a bit of difference.

Re:Poor Comcast (Bamboozled!)

[Andr0s]

Wootness!

This pretty much clears the story... all I could say is, 'BAMBOOZLED!!'

On a completely off-note, I'm growing increasingly curious about a certain thing...

Does RIAA even bother with trying to find 'media pirates' anymore? Or do they just offer ISPs a headhunter commission? Is it a fixed fee, or a percentage of lawsuit fines? I have some 'friends' I could report!

Straight from their TOS...

[gosand]

It's the sound of a thousand TOS agreements being rewritten in every ISP/broadband provider across the country. "Well you agreed to it when you clicked "yes" on that 400k text file."

Directly from their website:

" Important Note: Comcast may revise this Acceptable Use Policy (the "Policy") from time to time without notice by posting a new version of this document on the Comcast Web site at http://www.comcast.net (or any successor URL(s)). All revised copies of the Policy are effective immediately upon posting. Accordingly, customers and users of the Comcast High-Speed Internet Service should regularly visit our web site and review this Policy to ensure that their activities conform to the most recent version. In the event of a conflict between any subscriber or customer agreement and this Policy, the terms of this Policy will govern. Questions regarding this Policy and complaints of violations of it by Comcast customers and users can be directed to http://online.comcast.net/contactus/ "

And this...

"Copyright Infringement Comcast is committed to complying with U.S. copyright and related laws, and requires all customers and users of the Service to comply with these laws. Accordingly, you may not store any material or content on, or disseminate any material or content over, the Service (or any part of the Service) in any manner that constitutes an infringement of third party intellectual property rights, including rights granted by U.S. copyright law. Owners of copyrighted works who believe that their rights under U.S. copyright law have been infringed may take advantage of certain provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (the "DMCA") to report alleged infringements. It is Comcast's policy in accordance with the DMCA and other applicable laws to reserve the right to terminate the Service provided to any customer or user who is either found to infringe third party copyright or other intellectual property rights, including repeat infringers, or who Comcast believes in its sole discretion is infringing these rights. Comcast may terminate the Service at any time with or without notice for any affected customer or user. Copyright owners may report alleged infringements of their works that are stored on the Service or the Personal Web Features by sending Comcast's authorized agent a notification of claimed infringement that satisfies the requirements of the DMCA. Upon Comcast's receipt of a satisfactory notice of claimed infringement for these works, Comcast will respond expeditiously to either directly or indirectly (i) remove the allegedly infringing work(s) stored on the Service or the Personal Web Features or (ii) disable access to the work(s). Comcast will also notify the affected customer or user of the Service of the removal or disabling of access to the work(s). If the affected customer or user believes in good faith that the allegedly infringing works have been removed or blocked by mistake or misidentification, then that person may send a counter notification to Comcast. Upon Comcast's receipt of a counter notification that satisfies the requirements of DMCA, Comcast will provide a copy of the counter notification to the person who sent the original notification of claimed infringement and will follow the DMCA's procedures with respect to a received counter notification. In all events, you expressly agree that Comcast will not be a party to any disputes or lawsuits regarding alleged copyright infringement."

However, nowhere does it say that they may give away your personal information. It just says that they can shut off your service. You can read the entire TOS here: http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[Mazem]

Upon Comcast's receipt of a satisfactory notice of claimed infringement for these works, Comcast will respond expeditiously to either directly or indirectly (i) remove the allegedly infringing work(s) stored on the Service or the Personal Web Features or (ii) disable access to the work(s). Comcast will also notify the affected customer or user of the Service of the removal or disabling of access to the work(s). If the affected customer or user believes in good faith that the allegedly infringing works have been removed or blocked by mistake or misidentification, then that person may send a counter notification to Comcast.

So basically Comcast has decided to treat its customers as guilty until proven innocent when it comes to compyright infringement.

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[Macadamizer]

So basically Comcast has decided to treat its customers as guilty until proven innocent when it comes to compyright infringement.

This is a requirement under the DMCA -- the ISP's HAVE to do this, or they lose their "safe harbor" and may themselves be sued for contributory and/or vicarious copyright infringement. As long as they follow these rules, they don't have to be worry about being sued for infringement themselves.

See 17 USC 512(c) for all of the gory details. 17 USC 512

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[v1]

It also says they will notify you of the alleged infringement, (to give you the opportunity to file the "counter notification") which apparently in this case they did not do. So Comcast is not following the provisions they agreed to in their own TOS.

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[Hatta]

so let me get this straight... in the USA it is perfectly legal to enforce a contract which states that one party to the contract has no rights whatever, and that the other party may alter the terms of the agreement as they see fit?

Oddly reminiscent of the USA's attitude to international treaties.. now that I come to think of it, why am I surprised?

I am altering our deal. Pray that I do not alter it further.

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[brianf711]

sorry login failed, didn't mean to post as AC.

I'm surprised no one has complained about this; it seems crazy:

" Important Note: Comcast may revise this Acceptable Use Policy (the "Policy") from time to time without notice by posting a new version of this document on the Comcast Web site at http://www.comcast.net (or any successor URL(s)). All revised copies of the Policy are effective immediately upon posting. Accordingly, customers and users of the Comcast High-Speed Internet Service should regularly visit our web site and review this Policy to ensure that their activities conform to the most recent version.

Basically, they can bury some document anywhere on the comcast.net (or "successor UrL") and change the terms at any time without notice and they are effective immediately. IANAL, but haven't we discussed EULAs before and their enforceability. Could these terms really be enforced if they are changed and violated?

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[brianf711]

As I read this, they only have to "treat its customers as guilty" to the extent required to block access to or otherwise remove the content in question.

(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.

I don't see how safeharbor is voided by refusing to give the information outside of the court as listed in 17 USC 512(c).

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[NormalVisual]

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm curious if they can unilaterally amend an existing contract like that. As I understand contracts, for a contract to be valid there has to be an exchange of value, and if an existing contract is changed to give value to one party at the expense of another, there has to be some kind of consideration (compensation) involved or else the agreement (or at least the added terms) could very well be found unenforceable. I could perhaps see them changing the terms and then saying that continued use of the service after the next billing cycle constitutes acceptance, but not just changing the terms whenever they feel like without any kind of real notice. A similar situation might be if a landlord were to try to raise the rent in the middle of a lease period instead of notifying the tenants and then raising the rent upon renewal of the lease.

Any lawyers on here that actually know about this stuff want to offer their take?

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[MrLint]

Comcast has dug themselves a hole here:

It is Comcast's policy in accordance with the DMCA and other applicable laws to reserve the right to terminate the Service provided to any customer or user who is either found to infringe third party copyright or other intellectual property rights, including repeat infringers, or who Comcast believes in its sole discretion is infringing these rights

So if they turned over info about this user without terminating service they arent following their own policies. It can then be argued that they may not be correctly following other policies and laws, like handing over customer information without a court order.

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[Splab]

I find this so baffling that they can say that. Here in Denmark you cant change the policy without proper notice, and the policy changes cant be applied untill after the current "term" (ie. if you pay per quarter it wont be applied untill after next quarter) - Ohh yeah, firms does try to fsck with their costumers, but we got our consumer watchdog "forbrugerrådet" to deal with that.

