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Judge Allows Subpoenas For Internet Users
crimeandpunishment writes "A federal judge has ruled that the company holding a movie copyright can subpoena the names of people who are accused of illegally downloading and distributing the film. The judge ruled that courts have maintained that once people convey subscriber information to their Internet service providers, they no longer have an expectation of privacy."
... being an anonymous coward is the only way to protect my privacy?
Am I glad that my ISP account is registered to my cat.
Not sure if I agree with this or not. Subpoena's for information are generally thought to override any concern aside from providing the information requested (or, if an order to appear in court, than appearing in court). As a matter of privacy-rights, I think this judge is off his/her rocker. Seriously.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
It's amazing how prescient George Orwell was. His timing was off, but his prediction of a surveillance society police state was right on the money.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If you can have no expectation of privacy when you send information to your ISP, then use a fucking VPN, proxy, etc.
Sued for watching a Uwe Boll movie. My god, haven't they suffered enough?
Er... how exactly do you get an internet connection from an ISP without giving them any subscriber information?
Is there such a thing as an anonymous ISP subscription?
That isn't really a reason. That's just, "There's no expectation of privacy because I said so." That's like saying you have no expectation of privacy in your home as soon as you are granted a mortgage.
So... I convey my subscriber information to the Phone company... do I lose my expectation of privacy for making phone calls?
If you can't run your own internet service, and there is no anonymous internet service offerings, then basically they can always get your information through subpoena. But, I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing, it's not like you can buy a house and live there "anonymously". If you committed a crime, they'd be able to subpoena you. Of course, "crime" is subjective, I guess that's the real worry..
Don't download movies without paying for them?
Yes, yes, I know, there are far broader implications of the loss of privacy on the interwebs, and so forth.
However, my point still stands. Don't download movies you don't have permission to and this case never would have come up in this manner.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
And Mr/s Federal Judge might be enjoying a nice chewy steak later on, perhaps even some lobster if they feel like it.
Don't go down this road.
It leads nowhere.
From 1797 to date there have been only fifteen impeachments of a federal judge.
Ten ended in removal or resignation, five in acquittal.
There is only one impeachment trial pending, that of Judge Thomas Porteous of Louisiana. If it goes to trial, it will be the first since that of Bill Clinton in 1998.
As of January 2009, a total of 3,168 individuals had been appointed to federal judgeships, including 2,645 district court judges, 687 courts of appeals judges, 50 judges to the now-extinct circuit courts, and the 9 Supreme Court justices. This adds up to 3,492 total appointments United States federal judge
When this happened to US Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork the politicians were so outraged they created the Video_Privacy_Protection_Act. After all it's unfair to pry into a persons privacy, like what movies they watch. That's the principal right? Or is it all different if it's "pirates" on the "internets"?
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
I have no problem with getting anonymous access. The first step is to search for the SSID "linksys"....
Of course, the judge probably never bothered to consider the fact that the studio in question played the exact same recording industry end-run around legal procedures by first suing a bunch of "John Does", subpoenaing the ISP for their names and numbers, then dropping the case without prejudice and suing the individual "John Does" using their real names-- a clear misuse of the courts that wastes time and resources, but thus far unchallenged and thereby silently encouraged, to my recollection. The judge also probably never bothered to consider that the names obtained in this fashion are notoriously unreliable, especially considering dynamic address allocation and the widespread use of wireless networks and the poor access security thereof.
No, the judge decided that this was permissible either because he (she?) believes that kids downloading movies online is a grave affront to justice akin to mass looting, or that the arguments that this judge can consider were filtered by a overly narrow consideration of the case. While young kids and their families are squeezed for millions of dollars (often sent straight to the media industry's legal counsels), the bootleg industry in Asia makes off with billions of dollars' worth of undeserved revenue.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
you call out the op for being too literal in their reading of the title, but then go on to rant about people not being literal enough in their interpretations of the rest of the book.
sum.zero
Since I am a registered voter, are my privacy rights, null and void, anytime, anywhere?
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
And just how do companies know where to send the monthly bills???? The judge is a moron. When i give my address to an ISP its for billing and maintenance ONLY. I don't expect the company to give,sell my name address its not there to give,sell. Thats how i see it but since when does what we say mean anything anymore?? And since when do lawyers and judges live the life's of normal citizens??
Jack of all trades,master of none
Only if you suck wifi off your neighbors or the local starbucks.
This precedent is really scary, if taken to its extreme if you conduct ANY business you have fortified your rights to privacy to the government and any other company that just happens to feel like getting your data.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I guess that judge would consider renting and leasing to also have no expectation of privacy. So anybody that's renting or leasing something, especially a home or car, is screwed. Heck, even having cable tv would make your entire viewing habits obtainable with that his interpretation.
