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AT&T Won't Terminate User Service For RIAA Without a Court Order

Posted by Soulskill on from the somewhat-less-lame dept.

On Wednesday, we discussed news that AT&T had begun sending takedown notices to users whom the RIAA has accused of illegally downloading copyrighted works. Cox and Comcast are both cooperating with the RIAA in that regard as well. However, while Cox seems willing to shut off service in the case of repeat offenders, Comcast denied that it was considering a similar penalty, and AT&T said they'll flat out refuse to terminate service on the RIAA's word alone; it will take a court order. They seem satisfied with the effect letters have had on inhibiting such downloads: "'It's a standard part of everybody's terms of service,' [AT&T senior executive vice president Jim Cicconi] said. 'If somebody is engaging in illegal activity, it basically gives us the right to do it ... We're not a finder of fact and under no circumstances would we ever suspend or terminate service based on an allegation from a third party. We're just simply reminding people that they can't engage in illegal activity.' Cicconi said the company began testing this kind of 'forward noticing' late last year and even experimented with sending certified letters. Cicconi said the notices worked. The company saw very few repeat offenders."

16 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Good for AT&T! by javacowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As much as I despise some of AT&T's business practises, kudos to them for doing the right thing in this case. I have absolutely no problems with sending warnings to people and disconnecting them only if they're found guilty after a fair trail.

    The only thing I would change is giving them a dial-up speed (can check email and pay bills, but not pirate anything) internet connection if they're found guilty via a fair process. Internet access is indispensable for most people, and losing internet would be like losing phone service. The punishment should fit the transgression.

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    1. Re:Good for AT&T! by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know about anybody else, but if I get one of those letters from AT&T, I'm going to to wait around for them to terminate my service, I'll be terminating my service as soon as it arrives. Jerks. I can live without internet or live with using a smaller wireless network.

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      Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
    2. Re:Good for AT&T! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't know about anybody else, but if I get one of those letters from AT&T, I'm going to to wait around for them to terminate my service, I'll be terminating my service as soon as it arrives. Jerks. I can live without internet or live with using a smaller wireless network.

      Maybe YOU can but most people have gotten used to it. In many areas, it's indispensable as there are many people that can't pay all their bills from an ATM and don't have the time to go all the way across town to find an office to pay them.

      What about software developers? What would WE do without Internet?

    3. Re:Good for AT&T! by Chlorine+Trifluoride · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What about software developers? What would WE do without Internet?

      umm, i don't know, maybe develop software? moron.

      The point was that, without the Internet, the large scale collaberation typical of open-source projects would be mostly impossible.

    4. Re:Good for AT&T! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Companies can spout a lot of rubbish at you, but breaching (or even modifying) a legal contract with you on the basis of a third-party's hear-say isn't something that is going to stand up in a court of law. However, don't be surprised if, in the following years, your ISP's terms & conditions include clauses that allow them to use the RIAA or similar as someone with the say-so to terminate your contract, or similar. And once you sign that (or agree to those changes, even if that's just by failing to cancel after you were notified of them), THEN you have a lot bigger problems.

      Sadly, this is exactly what happened to me. I was disconnected from CableOne last year solely because of the word of MediaSentry. They gave me a number to call to reach them, but it always just went to a machine. I tried fighting it for as long as possible, but I develop web sites for a living, and can't really afford to not have internet access.

      I did drag their name through the mud viciously though, and told as many existing customers as I could what happened, and have convinced several people to switch to another service provider entirely.

    5. Re:Good for AT&T! by nine-times · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wasn't aware of that, but I think it agrees with my point: we don't take such actions lightly. Even when we take away someone's license, we do it because they have shown an inability to operate a car safely, and not because we don't like what they're using the roads for. The government doesn't say, "We think you're driving someplace in order to something that may be actionable in a court of law, so your driver's license is now suspended."

      Also, even when we take away someone's license, we don't try to prohibit them from making use of roads. We still allow them to travel on those roads, so long as someone else is driving. Or they can still ride a bike or something.

      So once you look at the Internet as communications infrastructure, suspending someone's account because of copyright infringement appears strange and worrisome. It's like suspending your electricity because you may be running an appliance that may infringe on someone's patent. Or suspending telephone service because you may be making slanderous claims over the phone.

    6. Re:Good for AT&T! by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ...share just $1,000 worth of software or music with your friends, and you're liable to face criminal charges. You could hit this threshold just by distributing a few copies of Adobe software, or just one copy of a high-end vertical market application, like specialized CAD/CAM software.

      Yes, if we go by value (as opposed to retail price), sharing a Vista ISO once will give you plenty of... credit, for lack of a better word.

      More seriously, how is this $1000 counted? Torrenting CS4 to the world? Or seeding a $10 movie until you reach a share ratio of 100.0?

    7. Re:Good for AT&T! by jc42 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The point was that, without the Internet, the large scale collaberation typical of open-source projects would be mostly impossible.

      And another point worth noting is that the Internet was mostly developed via a typical large-scale collaboration of open-source projects. Even in cases where the code wasn't legally open-source, it was fairly common for the code for the unix-based implementations being easily available to any developers who asked. And of course the Internet specs have always been online, downloadable instantly via FTP before we had browsers.

      I remember working on several projects that used Sun machines. When we had questions about details of the inner workings, Sun's staff would often respond by simply emailing us the kernel code (once they'd determined that we were C programmers). They seemed happy to answer any questions we had about it, though usually we figured it out ourselves once we had the code. I also recall several cases where we had the kernel code from multiple manufacturers, so that we could compare the implementations and report on any incompatibilities we found.