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[loraksus]

Then again, the "contract" that you have with a credit card company can be changed with only 14 days notice from them. Not only minor changes, but they could pretty much re-write it from the ground up and make it very customer hostile. There doesn't have to be a reason for it either, someone just needs to say "meh, lets fuck some of our customers."

You owed them 4 grand at 0% interest? In two weeks it could be 40%, and by some magic, it will not only apply to new purchases, etc, but on money that you've already borrowed. The nice new banruptcy bill that your whore government voted in allows them to act with impunity.

Contract of adhesion? Sure, you might be legally right, but can you afford the lawyers to prove it?

Re:Straight from their TOS...

[gosand]

That was the gp's point. Now Comcast will rewrite this so that it does say they may give away personal information.

And my point is - too late. They already gave out the personal information, and the TOS doesn't say that they can do that. Therefore, they deserve to have their asses handed to them in court.

Re:Seattle area people really care about privacy

[Punboy]

Ok, dont get a political flameware started. Quite frankly im pissed off with everything became a redstate bluestate thing. we're ALL americans, no matter what state we're from, and no matter our political affiliation. And where are the libertarian states?

Re:phew . .

[Gigs]

Except that the RIAA didn't contact the authorities, they contacted their Dept Collection Agency to EXTORT money from the accused. It is not the the ??AA's interest to put this case in criminal court. If they do and lose then they have established a precident which must be overcome on every trial after that one. Instead they threaten to sue you if you don't pay up. The difference is that in criminal court you get some level of councel for free. In Civil Court you are granted no such plesantries. It matters not if you are a pirate, you lose money either way.

Quite frankly, I don't understand why general /. population is so pro-copyright infringement when it comes to media, but god-forbid someone infringes on GPL and all hell breaks loose.

It has nothing to do with infringement, the market does not want to bear the outragous prices that the Record Industry wishes to maintain. And as is quite obvious it does not have to.

Re:How many Slashdotters

[Punboy]

Ya, Comcast won't service me either (not like that you pervs). Some stupid cable company i've never heard of owns the south end of where I live (Whidbey Island), and they don't do digital cable. Yes, this is offtopic, but I have a question... are you a whidbey islander? lol

Dear Comcast,

[futuresheep]

Regarding handing over customer information to collections agencies without due process or any proof of guilt; We will be cancelling your service and contacting Speakeasy for our broadband needs. While their service may be a bit more expensive, and their speeds a tad slower, their commitment to their customer needs and their customers privacy makes them a much more acceptable choice in my home.

Thank you and goodbye.

Re:Dear Comcast,

[deltatype0]

yeah that's my problem, comcast advertises a higher speed but i want to go with speakeasy for my new apartment. I take it that Speakeasy, even if it's slower is still the better idea?

Re:Dear Comcast,

[Legion303]

Speakeasy goes to 6Mbps down, at least in my area. I don't know what Clowncast has available. The difference in customer support alone should get you on Speakeasy.

Disclaimer: I don't work for either company.

Re:Dear Comcast,

[phillymjs]

MUCH better! Speakeasy doesn't constantly port-scan you to make sure that you aren't doing anything that they say you shouldn't do.

But they do perform some acceptable network policing-- they look for mailservers and perform open relay testing on them. It's rather infrequent, I notice it in my mailserver's logs once every few months or so.

My mailserver is locked down tight, so I don't know what they do if they find an open relay on one of their IPs-- but I would guess that they attempt to contact the subscriber about it.

When my servers have been spammed or probed by other Speakeasy customer IPs and reported it, the response by Customer Service has been lighning fast.

~Philly

Let's get together on this one everyone!

[ArcticCelt]

Excellent idea! Let's start somewhere.

I propose to write an email, fax or call to EFF first to ask them if they are willing to help the lady + create a found where we can donate. If the EFF is associated with the project, the people will probably be more willing to contribute. I'll be the first the give something. I have already started to write my letter.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco CA 94110-1914 USA

Phone: +1 415 436 9333
Fax: +1 415 436 9993

information@eff.org
EFF Contact

Re:phew . .

[geminidomino]

You do realize that your misguided tweak to the BSD prevents your stuff from being incorporated in solutions with real-BSD-licensed stuff.

First off, it's not misguided. I dislike the very concept of the GPL because it makes life difficult for the USERS. Don't beleive me? Then compile gaim with SSL on freeBSD without installing Mozilla. (Hint: gnuTLS doesn't work right on FreeBSD). This is my statement against it.

And secondly, you've never read my license, so you're talking out your ass when it comes to what it can and cannot be incorporated into. Of course, you've never seen any of my code either, so you're 0 for 3 on this one. Typical AC just typing to see your words on the screen, and not man enough to own up to them by signing in.

IHBT.

Re:oh man..

[Punboy]

Actually, what they're probably looking for is a court ruling granting her immunity from prosecution by the RIAA/MPAA dudes. Or at least to prevent the RIAA from using the information obtained from Comcast as evidence in court, a far more likely ruling.

Waive your rights...?

[irving47]

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...

Re:Waive your rights...?

[01000011011101000111]

If it's legal to waive your legal rights via a TOS I'm SOOOO Writing myself some crummy app tomorrow - TOS to include "We reserve the right to at any time withold any of your rights, entitlements and privilages whatsoever, and to remove at our convenience any of your assets. Further to this, we reserve the right to select your living arrangements, job and marital status as we see fit (especially at 3:34 am on a monday) Addendium - Should we wish you are legally obliged to comply with any orders we give you"... Now I've just gotta get Bush and to use it... >:) mwhahah! >:)

Re:Waive your rights...?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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?

Yes. If the people appearing in the video do not sign consent forms, you can not publish the parts of the video where they are indentifiable. That's the reason you occasionally see people with blurred out faces on those reality shows, those are the people the producers were unable to secure consent from.

Now, would simply making a copy of the survellience video and giving it to another party, like the RIAA, be enough to require consent? I do not know, but without thinking about it too deeply. I think it *ought* to require consent.

Re:phew . .

[geminidomino]

Considering that we are talking about "Due Process of LAW", show me where Congress granted Law Enforcement powers to the Asses of America.

Re:Poor Comcast? Poor Me!

[reezle]

Here's a nice place to ask their customer rep about your privacy: (Link to their onlinechat support)

Re:Denied

[Phil246]

In America, from the horror stories ive heard, it would seem people sue for the sake of it, regardless if they dont have a decent case - in the hope they`ll get an out of court settlement.
Now, i dont live there so i cant be sure, but ive a feeling thats how things are over there.
The rise of the 'compensation culture' deeply troubles me, with the frivolous lawsuits which are flying about, in the face of things such as common sense.

Re:Nice to have this on file:

[Anonymous Coward]

chat id : ce51a231-b623-4d9f-b571-edc082b8f760
Problem : Billing/General Inquiry

David > Thank you for contacting Comcast High Speed Internet Support. My name is Dave. How may I assist you with your billing issue today?

robert > Hi, I'm worried about what you might do with my billing information

robert > I was made aware you turned over records for Dawnell Leadbetter of Seattle, WA without her prior consent or notification to the RIAA

robert > I would like to know if your company is willing to turn over my information to anyone who asks you to.

robert > Hello?