IMO the judge is an idiot. To have ANY paid for service, you have to provide that information to the provider. In no way does providing information necessary to the provider a waving of rights to privacy other than the minor level done with regards to the information the provider needs, and then, only with regards to the provider.
Sorry, but I think we need to get rid of a lot of these judges that would rather screw the public than to be fair and just. I know in some places you can vote them out, and others, it's a till they die/retire thing. Are there any other means like yelling at politicians until they do something? (Maybe letting the individual judges know how you disagree with their B.S. might help, but I doubt those types would give a rodents donkey about the public and what it/they think.)
Three points:
First, I find it interesting, to say the least, that the plaintiff in this case isn't Disney, Columbia, 20th Century Fox, etc., but "Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteiligungs Gmbh & Co KG" a crapware movie distributor so obscure that Googling seems to 95% turn up links for this lawsuit. Wearing a tin foil cap, one could almost think they were acting as a front for the MAFIAA, much in the way that SCO was to some degree a front for Microsoft in its anti-Linux crusade. In the end, as we in the USA further lose our rights, the major studios will shrug and say, "It wasn't us, blame the Germans..."
Second point is that there seems to be a conflation of the concepts "Privacy" and "anonymity" not only in this thread but in the original legal documents.
Privacy = You may know who I am, but you don't know what I'm up to.
Anonymity = You may know what I'm up to, but you don't know who I am.
They're complementary terms, and both important rights, but for accuracy's sake we should be clear that, since the deed (file-sharing) is already known, just not the perpetrators, this is primarily a blow to anonymity.
Alternatively, given that it is accepted legal practice to refer to internet anonymity as "privacy of subscriber information," one can think of anonymity as a subset of privacy, "privacy of subscriber information" being one tine along with "privacy of home", "privacy of beliefs", "privacy of association," etc. Even so, treating this ruling as a generalized blow to privacy to some extent muddies and obscures what's going on, particularly the salient issue at hand: Should we be entitled to an expectation of anonymity/"privacy of subscriber information" on the internet?
Third, probably mentioned elsewhere by now, but here's the ruling. In point of fact, it's a mixed bag. While denying anonymity, it also says that jurisdiction may be a real problem for the plaintiffs.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
But what if I own a copy of said movie and I can't find it in my house so I download it instead?
The old quote "possession is 9/10ths of the law" comes to mind. In most cases if you don't have it, you don't own it. Just because you lost something doesn't entitle you to any further property or license rights. That's your problem. Keep better track of your possessions or insure them for replacement value.
Translation: One you are born and do ANYTHING to interfere with the United Corporations of Amerika you have no expectation of privacy.
Bollocks! By analogy, does this mean that if my name is in the phonebook, I no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy in my phone calls? Does this mean that if I give the utility company my name, they no longer have to ring the doorbell to read an indoor meter, or they can be granted a warrant to pick the lock of my backyard gate?
On the heels of the "first sale" ruling, I think it's time to donate to the EFF again. The courts have gone nuts, and I am sickened by what American business interests are willing to ask of the courts, if their slimy counsel can justify it to a judge. It's disgusting.
This cannot be tolerated. Not to catch a bunch of idiots watching screen-cam bootlegs. I'd sooner outlaw the entire entertainment industry than suffer this level of invasive surrender of basic rights. We can go back to making hand shadows for each other and playing Parcheesi as far as I'm concerned.
I hope to get traction for bills which clarify that just because the "Interwebs" are involved doesn't mean we've hit the reset button on basic privacy rights, since it's clear the courts are unable to understand that the basic precedents set in telcom bills apply.
--
Toro
The Big Lie that this Foolish Judge bought into is that the law firm didn't know where to sue until they got personally identifying information - after which they will dismiss the suit anyway. If the law firm did their due diligence with reverse DNS look-ups of IP addresses then they'd know the likely district of every IP on their list and be able to file their suit much closer to the actual user as they should be required to do. But hey, that's too much work - even though lawyers are supposed to do this work before filing lawsuits.
I am left to wonder if a successful challenge could be based on the fact that they sued in the wrong jurisdiction and that they could have determined the proper jurisdiction with little effort (for any single IP) on their part, and this denies me my fair opportunity to challenge their subpoena at this stage of the process, therefore I must be severed from this joint suit. Lawyers anybody?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You're at a membership-only swimming pool at 3 pm on the 11th. There are four other people at the pool. Your wallet is stolen. You report it to the police and cancel your credit cards. End of story. If you go to the trouble of filing a lawsuit then you must be a lawyer. Bet the next step is to sue the now identified John Doe for $23B in lost time, pain and suffering. You found your wallet in the car by this time, but the suit is already filled, so might as well cash in. The person settles and you have $8k that you didn't earn. Yay legal system.
