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Judge: Schools Don't Have to Help Music Industry
peg0cjs writes "www.canoe.ca reports that a federal magistrate has ruled that two North Carolina universities do not have to reveal the identities of two students accused of sharing copyrighted music on the Internet. U.S. Magistrate Judge Russell A. Eliason ruled that the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University do not need to cooperate with the RIAA in identifying two students accused of music piracy. The two unnamed students, who go by the aliases "hulk" and "CadillacMan", allegedly used University computer systems to distribute copyrighted material. The lawyer for one student said, 'We would never condone music piracy. What we're interested in is the rights of the individual -- privacy rights being protected.'"
BS. You have a right to fair trial and a right to privicy at the very least.
Even in a civil case, you must have probable cause to go into someone's bank records, medical records, phone records, search someone's house.
The school said, we are going to require you to have some basis to invade these student's privacy -- nothing is wrong with that. If this is a criminal case, the police would have to get a warrant from a judge. Here in a civil case, the school is saying get a judge to order us to.
This test has already come up in many courts. The plaintiff (RIAA) has to show that there is a likelyhood that they would be successful, before unmasking these people.
This comes from many cases where employees or investors have commented about companies and the company files suit only to unmask the people, then drop the suit. One of the early decisions was released in 2000.
Fight Spammers!
There is no such thing as a 'criminal' lawsuit. Filing suit implies a civil action (regardless of how uncivil it might get). For criminal action, one needs to file a criminal complain with the appropriate LE agency (which is then investigated, and if appropriate, charges filed by the DA)
Way to pass 100 miles from movie quotes, captain clueless!
(i.e.: the quote was from Spaceballs)
The issue here is which system is easier to abuse. The schools are arguing that they shouldn't be required to turn over info unless a subpoena is issued. And frankly, a judge will issue a subpoena/warrant to track down kiddie porn ring and such pretty quickly. The main issue currently is that the RIAA is trying to bypass the subpoena route and go directly to demanding information.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
All of the RIAA suits have been civil suits. That's the only kind of suit that the RIAA can file.
There's no such thing as a "criminal suit".
If you think that a subpoena is invalid, you can challenge it and ask the court for a protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c). That's what the attorneys for the students/universities in this case appear to have successfully done.
Sorry, it did appear I made a mistake in confusing subpoena with a warrant. Yes, they did obtained a subpoena. However, a subpoena merely requires the entity to show up in court, not force them to divulge information (in Doctor/Patient situation, a doctor is legally binding NOT to divulge information). In another word, unless the court issue a court order to force them to divulge information, an entity could refuse to (I think that falls under the Fifth amendment).
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Here's a page describing the type of Subpoena being used by the RIAA:
Subpoena Defense Alliance
As an employee of an ISP whos works with this a bit indirectly, we have a very simple policy. If you do not have a court order or a Subpeona you get nothing. I would expect that to be standard practice anywhere, otherwise you run into a slippery slope of who exactly you give information to and who you don't. Then eventually you get sued, either because you discriminated against someone and don't give information to them, or one of your customers sues because you release their information. Not a good place to be.
Copyright infringement is only a criminal offense if it is done for profit, or the work which is copied has a retail value over $1,000.
Law enforcement does not investigate civil cases.
So, it's more like:
1. The RIAA suspects someone has infringed on their IP and files a John Doe lawsuit in federal court.
2. The RIAA has to figure out who this person is before they can go much further in court.
3. The RIAA requests the court to issue a subpoena on the ISP to identify the infringer pursuant to 17 USC 512(h).
4. The ISP responds to the subpoena, and the RIAA now knows who the infringer is.
5. The RIAA amends their complaint to include the infringer as the defendant.
6. The lawsuit proceeds.
None of this has anything to do with warrants or the criminal system.
What?
Actually if they release information to the police they are in violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). FERPA lists exactly to whom information may be given, and the courts *are* on the list, and the police are *not*. So even the police would need a court warrent to protect the University from a Federal prosecutor.
Here in Sweden they do, sort of.
:)
We have a law which protects how personal information like name, address, and so on should be handled on the Internet and after a much noticed raid of the ISP Bahnhof the swedish anti piracy agency APB got much criticism. Among other things it was said that an IP-address could actually be considered personal information, which makes the PUL (PersonUppgiftsLagen, Personal Information Law) kick in. Which for instance makes it illegal to spread that information in whatever way you feel for without permission from the person it matters. And also we have a law to protect someones privacy called Sekretesslagen.
Anyway, it all ends up in that for a small crime (which "regular" fileshareing seems to belong to) the ISP aren't allowed to share the name and other things with APB. If the crime is considered large the Police could probably get the information, but anyway.
Also APB have sent out a large amount of letters to scare people who uses common P2P programs, they haven't done that directly thought, they have given the IP-address to the ISP which have forwarded the message to the costumer. However noone I know using the ISP Bredbandsbolaget have gotten any mail/letters, and it's said Labs2 doesn't send out any either, because they don't care about what the private APB wants. Labs2 have also said they have gone one step longer only logging what is required by law and stop logging the rest to protect the privacy of their users.
More information can be found at:
http://www.piratbyran.org/
APBs webpage http://www.antipiratbyran.com/ is down since they got hacked.
Sorry for my bad english