David > No, we cannot give out account specific information unless they can verify the information that we require.

robert > Which information is that?

David > For security purposes I will need the following before I can provide any account specific information. This information includes the last 4 digits of the Primary Account owner's Social Security number/Security Code (If applicable), the full 16 Digit Account number or the exact amount of the most recent payment on the account.

David > That is the information that we request.

robert > OK, you will not divuldge my information unless they can provide proof they are me? Is that the gist of your statement?

David > No, that wouldn't be a gist, that would be an accurate statement.

robert > good enough... thank you

David > Customer has closed chat and left the room

David > Is there anything else that I can assist you with?

David > Thank you for choosing Comcast as you Internet Service Provider. If you have any more questions feel free to email us or you can chat again with one of our Online Customer Support Specialists 24 hour a day, 7 days a week at http://www.comcastsupport.com/sdcuser/asp/default. asp. Have a great evening.

David > Analyst has closed chat and left the room

The real story

[gorbachev]

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.

Re:The real story

[LionMage]

Yeah, the way the article reads, her information was handed over to the RIAA during a court case in another jurisdiction, and she was sent to collections without prior notice or trial. In fact, the collection agency used the threat of a law suit as leverage to extort money, so clearly there was never a court case.

I find it alarming that the RIAA can obtain information about a person in one jurisdiction when the person resides in an entirely different jurisdiction. I furthermore am alarmed that they can use this as grounds for extortion.

It seems to me that they (the RIAA) are required to actually tender a bill or invoice for the funds first, rather than sending the matter directly to a collection agency. The fact that a collection agency is involved can irreparably harm this woman's credit. But then, that's probably part of the plan.

Re:The real story

[DarkAce911]

If they call it an invoice and mail it to her, it is then mail fraud. She don't not owe them anything untill they get a judgement from the court. What they have been offering is a settlement in exchange for not sueing.

Re:phew . .

[nebaz]

He might have meant that it is about time that somebody sued Comcast for this info. It's kind of ambiguous.

Re:Denied

[Bullfish]

It's the way things are done in the US. Also, if it comes right down to it, the only way to truly strike back at a corporation that's wronged you is to hurt them financially.

Re:awesome

[Nerd Cooties]

Neither RIAA or a debt collection agency would be able to start such an investigation. They could request one from a proper agency, but as they are not law enforcement of any sort that kinda leaves them in the cold.

I call collusion

[murderlegendre]

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)

Comcast Cable internet service policy -- disclosur

[whoever57]

Here is the section on disclosure and it is pretty hard to see how this allows disclosure to the RIAA.

Debt Collection? Awesome!

[That's Unpossible!]

If I was downloading copyright protected music, I would much prefer to receive a notice from a debt collection agency, rather than be sued.

After all, with the debt collection notice, you can easily and legally get the to cease and decist by simply sending them a "Drop Dead Letter", certified/registered for delivery.

http://clarkhoward.com/topics/drop_dead_letter.h tm l

Once they receive this letter from you, they are no longer allowed to contact you, and the alleged "debt" will not show up on your credit report, either.

I have used this technique twice now on bogus debts. Once, I told WIRED magazine to stop my subscription, but they never did. They continued to mail me magazines, even after I received notices telling me if I didn't pay to re-subscribe for another year, they would cease sending the magazines. I thought, cool, I won't pay, and they will stop sending the mags. Then I got a letter from a debt collection agency for $11 (one year's subscription). Since you pay for magazine subscriptions in advance, I was amused at how WIRED had decided to operate. I sent the DDL, never heard back from the agency, and furthermore, stopped buying WIRED even on the newsstand.

Similar situation happened with Microsoft. I was subscribed to their technet monthly service where they send out CDs and information each month with updated software, beta software, etc. They asked me to re-subscribe for another year, I declined. Later I received a debt collection notice. DDL sent, seeya later.

Thank you Clark Howard!

Re:Debt Collection? Awesome!

[NaruVonWilkins]

Why won't the debt show up on your credit report?

Re:Debt Collection? Awesome!

[Immercenary_2000]

"Then I got a letter from a debt collection agency for $11" Something tells me they might be a little more persistant over $4500 than $11. I doubt this would work as well in this case

Re:Debt Collection? Awesome!

[Richard_at_work]

Yes, but that course of action doesnt negate the ability of the initiator (in this case the RIAA) from suing you. You can get the debt agency off your back by doing that, but you will probably just find yourself being served a court summons.

This is perfectly allowed under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Section 805 Part C which handles ceasing of communication allows for three exemptions :

(1) to advise the consumer that the debt collector's further efforts are being terminated;

(2) to notify the consumer that the debt collector or creditor may invoke specified remedies which are ordinarily invoked by such debt collector or creditor; or

(3) where applicable, to notify the consumer that the debt collector or creditor intends to invoke a specified remedy.

Under subsections 2 and 3 a specified remedy can be sueing you to recover the debt. In other words, that letter you link to is not a 'get out of jail free' card.

Re:Debt Collection? Awesome!

[That's Unpossible!]

Because it isn't related to a line of credit.

Re:Debt Collection? Awesome!

[That's Unpossible!]

Something tells me they might be a little more persistant over $4500 than $11. I doubt this would work as well in this case

Please read the drop dead letter. It specifically states, "Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, a federal law, you may not contact me further once I have notified you not to do so."

So yes, it would work just as well, since it would be illegal for them to continue to hound you over the debt once you have notified them to drop dead.

Re:Debt Collection? Awesome!

[Immercenary_2000]

Yes, but if you really do owe money to whoever sent the collections agency after you in the first place they can take you to court for it. What I was trying to say was that yes this would work if the amount was small. It's hardly worth their time to sue over $11. But when we start talking thousands of dollars it becomes more likely that whoever you owed would pursue a remedy by the court system. I doubt sending the letter would get you out of a legitimate debt which was big enough to be worth going to court over.

Re:Debt Collection? Awesome!

[NaruVonWilkins]

It's ridiculous to claim that something won't show up on your credit report just "because it isn't related to a line of credit". Someone had checks drawn off a fake account under my name, and after it took the collections agency two years to find me, I found them after seeing bounced check items on my credit report. Simply telling off a debt collector will not get you out of trouble - the burden of proof is on you, even if it only means filing an affidavit of forgery.

Re:Debt Collection? Awesome!

[UncleFluffy]

Once they receive this letter from you, they are no longer allowed to contact you, and the alleged "debt" will not show up on your credit report, either.

The last time a collection agency sent me a notice (wrongly, btw) my reply was along the lines of:

"Your client is in error and has provided you with incorrect information. If you would like my assistance in resolving the issue between yourselves and your client, my consulting rates are $250/hr with a minimum of 3 days per request answered.

Not surprisingly, I never heard from them again.

Mod up

[Baricom]

Yes, being alive would be most helpful :) Thanks for making me smile (smirk?).

What bothers me...

[ZenPirate]

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.

Re:What bothers me...

