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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)
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.
1984 was written in 1947-48, when the Soviet Union was busily suppressing any kind of freedom in Eastern Europe. Orwell wasn't prescient, merely observant.
So... I convey my subscriber information to the Phone company... do I lose my expectation of privacy for making phone calls?
You are missing the forest for the trees. People are against these kinds of decisions not because of the results for the pirates, but because the laws can be abused. Copyright law is currently being misused to quash political campaigns, as an example. The "First they came for the Jews..." quote is incredibly appropriate for any privacy issue.
Do you not see the implications of any company being able to request private information from your ISP on a subpoena, even when that private information doesn't always reflect the person using the IP?
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.