Reading 1984 and Animal Farm can be misleading if you don't understand that Orwell was, himself, a socialist. Read, for instance, Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's account of his time as a volunteer in a revolutionary socialist militia in Spain, and the way that they were attacked by the Communist Party.
Courts have held that Internet subscribers do not have an expectation of privacy once they convey subscriber information to their Internet service providers, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled.
If all it takes is to give up your name and address, then the government can read your mail, eh? That is how you get mail - by conveying your "subscriber information".
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
anonymity != privacy
Read it yourself before you leap to judgment. It's actually pretty easy to grok, as these things go.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Your personal information is not "private." Your ISP can easily relate your IP address back to your personal information, and they will happily happily do so and then release the information to comply with a subpoena.
I don't know enough about Tor to say whether it might help to conceal your identity from other nodes on the internet... but if it does, that might be enough to avoid this kind of problem.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
" once people convey subscriber information to their Internet service providers, they no longer have an expectation of privacy"
" once people convey medical information to their health care providers, they no longer have an expectation of privacy"
" once people convey purchase information to their credit card company, they no longer have an expectation of privacy"
" once people convey voice data to their telephone company, they no longer have an expectation of privacy"
Judges are people. Therefore, any judge with an Internet connection no longer has any expectation of privacy. Got that, folks?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm assuming there's some legal definition for "expectation" that, in traditional legal form, has no bearing on what the word means to normal humans?
Otherwise, it would seem there are two pretty easy outs:
1) Anyone who uses file sharing networks sends their ISP a letter saying, "I expect you to maintain my privacy." Short of the ISP writing back to them and saying, "no," they now have an established expectation.
2) ISPs who don't want to carry the costs of media industry fishing trips put in their sales blurb, "We maintain your privacy." Now users of those ISPs have an expectation of privacy.
In normal English, either case would establish an expectation amongst users for their privacy to be maintained. That courts may have [illogically] ruled users of general ISPs somehow don't have that expectation but that doesn't matter as ISPs/users would have now established and clarified a superceding expectation.
Of course, like I said, legal definitions rarely match common sense or actual English. ;)
Meh. -- from the i2P2 FAQ: "Like Tor, I2P does not magically encrypt the Internet. You are vulnerable to snooping by the outproxy operator. The Tor FAQ does a good job of explaining this. There is no HTTPS outproxy in I2P, and you cannot hide your traffic from an HTTP outproxy operator. In addition, you may be vulnerable to collusion between the outproxy operator and operators of other I2P services, if you use the same tunnels ("shared clients")."
Mod Me Up. You'll make a grown man cry.
IANAL
If you read the ruling, the judge said that:
a) Of the people who filed to squash the subpoena, 3 of the 4 people actually revealed the pertinent information (name, address etc) as part of their filings
b) That the subpoena was for the ISP to reveal name and address
c) That fulfilling the subpoena was not burdensome
d) That the time and place to defend against the accusation would be after the plaintiff actually filed to litigate against individuals
Sounds to me like at this point in the process, it's a solid ruling on the merits. Of course, once the plaintiff refiles against an individual, they can respond to the accusation with (in roughly this order):
* this court doesn't have jurisdiction
* you don't have standing to sue me in the US
* you can't prove (on balance of probabilities) it was my IP address at the time without getting the ISP to reveal my traffic through them
* you can't prove (on balance of probabilities) that my equipment wasn't a) hacked or b) setup in accordance with the ISPs instructions so any possible downloading was by intrusion on their equipment (ie, it's their fault)
* If it was on my IP, you can't prove which individual was connected to that IP at the time (wifi etc)
* if I did download it, you can't prove I infringed your copyright (is downloading an infringement)
* If I infringed your copyright, you can't prove there was any financial loss
* If there was financial loss, it was minimal
* If it was minimal, then the case should never have been brought at this level and it should be refiled in small claims (or equivalent)
You're description of debt is incredibly small minded. Ever heard the expression: "If you owe the bank $100, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank $100,000,000, you own the bank."? It's essentially true. Right now and in the mid-term, we have China over a barrel because of how much we owe them, in dollar denominated debt. They can't stop lending to us or the renminbi appreciates against the dollar they lose economic competitiveness while we gain it (same thing with the Euro, since Germany is also an export economy). Why did Wall Street get bailed out without the bond holders taking a haircut? Because the bond-holders generally are pension funds (public and private), large mutual funds etc. i.e: the retirement funds for the middle-class. Wall street has Main street over the barrel in exactly the same way: once you lend too much, you lose control of the borrower.