[Lumpy]

actually that is not suprising. you need to listen to the panels from the last hope conference specifically the security and intelligence expert from the government.

the FBI and NSA are bungling boobs who cant collect any useful data right now because of mismanagement and incompetent leadership. the field people are all doing the best they can with nothing because the "leaders" dont know anything or what to really do.

the fact that a company can gather information faster and better than the FBI and NSA is not suprising.

www.2600.com the conference is the last hope conference and look for the 5 part audio files on spying and intelligence.

Letter from Adelphia

[Anonymous Coward]

On Feb. 15th I recieved a letter from Adelphia Cable saying that MGM had complained about my use of their copyrighted material by using bit torrent .

On page 3 of their 7 page letter, they state:

8. Under what circumstances will you release my information?

Adelphia will only release your information to the copyright owner when legally required to do so by court order.

I decided it would be best to not respond and see what happens. Nothing so far.

They also said they had shut off my service until I contacted them, but two months later I'm still with service and haven't heard anything yet.

By the way, I've never seeded any torrents, so MGM must be going after "leeches" also.

Re:Letter from Adelphia

[kelnos]

By the way, I've never seeded any torrents, so MGM must be going after "leeches" also.

Nope. If you use BitTorrent at all, you're uploading. Granted, you didn't actually say you were downloading via BitTorrent, but I'm not sure why you'd mention it otherwise.

Re:Letter from Adelphia

[2ksilver]

No.

I have an option for leech only in g3torrent. It disables all uploads.

Yes, you can only download but not upload with bit torrent.

This ain't the first time

[PapalMonkey]

"...The Settlement Support Center, a group that works exclusively for the RIAA handling settlement negotiations. "

"...The RIAA referred all of the Drexel cases to the Settlement Support Center, a group of lawyers who specialize in settling."

"...recieved calls from the "RIAA Settlement Support Center". A disgusting attempt at making themselves sound like the nice-guys they are known to not be."

Re:phew . .

[JoshRosenbaum]

Typical AC just typing to see your words on the screen, and not man enough to own up to them by signing in.

Agreed. If I had mod points I'd mod you up, mostly for your Due Process comments. You're also entitled to your opinion of the GPL, and I congratulate you for standing up and saying something about it.

Basically I'm saying, +1 Insightful to you, and -1 Troll to AC.

Suspicion of Illegal acts

[nurb432]

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.

Re:Denied

[Arathrael]

Well, the question's not whether it should be illegal, it's whether it actually is illegal. Sadly, they're not the same thing. I offer the existance of lawyers as evidence.

Re:phew . .

[geminidomino]

You do realize that your misguided tweak to the BSD prevents your stuff from being incorporated in solutions with real-BSD-licensed stuff.

Again, that's not true. BSD license does not require anything of the code put under it.

PS Why do you have a hard-on for companies closing off your code but throw a hissy fit if someone GPL's it?

I don't throw a hissy fit. I forbid it. If you don't understand why, you've either never heard of Stallman or GNU, or you buy into their perverted concept of "freedom"

Re:phew . .

[JoshRosenbaum]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaa, I smell a bar brawl with ACs!! :)
-- Josh

What exactly can the RIAA even do anyways?

[saleenS281]

Even if they found out it was come from her IP... what proof do they have that "SHE" downloaded the stuff?

Let me make up a quick defense or two here...

"I had an open wireless access point, someone else must've been stealing my bandwidth."

"There's a trojan on my computer, I didn't download that stuff, I don't know how it got on there."

They didn't even seize her computer, they don't even have proof of it being on her hard drive, so how the hell can they make a claim against her?

If I leave my car in my driveway, and someone steals it and kills someone, since when am "I" the one who's charged with murder? This is news to me, and I think I need to leave the country if that's how it really works.

Or better yet, if someone cuts my brake lines, and I hit another car, that's "MY" fault? Apparently the RIAA decided there are no longer laws in this country... I'm pretty sure their are still one or two though, and that their case has about as good of a chance standing up in court as a piece of tissue paper has of replacing the hoover dam.

**Note I only feel confident posting this because I am *NOT* on comcast. I'm sure the RIAA would be sending me a bill/collection agency for "defamation of character" if I were.

Re:What exactly can the RIAA even do anyways?

[oneiron]

None of that matters... They're just trying to scare people into settlements. You don't need a solid case to do that. All you need are a few expensive lawyers...

Re:What exactly can the RIAA even do anyways?

[saleenS281]

I'd love that personally... I'm pretty sure you can counter-sue as a civil suit for frivelous lawsuits. IANAL, but I swear that that's possible. I wouldn't mind hitting the RIAA up for a couple mill for harassment, defamation of character, wasting my time, etc. etc.

Re:What exactly can the RIAA even do anyways?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

On the brakes. Yep, your fault (at least over here in the UK). The driver of the vehicle is responsible for it's roadworthiness even if it's a hire car or you're driving it away from it's MOT. Of course, you're unlikely to be charged if someone deliberately cut your brake lines to cause an accident as it wouldn't be in the public interest. (IANAL, of course)

Re:What exactly can the RIAA even do anyways?

[kelnos]

I'm relatively sure that's the case in the US as well. The car owner is responsible for the road-worthiness of the car. Granted, the person who cut the brake lines would be guilty of a crime, but the car owner could still be sued for negligence, IIRC.

Re:What exactly can the RIAA even do anyways?

[mirqry]

They want to scare her into settlement so they don't have to go through all that. The way to prove it is to file a lawsuit. The police will get a warrent to seize her computer. Then will will analize every cache and log they can find to see if she did the downloading or not. Its much easier to just get her to settle first.

Re:What exactly can the RIAA even do anyways?

[justchris]

You make an excellent point. And exactly how many of the cases the RIAA has brought have actually gone to court? I suspect the figure can be recorded in single digits.

Re:What exactly can the RIAA even do anyways?

[saleenS281]

I apologize, I should've been more specific. I was refering to say... if you hit and killed someone. I'm almost positive you would not be jailed for murder. IANAL though, and I could be wrong, perhaps that analogy sucked :>

Re:What exactly can the RIAA even do anyways?

[DeanFox]

This is the way it works, so go ahead and start making plans to leave. I am. I figure my retirement will stretch further in another country anyway. Somewhere like Belize. I can get a coastal villa for $50K and a full time maid and cook for $40 a month. I can hire a full time bartender who will make me drinks with little umbrellas in them for $25 a month. But I digress.

A man is arrested for drunk driving. He is booked and released on bond. Not having a ride home, at his request the police call his friend Joe, they explain the situation, and ask that he come get his friend. At 2am Joe gets out of bed, gets dressed and goes to pick up his friend. Rather than to take him home, at his friends request, Joe takes him back to his car. He drops him off and then goes home and back to bed. His friend gets back in his car, still under the influence, takes off and this time kills someone in a collision. Later that morning Joe is woken up by the police and arrested for vehicular manslaughter. He contributed by taking his friend to his car rather than home making him just as guilty. It's that law in where everybody involved is guilty of murder even if they didn't pull the trigger.

