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Court Allows Unmasking of P2P Downloaders
bricko writes "A federal appeals court says copyright-infringing downloaders can now be outed. If you use or have used P2P, this may interest you. From Wired: 'The RIAA detected what it claimed to be infringing activity on an IP address the university linked to the student. The unidentified student moved to quash a federal judge’s order that the university forward the student’s identity to the RIAA. The student asserted a First Amendment right of privacy on the Internet, in addition to a fair-use right to the six music tracks in question. The appeals court ruled in the RIAA’s favor (PDF) after balancing a constitutional right to remain anonymous against a copyright owner’s right to disclosure of the identity of a possible “trespasser of its intellectual property interest."'"
I'm not a confused hippie constitutional scholar but I did just take a political science class. The teacher talked about something called precedent and about unwritten or "unenumerated" rights. The 9th Amendment counsels against dismissing such rights. The actual right to privacy was handed down in Roe v. Wade when the supreme court ruled in the favor of Norma McCorvey saying she had a right to privacy in general, and a right to abortion more specifically. Of course the right to an abortion is not equal throughout the entire pregnancy term as I am sure you know.
So don't be so quick to toss away your unwritten rights, yes you do have them, and accept that the consitution is not the final paper on where your rights are. Start looking at court cases too.