Debt is certainly a domestic problem in the US, in the sense that until mortgage debt overhang in particular diminishes there won't be a robust upswing in demand. But US sovereign debt level is not going to be a problem for a long time, if ever. About the most realistic (e.g. considers the macro effects, financial system stability, currency and capital flow issues) estimate I've seen comes from Harold James' book, and boils down to many decades in the worst case. As such, it would be a smart idea to alleviate the domestic personal debt problem by transferring it into sovereign debt, to get demand and economic growth and employment back on track. But unfortunately the debate is dominated in Washington by people who can't understand debt beyond of the context of their credit card and/or are more concerned about moralizing the personal responsibility to repay than they are with fixing the economy.
You don't appear to understand debt period, but you really misunderstand it at a national level. Now this isn't 100% your fault, as it is complex, but it is your fault for running your mouth on about it. I'll deal with the first part: You say the debt is "credit extended to US by foreign nations." Ok, well let's have a look and see who the US's biggest creditor is then. Hmmm, total international debt is only 27%. 23% is made of of various things like personal holdings by US citizens, retirement funds, local government holdings and so on. Man that leave 50%, where is that? Oh, holdings by the federal reserve, and other intergovernmental holdings. As in the government investing in itself, since US government bonds are a very safe investment.
So no, sorry, it is not a case of "The US owes the rest of the world." Rather it is a case that there is a lot of investment, from the world and the US itself, in the US government.
I could go on with the rest of your crap but why bother? The onus to educate yourself is on you. You need to go and understand how debt works on both a personal and national level (it is very different). You also need to understand some basic things about money and production, such as that money is just a theoretical construct for facilitating trade and that real wealth on a large scale is the ability to produce.
Spend some time learning, then try again. Stop being an uninformed chicken little.
I've had an opportunity to use public wi-fi a bunch of times lately. I got an ipad and for the last month I've been using it all the time, everywhere. Naturally, I've been curious about the possibility of doing so anonymously.
I'm pretty much convinced *anonymous* unsecured wi-fi doesn't exist. In every place I've used it, I've found that there's a surveillance camera nearby or such a low level of usage that any person who uses the wi-fi can be identified.
I've used it at at least 15 different McDonalds. In every case, there were only a few users at once (usually just me) and if any one of us were to do something illegal, it would be possible to match times to surveillance video to car license plates to faces.
At one McDonalds, it was possible to hook into the connection across the street at an unrelated business. But the connection was only viable when sitting at a couple of tables in the restaurant. In that case, not only would the surveillance data have identified me, it would probably have told investigators where I was sitting.
I've used it at truck stops; they all have cameras. I've used it at hotels; they give me a traceable access code. (OK, that's not "unsecured" but it's still illustrative.) I've used it at big hotels where it's completely unsecured in the lobby; they have enough surveillance cameras to walk the dog.
None of my neighbors have unsecured connections. I've yet to find one in an office building. I keep my iPad with me all the time and I'm simply not finding unsecured wi-fi in any location where I wouldn't be identifiable after the fact. In the one place that was busy enough that I might go unnoticed, a hospital emergency room, the network was so locked-down that nothing much could be done beside browsing news sites; nntp and torrent connections were specifically blocked.
So how does one go about finding and using this "unsecured wi-fi" in a way that enables the user to remain anonymous?
I'm sure I'm missing something. I'm new to this whole "mobile lifestyle" thing and perhaps someone can clue me in.
You wrote:
This is a false analogy. If you use a correct analogy with the phone system, then you'll see that the same standards were applied.
Phone analogy: You can call a number and connect with a modem to a movie-trade Bulletin Board System. Movie company finds out about number and is able to get a call log of every number that has dialed into the BBS -- that allows you to trade movies. Movie company finds the number allowing free movie trading and gets a call log of the numbers that dialed into it and were connected for more than 5 minutes. Now they ask the phone company for who owns the numbers.
That's it -- asking for who own's an 'ip' is equivalent to asking who owns a telephone number.
It is not the same as allowing monitoring of the calls.
Given the correction, do you think it is unreasonable for 3rd parties to be able to do reverse number lookups?
That information is publicly available (possible for a fee) for listed numbers. For unlisted numbers, I doubt the police would even need a warrant to obtain a reverse listing, nor, I suspect, would a company suing the owner of that number for illegal activity.
How long has it been since we've had the expectation that our identity was completely private when making a phone call from our own phones?
Did this go away with 9-11? I don't think so...