A mother has a 19 year old daughter living with her. The daughter has friends over and they're listening to music. It turns out they also had alcohol. The mother did not buy the alcohol, she didn't even know they had any. The mother goes upstairs to bed. Later, the friends leave, under the influence, and kill someone in an auto accident. The mother is arrested for vehicular manslaughter. Again, the contributory guilt. The mother asleep in bed is "just as guilty" as the drunk driver. The mother contributed by negligence not stopping them from drinking even though she didn't know they were.

In both these cases these "victims" of our laws were found innocent by a jury. But that's the point. The laws already exist in the U.S. to be arrested and considered guilty for anything, whether you did the crime of not. Property can be seized without trial in direct conflict with our Constitution and Bill of Rights. The only thing standing between you and prison are not the protections afforded by the Constitution or even common sense, it's 12 people in a jury box.

Ever do laundry and pour the bleach in without measuring? You're a felon. It is against federal law to use that product inconstant with it's product labeling. A felony punishable by many years in prison.

It's not laws that keep me free and when socialites values change with the wind, so does my freedoms from an oppressive government. The laws in the United States are not dissimilar to those in 1930's Germany. Our SS and take you from your home, imprison you without charges, without access to legal counsel, hold secret trials, convict and punish you in secret. All the time your family is filling out missing person's reports and stapling posters to telephone polls with your picture.

Our freedoms do not exist on paper. They only exist in the minds or our citizens.

Go ahead and plan on leaving if that's how you feel. But I'd ask that you stay only because I'd want you on my jury if I'm ever unfortunate enough to be caught up in one of our police squad raids. You and people like you are the only reason I'm free, not because of any law. Stay just long enough for me to build my retirement to Belize. At least there I can avoid trial with a payment to a judge that's half the cost of an attorney defending me here.

Re:phew . .

[cBrewer]

Since when was the RIAA the law?

Re:phew . .

[geminidomino]

I was responding to the AC. Stupid me forgot to quote him and he got modded down. =\

Where is the EFF!!111!!!!!1118

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the EFF? They need to be in on this.

Yeah, the EFF needs to stand up for our right to download these companies' movies, music, software, etc for free!

While we are at it, they also need to do more in terms of fighting for the spammer's right to free speech and to bypass our spam filters!

Re:Where is the EFF!!111!!!!!1118

[Weaselmancer]

I'm going to respond to you AC because you've illustrated my point the best.

This is not about what you download.

This is about your ISP divulging personal info about you and about what you do online.

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.

What she has a problem with (and she should) is her ISP giving her personal and private info to a non-legal body. Despite the noise they make, the RIAA is nothing more than a business consortium. they are not, repeat, not the cops.

To put it another way, what if Pepsico or Johnson & Johnson demanded her info? Still okay with that?

So rather than whine about the erosion of our rights and the ability of modern business to crush the individual - here we have an opportunity to set a precedent. So let's do exactly that. While we still can.

Re:Where is the EFF!!111!!!!!1118

[NormalVisual]

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.

Re:Where is the EFF!!111!!!!!1118

[Weaselmancer]

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.

That's a very good point and worth repeating. It'd be a total circus watching the debt agency trying to prove the debt, and next to impossible. Especially if the lady can prove a reasonable doubt, and that shouldn't be too hard to do.

Re:Denied

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the thing is, is this: If they don't have a decent case, it gets thrown out by the judge.

Which is why all those "crazy lawsuit" stories you hear from time to time don't contain much detail -- when you find out the old lady that won a lawsuit against McDonalds for their coffee being too hot had suffered third degree burns and required skin grafts to her lap, and that McDonalds had ignored many similar injuries before hers, and had refused flat-out to help with her medical bills or even just shell out the measly cash to replace their ancient coffee makers with newer, cooler ones... Well, suddenly her lawsuit doesn't seem too "crazy" or "frivolous" anymore, which defeats the purpose that the story-teller had in mind when he left out all those parts.

There's a strong anti-lawsuit faction in the U.S. which takes every opporunity to distort and magnify the "problem" in hopes of getting laws passed to eliminate all liability suits, so that large businesses can no longer be held accountable. This faction is mostly made up of said large businesses, and their flunkies in the media.

Incidentally, though McDonalds lost that suit, and with good reason, they refused to pay the penalty the court decided upon and offered her a much smaller payment. She accepted rather than go back to court -- a lawsuit wasn't even her first choice anyway.

Only in America

[geekee]

do you see guilty people sue when they get caught. Reminds me of when a burglar sues because he injured himself on your property.

The media just calls it downloading

[Cryofan]

IANAL, but AFAIK, no one has ever been sued for just downloading. I do not think they can sue you for just downloading. THey are suing for sharing files. But the media and RIAA/MPAA cooperate to make it sound like it was downloading. Well, OK, they lie. But what it is is either she was sharing a file over kazaa, and the RIAA searched for and find it and got her IP, or she downloaded a file from bittorrent, which supposedly automatically shares the file as you downloading it. RIAA/MPAA is supposedly getting the IP from the tracking software which tells you which IP are downloading/sharing. Then they can sue you that way.

But the media likes to call it downloading, when it is really uploading. THat dang liberal media. When the revolution comes, we need them all dangling from a rope, right?

Re:Denied

[Phil246]

in the UK, theres the "loser pays legal fees" thing, which also helps to discourage the frivilous lawsuit from even being filed in the first place.
Is there no such system in the US for this?

Re:phew . .

[01000011011101000111]

Since they got an abbreviation - Didn't you know?
All the following are law agencies: FBI CIA NSA RIAA MPAA MIT CIT MS SCO NRA OPEC & my personal favourite: BLT - gotta love teh taste of bacon in the morning!

Re:oh man..

[Skye16]

Why am I naive for completely disregarding about whether some members of our population are pissed at some woman? That happens every fucking day. It's life. It's not even worth mentioning.

The point is, though, if the prices become prohibitively expensive, that's it. Game over.

A Judge Dredd Moment...

[Foobar of Borg]

"Because illegal methods aren't justified by being used to combat illegality. The ends do not justify the means."

Unless you are the US Government, of course.

Or, to put it another way...

US Gov: "You can't judge me with the law! I am the Law!"

Very Suspect

[max born]

What interest would Comcast have in giving away personal customer info to a debt collector? It's bad publicity and what could Comcast possibly gain?

Verizon, for example, fought the RIAA even when they had court subpoenas, RIAA v Verizon. So I have trouble believing that Comcast is going to violate a user's privacy and perhaps drive customers to Verizon, a competitor. Something is not right here. Perhaps Comcast gave away this user's info by mistake?

Re:Very Suspect

[rfunches]

Verizon is a telecom company; Comcast is a massive media company. It's highly unlikely Verizon and the RIAA were buddies before RIAA v. Verizon, but considering that Comcast's digital cable service includes digital music channels, I'm willing to bet there's a fair amount of talk -- or money -- between these two entities.

Comcast can afford to lose customers because in reality they won't lose too many to this incident. Heck, most people will never hear about it because it'll never make the local news. Those that do won't drop Comcast because 1) too much of a hassle to switch providers, 2) assume they are safe because they engage in no illegal downloading (though this isn't always true -- my paper on RIAA v. Verizon details a defendant who was wrongfully sued), or 3) can't get comparable service in their area.

