Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Refusing To Comply With Piracy Subpoenas
New submitter nbacon writes with news that Comcast, apparently tired of the endless BitTorrent-related piracy lawsuits, has stopped complying with subpoena requests, much to the chagrin of rightsholders. From the article:
"Initially Comcast complied with these subpoenas, but an ongoing battle in the Illinois District Court shows that the company changed its tune recently. Instead of handing over subscriber info, Comcast asked the court to quash the subpoenas. Among other things, the ISP argued that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over all defendants, because many don’t live in the district in which they are being sued. The company also argues that the copyright holders have no grounds to join this many defendants in one lawsuit. The real kicker, however, comes with the third argument. Here, Comcast accuses the copyright holders of a copyright shakedown, exploiting the court to coerce defendants into paying settlements."
The motive is probably based on $$$$$. Comcast probably wastes a lot of money handling these supeona requests, and they finally decided it was cheaper to say "no" then to comply.
FREE magazine : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior/
"lose safe harbor protection"
Lose what?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act
The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act is United States federal law that creates a conditional safe harbor for internet service providers (ISPs) by shielding them from potential secondary liability for the infringing acts of others.
If Comcast can be found to be aiding and abetting infringers, they may end up being judged directly responsible for the infringement carried on by others who happen to participate in a bit torrent of infringing media. Safe harbor is granted to ISPs to prevent them from having to monitor every packet transiting their network. However the media industry is sure to claim that comcast became a participant in infringement the minute they stepped in and tried to quash these subpoenas. Watch and see.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Bear with me for a second:
Pirating customers are heavy users.
Comcast is implementing usage-based tiered billing.
It is now in Comcast's best interest for customers to pirate, because it means they get more money.
When I worked for an small ISP (roughly 80,000 subscribers), subpoenas were not a matter of a minimum wage clerk handling these. All subpoenas were routed to the legal department where they were reviewed. Once legal was satisfied that everything was in order they would hand it to operations to actually retrieve the requested data. Once the request was complete, operations would hand it back to legal who would then give it to the proper authorities.
It is important to note that subpoenas were not rubber stamped by the legal team. They would often deny subpoenas as unrealistic (IP address, connection start time, connection end time, Name, billing address, for every subscriber in every jurisdiction over a two week period) or not possible to fulfill. So I would not be surprised if the cost of fulfilling the subpoenas at Comcast is significant.