      The main practical difference with current systems is that we no longer need to ask for the code for linux or *BSD distros. It's all online, downloadable in a matter of seconds rather than the hours that asking via email could to take back then.

      OTOH, one of my first unix systems was Amdahl's, which ran on VM on an IBM mainframe. We didn't need to ask for the source, because it "wasn't an option". All the source was included on the install tapes, whether we wanted it or not. We actually found a bug within a week or so, in its dealings with the clock in our version of VM. I fixed it in an hour or so, and emailed the patch back to Amdahl. I got a nice letter thanking me for the bug fix, and saying that several of their QA people had validated my code, and I was now on their list of contributors. This was in late 1981, before anyone but a few thousand geeks had ever heard of the Internet (or ARPAnet), and it was pretty much a textbook case of why a sensible vendor might want open source software. (It also contained the first IP/UDP/TCP implementation we could find that ran on an IBM mainframe, so it could talk easily to the little unix boxes in our development lab. ;-)

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      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  2. A company with Balls....for once by Ozlanthos · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I like AT&Ts move here. While they could have been little wimps and acquiesced to the mafRIAA's demands they said,"Sorry, we here at AT&T care more about providing service to our customers than making sure Lars Ulrich and Madonna get every red cent they feel must be extorted from their fan-base". "Oh and by the way,(in the immortal words of Bender), "Bite my shiny metal ass"! Although... I am a bit discomfited with the idea that my traffic is being monitored so closely that the mafRIAA can tell that "I" downloaded "copyrighted works". That alone could be enough for some users to drop the service upon receiving such a notice. None the less, bravo AT&T. In a world of ever pussifying people, you've shown me that you still have a pair!

    -Oz

  3. Re:Cover your arse. by Chlorine+Trifluoride · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is sensible. One of those days, the "collaborating"* ISPs are gonna cut the wrong guy by mistake and will be slapped with a breach of contract suit with the usual astronomical claims...

    After all, we're all entitled to proper due process.

    * In the same negative sense as those french who collaborated with the nazis during WW-II.

    Breach of Contract? You mean that part of ISP contracts where they say that they can terminate your service for any reason?

  4. So rare by iYk6 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not sure they deserve kudos for this. Looks more like they simply don't want to axe a paying customer.

    In these days, common business sense, choosing not to mess with your own customers, is so rare that kudos may be called for.

  5. Comcast is happy to shut off your service by SuperBanana · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Comcast denied that it was considering a similar penalty,

    Maybe not for RIAA stuff, but for the first time in a DECADE (I'm including Mediaone, Roadrunner, AT&T, and Comcast- ie all the various incarnations of the same cable company here) they're suddenly strictly enforcing their policies regarding hosting services. If you have any incoming SMTP or WWW traffic, expect to be canned if you haven't been already...even if it is for personal use.

    It astounds me that people get bent out of shape about bittorrent throttling, but not terms of service that force you to be a "consumer" of the internet; the ToS specifically ban "web discussion forums" and internet email lists (I was running neither.)

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    Please help metamoderate.
  6. Re:Correlation, please? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How does PeerGuardian actually protect you? Its pretty easy for the RIAA to cycle adsl lines, oe heck even dialup accounts, on a monthly basis, even to the extent of renting an apartment with 5 phone lines and rotating the ISPs every other month - are PeerGuardian fast enough to catch those IP addresses before they are actively used by the RIAA? Is there any real way to actually accurately identify those IP addresses at all?

  7. This is how compaines use the TOS as a weapon ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If you look at the average TOS agreement, say from Comcast, you'll notice that it's almost impossible to be in agreement based on the standard that Comcast service customers must meet.

    This basically allows Comcast to have indiscriminate powers that can terminate customers at will with any "infraction" they deem violating the TOS with no recourse.

    High bandwidth customer? Like online Netflix and Hulu? Looks like Comcast needs to look at little closer at you traffic to so if there are any "violations".

    Didn't anyone learn anything from George Orwell's 1984?

  8. An MPAA warning worked for me by Fookin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm a TWC customer and came home one night to find my computers not able to get online. It was really weird, the cable modem got a DHCP address, gateway, DNS info, etc but I just couldn't get to any online locations. I called tech support and they said I had been "quarantined" for a Copyright violation notice they received from the MPAA / Viacom. Apparently they didn't like my sharing of a couple episodes of The Mentalist.

    That really pissed me off because at the time, I couldn't view episodes at the CBS website, they weren't on Hulu and I couldn't get them through iTunes. Also, there were no Season boxsets available for purchase. So if I couldn't watch it live or if the DVR didn't pick it up, I was out of luck.

    Tech support basically told me to stop doing what I was doing and there would be no problems going forward. So I did. Maybe I'm a coward, I dunno - but I just don't want to tempt a lawsuit.

    In all fairness, I think I got popped because I was using TPB. Maybe I should just stick with private trackers that use encryption or maybe that doesn't really matter and I'll get popped anyways. Still haven't decided what I'll do going forward ...

  9. Re:ATT FiOS came knocking last week by adolf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    On the plus side, U-Verse works very well with torrents.

    With Roadrunner, I had to do clever QoS traffic shaping stuff inside of a custom firmware on a WRT54G in order to keep torrents from swamping the connection with high latency.

    With U-Verse, I don't. I can just leave Azureus run wide-open, and it'll occupy the entire 6mbps/1mbps connection with hundreds of connections, while latency always stays low. My wife no longer complains about me downloading torrents while she plays WOW.

    It works so well that I've bypassed the fancy WRT54G altogether, since the supplied U-Verse 2-wire router seems to work quite well enough for everything I do without extra help. (It also includes a battery backup, so I can continue to use the laptop during a power outage.)

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    Kid-proof tablet..