My paper on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and RIAA v. Verizon

Re:Denied

[xkenny13]

Well, the question's not whether it should be illegal, it's whether it actually is illegal. Sadly, they're not the same thing. I offer the existance of lawyers as evidence.

Since IANAL, and IANAJ, I don't have the right to make such a statement, for or against.

Personally, I hope that this case provides a proper legal precedent, such that my personal information cannot be handed out willy-nilly to anyone who *thinks* I might be infringing upon their rights.

Your rights end where mine begin. My right to privacy should at the very least be guarded by a proper court order.

Suing is easy. Winning is hard.

[wheelbarrow]

Remember that anyone can sue any person or business over anything they want. That's the easy part. Those of you crowing about justice being served should wait and see. Depending on the agreements that the subscriber signed when she joined the ISP, this case could be dismissed on Monday.

Re:awesome

[CatOne]

So you don't think the RIAA provides a list of IP addresses, files shared, and times those files were shared, to Comcast when they're looking for the subscriber info?

c'mon.

Mod parent UP

[CatOne]

Useful info on USC 512(c)

Re:Taking privacy seriously

[symbolic]

I was under impression that USA Courts took privacy issues quite seriously.

If that were true, neither Lexis Nexis nor Choicepoint would be in business. There would not only be serious constraints on the amounts and kinds of information that could be aggregated with respect to US Citizens, but also under what circumstances it could be used. None of that exists, and as long as Big Bu$ine$$ has its way, it never will.

Re:And when she's found guilty...

[bbc]

"And when she's found guilty of downloading music...."

Do you really believe they want to sue her? What if they lose?

And prosecution is completely out of the question, since president Bush has been found out to be a filthy pirate (RIAA's words, not mine). If they prosecute her, he must be prosecuted too.

Re:What _I_ would do in her situation

[CatOne]

So you'd say this in court and commit perjury?

Or you'd have your ass handed to you when you realize they're nailing her for SHARING the files, and not DOWNLOADING them, thereby competely obviating your obtuse statement?

Besides, you'd REALLY try and convince people that you are savvy enough to log on and grab a bunch of stuff via Bearshare or KazAA or BitTorrent, but couldn't figure out how to click "Import" in WMP when you put the CD in the computer? Come on.

Who tought you about right and wrong, anyway?

F*** Comcast

[anand78]

I hate this sh**t, someone else controlling every aspect of your life. This whole copyright thing and getting sued for listening to a song. I plan to stop my high speed internet the day adelphia bill says comcast with a letter attached to the cancellation saying that my info is not on sale.

Re:F*** Comcast

[anand78]

Thank You BigBoy , Unfortunately I am not a teenager and I guess spending 18 years of my life in Studies should be sufficient for reading slashdot.

Re:Denied

[elbenito69]

Yes, there is, but lawyers will often operate on a 'pro-bono' basis, which means that their fees are strictly a percentage of the settlement if you win.

Consequences or is there really a choice ...

[WillAffleckUW]

And then some customers will get pissed off, tell Comcast to go fuck themselves, and their revenue decreases yet again. If this were to continue happening, their rates would be so high that people switch to _whatever_ else and they would go out of business OR stop being a bunch of pricks, suck up the loss and try not to do it again.

Or we all go to free WiFi in the city of Seattle.

Starting to sound really nice, if you ask me.

Re:phew . .

[LtOcelot]

BSD license does not require anything of the code put under it.

Exactly. Since yours is more restrictive and does, your code can't be incorporated into a BSD-licensed project.

99% discount....

[seanvaandering]

Either this story has some facts wrong, or the RIAA offered a very steep discount to the collection agency.

Well, considering they could discount it up to 99% and still profit!

Passed on to Debt Agency == Automatic punishment

[Oori]

I just wanted to remind everyone that passing one's bill onto a debt collection agency is often tantamount to immediate punishment. Once the agency gets an unpaid bill, they often register the uncollected bill with the credit agencies. Once that happens, all sorts of strange things start happening -- your APRs on the credit cards go up, loans become more difficult to get, etc'.
This "negative information" having to do with your debt being assigned to an agency *stays* even after you had paid your bill. IN fact, it takes quite a bit of work to have them remove it for you. So even if the RIAA eventually turns out to have made a mistake, or the debt agency turns out to be wrong, simply starting the process corresponds to immediate punishment.

Re:phew . .

[nebaz]

Sorry, didn't see that.

Re:Denied

[Macadamizer]

in the UK, theres the "loser pays legal fees" thing, which also helps to discourage the frivilous lawsuit from even being filed in the first place.
Is there no such system in the US for this?

No, we don't have "loser pays" in the U.S. Someone who prevails in a lawsuit can sometimes have their legal fees paid by the loser, but usually that requires some seriously fraudulent (not simply bad, but highly illegal) activity on the part of the loser -- also, some specific statutes provide for essentially "loser pays," and such a clause can always be part of a contract neogitation. But there is no general concept of "loser pays" in the U.S.

OFF TOPIC: The general reasoning behind this is that there is a belief that if someone has to pay if they lose, they will be unlikely to bring even a righteous lawsuit, because, lets face it, you never know what it going to happen in court. If you are judgment proof, then that might not be a big deal. But if you are solid middle-class citizens, maybe have a house or some other assets built up, you may think twice about suing Mr. Big Business, even if you have a really strong case, because the of the downside risk -- potentially losing your house and other assets, etc. Even if you had only a 2% chance of losing, many people would choose not to sue rather than take a 2% chance of being financially ruined.

So, the feeling is, in order to allow free access to the courts for people of modest means, we have to put up with a certain amount of BS. The U.S. court system has developed procedures for summary judgments and motions to dismiss that hopefully will clear out the most serious abusers of the system before they get too far along in the system. It's a trade-off, and one you might not agree with, but that's the usual policy argument you see for why we don't switch to a loser-pays system.

Remember smartcards?

[SlickDonkey]

They probably got the idea from DirecTV, who assumed anyone who bought a smartcard programmer is stealing their service. "Pay us $3000 and we'll go away. Otherwise be prepared to go to court and we will suck your wallet dry, whether you win or not."

Re:phew . .

[geminidomino]

That would depend entirely on the restrictions.

Comcasts Terms of Servitude

[ShagratTheTitleless]

It seems it would be simpler for comcast to list the things you CAN DO with their service, like this:

Comcast acceptable use policy.

Section i) You may visit espn.com

End of terms.

Re:Nice to have this on file:

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, Dave didn't at all have an Indian accent. I'm actually quite suprised!

comcast to lose customers

[Teja]

I say that it won't be too long until comcast loses quite a few customers from this. Besides from what comcast just did, all I've been hearing recently from the blogosphere is how bad Comcast's service has been.

Re:Seattle area people really care about privacy

[wronski]

Ok, dont get a political flameware started. Quite frankly im pissed off with everything became a redstate bluestate thing. we're ALL americans, no matter what state we're from, and no matter our political affiliation. And where are the libertarian states?

No, we are not all american. Some of us are, like, from the rest of the world...