Does this result mean that as soon as I give my information to someone else (usually required by law I might add), I lose the right to privacy (If I'm a US citizen at least, although Australia will follow suit shortly no doubt)?
Again, the only way to circumvent this is to simply not buy products that require your name, address and credit card details. Pay cash only. Make the fuckers work hard with visual ID only (and no name etc). Imagine if 90% of US Internet users cancelled their accounts, citing privacy concerns as a result of this wayward decision, from again, incompetent judges who do not live in the real world. You have to pointedly tell your ISP that you are cancelling because you want privacy and do not agree with this latest court decision. You have to make that point very bluntly, shout and yell from the tops of every building. I guarantee you that with the sudden drop in profits, these companies will do 1 of 2 things:
1) raise the price of Internet connections to make up for their losses (and the result of this ill fated act would be that the remaining 10% of subscribed users in my example would also cancel, citing unreasonable costs)
2) rally the government to reverse the decision of the courts, citing loss of income.
ISPs will never do number 2 unless it is in their interest. And the ONLY way to make this happen is for people affected by these silly court decisions to cancel their accounts. Do you really need the Internet? I mean really? Before you say that you really do need the Internet, a question: how did you survive without it before the Internet became popular and readily available? How about reading a book. Watching a movie. Going for a walk. Spending time with loved ones (all of these suffer from over Internet use).
Dave
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. --Martin Luther King Jr.
As I explained to GP above, that is simply not true. The essential issue behind ALL of these lawsuits is the contents of those data packets. I.e., whether they contained copyrighted material. So your telephone analogy does not adequately cover the situation, mine does. A good analogy has to take into account that it is the contents of the information that was allegedly sent (corresponding to the contents of your telephone call) that is the most important issue of all here. It's not just a matter of using a BBS that only supplies illegal files. P2P networks carry a lot of perfectly legitimate content. The issue is WHO used it for illegal purposes. And the only way to know that is to determine the contents of the data being downloaded.
Further, as I mentioned earlier, this judge has completely ignored the fact that IP addresses do not identify individuals. While that is only peripheral to this conversation, even if the plaintiffs are successful in getting the subpoenas issued, they still bear the burden of proof that the owner of that internet account was the one doing illegal things. Maybe it was an adult son or daughter. Or a visiting friend. Or somebody who accessed it via an open WiFi router.
And it needs to be said that, old FCC decisions aside, there is no real-world reason people should not have as much of a "reasonable expectation of privacy" on the Internet as they enjoy on a telephone call.
I should clarify: Yes, I do understand that the subpoenas involve only "subscriber" information, and that her ruling was directly bearing on only that issue. In that sense, yes, it is like your phone records without the content of your call. However, both OP and TFA seemed to imply that this applies to any right to privacy in your internet communications at all. So technically you are correct. But when you add to that the fact that plaintiffs claim to have detected the contents of the downloads, the overall effect is still as if you had your phone tapped, even though those issues will not be raised until later (if at all).
No -- that's not it. The court decided that the mapping of NUMBER (IP or phone) to the subscriber, wasn't private information. That's all.
But the court isn't giving access to *contents*. The prosecutors claim to already have access to contents. Going back to my BBS analogy -- this is a BBS where there is 1 phone number / item of content. So by dialing a specific number, you've already chosen what you are downloading. There is no anonymity, because you are passing out checksummed hashes of files who's identity is known to be illegal. You've exchanged checksummed material with the prosecutors already, so they KNOW what you have -- it wasn't the court that told them the contents, it was you dealing with a recognizable data stream. Now they just ask who's attached to the data stream @ 7:42pm on Sunday May 12th.
They can assert that a specific account was engaged in illegal file sharing and then they can look up who owns that account (ip or telephone #). They aren't saying that the IP==a person, any more than a telephone# == a person.
At that point, the owner can present information to explain how their number could have been misused, i.e. I serve an open WiFi link, or, my number was hacked, or, my dog knows how to get on the internet -- whatever that a judge or jury would accept as some level of 'doubt'. But so far, there's no violation of privacy beyond what you'd expect by dialing into a BBS. In fact the exact same technique was used to nab child-pornsters by busting a BBS that contained only child porn then watching who dialed in -- so the content was known through other means -- they didn't ask for the subpoena until they had "ip's or phone numbers' that had accessed the 'infringing' material.
I agree it's a crappy situation, but I don't think they did violated any privacy expectations that were already violated some time ago -- now whether or not privacy was violated in allowing phone numbers to be mapped to individuals -- that's another discussion. It's a bit hard to argue against that one because it is so widely done and accepted. With that precedent, it's hard to argue that the computer equivalent should be granted greater privacy protections.