Re:phew . .

[westlake]

"Crimes" get reported to Law Enforcement. Contrary to what they, and apparently you, beleive, the Asses of America are NOT Law Enforcement agencies.

You get nowhere arguing that a crime against property cannot be reported to the property owner or his agent.

RIAA v. Verizon/Charter

[RotJ]

Comcast deserves to get sued for caving in to the RIAA. Both Verizon and Charter fought the DMCA subpoenas in court and won.

Re:Who tought you about right and wrong, anyway

[CatOne]

Typos happen, genius :-/

Re:phew . .

[OmgTEHMATRICKS]

What I'm saying is that it has taken long for someone to do SOMETHING - even if it is stupid. At least, you know, EVERYONE isn't sitting on their asses twiddling their thumbs.

It makes me sick that....

[Brad1138]

Comcast is the only broadband provider available to me. :(

Anonymous Internet

[ArticleI]

What would be good for consumer privacy would be an internet service where they can't pinpoint your physical location. Satellite internet connections have the potential to do this, but companies like Earthlink would not take advantage of it. The idea is you would buy the hardware and pay for the connectivity with "internet cards". It would be similar to the way pre-paid cellphones work except that instead of minutes you would pay for monthly access with them. With current satellite internet they can't find exactly where the hardware is but they can find out who pays the bills and that is where the RIAA/MPAA goons come knocking. Of course the proposed system has great potential for abuse and depends on the company not tracking where individual cards are sold, but it is still an interesting idea.

Re:Seattle area people really care about privacy

[Punboy]

good point...

hey, i have a headache, leave me alone :-p

Enter 1984

[yasuo.hiroshi]

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.

Me too

[ArchieBunker]

Let my wired subscription run out and then received a debt collection notice for $11. Called the 800 number and there was an option if you let your subscription lapse. Haven't heard anything since then. Sounds like some sort of scam to me. Send out fake debt letters and hope people will just pay the $11 instead of dealing with it. Fuck you wired.

Re:Denied

[zakezuke]

and had refused flat-out to help with her medical bills or even just shell out the measly cash to replace their ancient coffee makers with newer, cooler ones..

Actually, IIRC they had a policy of serving their coffee at above 180F, closer to 190F. Reality was they just set the thermostat as high as it could go before boiling. This allowed them to use cheaper beans and still get the flavor out so they say, and the coffee would still be hot after you took it to work. Reality was the coffee was burnt and you couldn't drink it for a good long hour without risking blisters in your mouth. It was in a way very thoughtful, but near as I'm aware, this was only documented in their operations manual and the customers were never told their coffee wasn't intended for drinking at the resturant. They would tell you after you burn your tounge, but not before. "Heh heh, someone else dumb enough to drink our coffee".

I wasn't a big soda fan, but after my experences with McDonalds coffee I never bought it again.

Re:phew . .

[bechthros]

Congress disagrees.

They passed a law in the 80's to specifically state that it was OK to make mixtapes for your friends. Their reasoning was that a) the person making the mixtape had paid for the music in the first place and b) cassettes weren't exact copies of the original, that people could make tapes for their friends. This law being passed was the only reason music-oriented casette recorders (as opposed to voice-oriented casette recorers) ever became legal to own in the US. For many years, they weren't - and I'm old enough to remember it.

So, Mr-know-it-all-AC, since I paid for my 300+ CD collection, and mp3's are lossy (read: not exact) copies, am I allowed to share them with 10 friends on the net? 20? How many friends am I allowed to have and make the equivalent of digital mixtapes for, of stuff I bought with my own money? Remember, mp3's are lossy compression and nowhere near as high quality as the original PCM streams. They're not exact copies. And "not exact copies" is exactly what Congress passed a LAW to protect our ability to make, and share with our friends.

And what started all the controversy, you ask? Funny thing - it was the fucking RIAA running around like fucking Chicken Little screaming that the fucking sky was falling and that they'd all be bankrupt in six days and all the recording artists would fucking starve and it would be the end of western fucking civilization! Sound just a little bit familiar?!

But gee, the RIAA is still around. In fact, now that I think about it, the RIAA made fucking SHIT TONS of cash off of selling cassettes - once they had been forced by the marketplace into accepting a new distribution mechanism.

I'm getting SO tired of repeating myself over and over and over because all you twenty-something self-righteous oh-look-I'm-a-good-corpofascist little twerps have absolutely ZERO sense of history!

Re:phew . .

[DarkAce911]

The lady has a case against the collections agency and the RIAA for volations of the Fair Debt collection act too. Debt collection is regulated somewhat.

The spammers are loving this

[geekee]

If she wins, it'll help spammers remain anonymous since ISPs can't hand over info without a court order.

This will be a lesson for Nobody

[serutan]

This case will never go to court. The best the woman might do is get a settlement from the RIAA, and a settlement with the big boys is like Fight Club.

The first rule of the settlement is:
You do not talk about the settlement.

The second rule of the settlement is:
You do NOT TALK about the SETTLEMENT.

While it might motivate others to sue, each brave soul will have to do it without knowing whether it will really be worth the time and effort until it's over, and the rest of us spectators will remain completely in the dark.

Semantics?

[tepples]

If person A recieves a patent, person A cannot be sued by person B because person B holds "prior art." Rather, person B can attempt to have the patent held by person A held invalid through a declaratory judgment.

In other words, B is suing A to get A's patent overturned, right?

Re:awesome

[Travelsonic]

To the majority of people here, copyright infringement is OK and even morally commendable.

Hellow A.C, do you have proof to back it up, or do you take any arguments against actions taken by the RIAA as enough reason to think this?

Re:Nice to have this on file:

[Anonymous Coward]

... the exact amount of the most recent payment on the account.

Wow, that keyspace is huge. The universe would die of heat death with countless light years between individual atoms before a third party would ever be able to guess how much you paid on your bill last month, unless perhaps they rooted through your garbage the previous month or happened to also be a Comcast customer.

Re:awesome

[Nazadus]

I don't think people think copyright infringement is OK, I think they think otherwise.

Think about it. The radio is free (well, the muzak), why shouldn't I just be able to download the music?

You and I both know the radio stations make money from the ads (and that's how the music is free) but for the most part, many people don't think about it (they might know it, but it just never connects).

I don't think music should be free, but I also think they charge an insane amount for most of it. What people fail to realise is how much our culture and society revovles around music. Driving home? Work? Programming? So it's not like the excuse of 'well, don't like the price? don't buy it!' will fly... if it's that damned easy, people will do it. Just becuase it's illegal doesn't mean it's immoral. Our society dictates what's immoral and whatnot. Apparantly they don't care.

The RIAA can do whatever they want. While I don't think they will die (not within the near future.. unless they do something horrendously stupid... like sue me! (hehe)) I think they will *NEVER* make the money they used to.

This happens when techology replaces some things... it sucks... it rules... get over it.
If I wanna surf the pirate seas, jump on the same band-wagon as the Microsoft pirates and cry me a river. Charge less. Yes, this means less profit... I don't care. Why should I care? You're out to screw me anyways, why should I care when I screw you? ohh wait, corporate america.

The street works both ways. We've been screwed for so long, but now they want to complain when people screw them? Cry me a fucking river. Call the kettle black. Whatever.

Where was I going with this argument? umm... apparantly no where...

Somethings fishy..

[acomj]

This is a patently BS law suit. Somethings not being explained. Here's why. At first the RIAA used the DMCA to get information from isps. No court, just a letter. Well a court ruled they can't do that anymore (I think some of the DMCA was struck down, lack of due process?).
Now the RIAA file lawsuits, send legal documents to isps to compell them to reveal information about customer at ip address x.x.x.x. ISPs don't want to be in contempt of court so they comply.

This behaviour would be very out of character.

I'm betting her kids have something to do with it...

But

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA can seemingly sue you without proof. The fact you cannot afford to pay a solicitor to defend yourself means they win? How's that?

If it happens to me, I will refuse to pay and countersue under criminal law (fraudulent misrepresentation should work) and if necessary get a jury appearance.

If the worth of the downloaded material is more than $5000 in the US it's a criminal case, yes? So why is it still a civil matter?

TOS?

[Flamsmark]

TOS and EULAs are very rarely accepted as a contract round here. many people break them, get sued and wind up winning: simply because the 'contracts' are ruled as unenforcable because the user never reads nor sees nor has a choice about them.

Re:Poor Comcast? Poor Me!

[Pofy]

>Comcast may revise this Acceptable Use Policy
>(the "Policy") from time to time without notice
>by posting a new version of this document on the
>Comcast Web site at http://www.comcast.net (or
>any successor URL(s)).

HOw can any such provisions really be ok and acceptable in a contract, especially in a consumer retaled situation?

It really mean that each and every customer each and every time before using the service really need to go visiti the site, read the whole thing trying to figure out any changes, and THEN start to use the servicee. Each and every time. On top of that, it basically mean they can do anything they want and the only possibility the customer has it basically to terminate the service. To me it almost seems like being hostage at their mercy.

Why not simply condense all those pages after pages with terms of use, policies and so on into a single line stating, "we can do whatever we want, we will post a notice a few seconds in advance, just accept it".

Re:Denied

[pod]

I can already see the bureaucracy sprouting up to manage this mess you propose.

1) You won't take someone to court if they cannot defend themselves (otherwise there is no justice)

Who decides when someone can't defend themselves? What does that mean anyways?

2) If you have an expensive lawyer, you have to pay for the defense of the other party

What is an expensive lawyer? I think all lawyers are expensive.

but the poorer party has incentive to ensure that their defense is cheap too.

Of course they do, they have no money, they're poor (duh!)

Easily Done

[IBitOBear]

The RIAA moves on the provider of illegal material and captures their server logs. There is proof-of-transfer of spesific content between parties who are not agents of the RIAA.

If they got those logs by any reasonably legal means (including legal arm-twisting and threatening) then they have evidence.

Find the server, compromise the server, find the client. Sue, threaten or extort the client. Profit!

Rich?

[MarkByers]

Rich? They aren't trying to make money as much money as possible off the individuals. They are trying to choose normal people - people that you can identify with. Then you will think that maybe next time it will be you.

As long as they can make these people miserable and force them to make a public statement about how they will never do it again, it doesn't matter how much money they make from it. The terror tactics will make them far more money as everyone else starts buying instead of pirating.

Re:Rich?

[penix1]

How is suing the end-users of their supposed product (music) going to endear those users into buying from them again? I argue that just the opposite is occuring and the RIAA will most likely blame that decline on more pirating. We all know they are full of shit when they claim "billions lost to pirating" and such.

B.

Re:Poor Comcast? Poor Me!

[noamsml]

from "prohibited uses":
access any other person's computer or computer system, software, or data without their knowledge and consent;

does that mean that I have to ask a site operator before downloading any files from his server (eg. browsing his site)?

Re:Poor Comcast? Poor Me!

[penix1]

"HOw can any such provisions really be ok and acceptable in a contract, especially in a consumer retaled situation?"

Because it is not a contract. It is a Policy. This is how it works; A law trumps a contract, a contract trumps a policy, a policy trumps an oral statement. The customers are held to their contract (that they signed when getting their service) and that trumps this policy. Now it depends if this clause is in the written contract but that can then be argued as uninforcable (law trumping contract) and the policy that was in place when the contract was signed will be the version used in court.

B.

They've already sued the dead...

[penix1]

Too late. They've already sued the dead..

http://www.betanews.com/article/RIAA_Sues_Deceased _Grandmother/1107532260

B.

Re:Poor Comcast? Poor Me!

[dorzak]

from "prohibited uses": access any other person's computer or computer system, software, or data without their knowledge and consent; does that mean that I have to ask a site operator before downloading any files from his server (eg. browsing his site)? If the site provides a link to download it from their own server publicly, they are giving consent for you to download it. If you are accessing a computer that is acting as an FTP server because of a trojan, that is a different matter. Also policy cuts the other way. If somebody's computer is attempting to propogate a virus to your system, its attempting to access your system without your consent.

Re:Poor Comcast? Poor Me!

[Frobnicator]

HOw can any such provisions really be ok and acceptable in a contract, especially in a consumer retaled situation?

Standard "IANAL but I work with them" disclaimers apply.

First, this is a policy and not a contract. If it were in a contract, they would have to include a way for the customer to escape. Probably in the form of: "We'll send an email to the address on file, which you agree to keep current. If you keep using the service after that date, we'll assume you agree. If you don't get the email message for whatever reason, it's not our fault, we sent it."

It does *NOT* mean, as you suggested, "we can change the entire meaning of this thing on a whim, do whatever we want, and there's nothing you can do about it."

It is normal legal boilerplate with a fairly simple meaning.

Generally speaking, that boilerplate lets them make small wording changes and minor meaning changes that don't change the overall spirit of the document.

To say they will "revise from time to time" is simply a standard legal expression saying they don't know how frequently they will update it. It is generally interpreted to mean a relatively long while, and as a stable thing. It also normally means that it will only be minor revisions. Revising their policy to do be the exact opposite of what it used to be is not really a revision, more of a replacement.

To say that they won't be notifying custmers is also a standard legal expression so they don't have to notify every customer, and possibly get acceptance from every customer, any time they modified their policies. Even if it was as simple as changing a typo, they'd have to notify their entire customer base, possibly through a paper mailing.

Major changes, or things that do affect the overall spirit of the document, will still generally need to be sent out to the customers unless they want to be sued.

frob

|2144

[xshariq]

To me, RIAA is losing
they now need all the help they can get
why are the ISPs supporting them?
from this article, i'm shocked, because I wouldn't think Comcast would do this
but it always depends what the RIAA was offering them: money, porn, paris hilton.
I don't know why someone would want to agree to a contract that says "Hey! We're going to give your info out!!!"


.....RIAA and their low blows.

OffTopic: LJ stuff in sig

[EvilStein]

Hrm, I read your article, and sadly, the links are either to deleted journals/posts or 403 Forbidden. :(

Re:OffTopic: LJ stuff in sig

[metamatic]

Wow, maybe the troll finally got banned. Small consolation...