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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."
I take back every nasty thing I ever said about Comcast.
Well, on second thought, I temporarily suspend my badmouthing of Comcast. ...
Ok, time's up.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I had my doubts about Comcast for some time now, but if they keep this up, they may keep me as a customer.
For a second I thought I was pulled into an episode of the The Twilight Zone. Comcast is the last company I expect this from. Go Comcast?
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
Finally. This is the only way that the RIAA/MPAA will change its ways: when other massive corporations start to fight back in court. Triple bonus to Comcast for calling this what it is: a shakedown organized through the legal system. I normally hate Comcast with a passion, but I will cheer them on in this fight. Bring out the popcorn!
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Wow Comcast... What happened to you man, you used to be sooo evil. First removing data caps, now this? What's next free nbz?
Don't kid yourself.
Comcast is only fighting back because having its subscribers targeted by subpoenas is bad for business.
Just imagine if SOPA had passed. They would have been shut down overnight for taking a stand like that.
Really Comcast? I think my head just exploded. There must have been something really expensive going on corporately to supply the data. I can't believe that they would ever do anything for a customer.
An article featuring Comcast in a positive light on Slashdot, truly this is the end of days.
So I (heart) Comcast now?
Really, you've got to make up your mind; it is getting harder to remember who to hate and who to like.
PS: We still hate Apple, right?
See, that's the great thing about capitalism. It doesn't attempt to change human nature, it allows human nature to work as is and get the same results as you would with super-moral people who care immensely about others.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
While it's nice that Comcast is standing up to them, if you read through you'll find that it's four porn companies. In other words, they're not standing up (in this case, at least) to any of the MAFIAA members.
Do you have ESP?
A few Subpeona's here and there are fine, sure they cost you, but it's a cost of doing business.
That's that right up until some company wants to subpeona 4,000 of your users, per week.
And the thing is these subpeona's, they aren't for john doe at 127.0.0.1 on 6/15/2010, they're for MAC addresses, traffic usage reports, etc and the requestor gets NASTY if they don't get what they want.
Either you spend an ungodly amount of cash complying, or you go the cheaper route; get the lawyers to tell them to go pound sand.
Repeatedly, that is.
Have gnu, will travel.
They're only protecting their customers to secure their ability to keep screwing them up the ass.
If you get bills through the mail (from Comcast included), then you've been urged to "Go Green!" by going paperless. We know they don't give a crap about saving a few trees. They're trying to reduce their costs (paper, stamps, design, etc.) If emailing statements was more expensive, they would not push us in that direction.
I'm guessing Comcast is doing this exclusively for the same reason (saving money) and covering it up with the same moral wrapping paper.
They're sick bastards but, hey, if it puts a stop to this....
I was just seriously shopping to dump Comcast for forgetting who their paying customer is with their sleeping-with-the-RIAA crap. This will buy them one month.
Rubbish. If Capitalism hits on a morally good outcome, it's by pure fluke.
Capitalism is often exploited by people who are following their human nature to lie, cheat, steal, and other stuff. You know, things like putting melamine into baby formula.
Capitalism doesn't give a fuck about you, and is in fact amoral (note I don't say immoral, but it does yield a lot of immoral things).
If you believe what you wrote, you're an idealist who still believes the system works -- it doesn't, it only works for those who have money and can pay to exploit the rules.
As it exists, Capitalism is mostly about trying to make sure the loopholes are all stacked in your favor instead of anybody else. This great wonderful thing you call Capitalism which always arrives at good outcomes is a myth. Companies would make skin care products out of 3rd world children if they could get away with it and if it was profitable.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The thing about capitalism is it allows you to support only the things YOU want. Don't want melamine in baby formula? Don't buy it, don't support it, make sure that all the formula you buy is melamine free and has been tested by three labs if you want. For example, I don't like Sony's policies so I don't have to give Sony a penny of my money. I also don't like the wars, the welfare state, etc. but I still have to pay taxes or else I go to jail.
See, the only reason companies are profitable in pure capitalism is because they provide things that people want in ways that they want them, otherwise they go bankrupt and even if someone else wanted to support them by buying their product. You would not have to spend a single penny. There is not a single thing (outside of government) that I buy that does not improve my standard of living. If they didn't, I wouldn't buy them, I wouldn't support the companies.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
...for a good cause.
Seriously, why is the only reason good things ever happen online laziness? It doesn't reflect well on those in power.
Great Intellect...
First, and foremost Comcast is in business to make a profit. Make no mistake, if they thought they could profit from turning folks in, they would. Read some of the supporting documents. Verizon (a Comcast competitor) has taken a stand and started saying "Nope" to the courts/. Apparently they have enough legal ground to quash the "track this IP for us" requests. This is a two fold benefit to any ISP. First, you don't have to waste time and money having your staff searching though logs to find out who had that IP at that time. Second, you keep a small segment of your customers who care about such things from running to your competition.
Surely this problem will go away for all ISP's in fairly short order. Once an ISP starts successfully protesting such requests for information, the guys doing the shakedowns will eventually stop wasting time/money making the requests. ISP's will have to pay their lawyers a bit more up front to stop such requests, but eventually this will get them OUT of the business of turning in their subscribers by keeping them out of court. With the profits fading away, the shakedown artists will have abandon the courts and try to come up with some other way to do their shakedowns.
This is NOT over. Verizon, Comcast and others have signed on to start giving their customers warnings on behalf of various copyright holders for various types of infringing content passing over their networks. It's called something like "six strikes" and the providers are hoping it will allow them to generate more business for their "legal" services, by working in cooperation with MPAA and others. I hold now illusions that this "solution" is a good thing for anybody, except perhaps for the ISP's who see it as a marketing opportunity. I wonder if my bittorrent activity (all legal by the way) will draw a warning from Verizon (my ISP). I know they don't like bittorrent and it sure seems that they throttle my connection when I have active transfers, so I'm half expecting to be "warned" about the Ubuntu, Fedora, and CentOS distributions I try to seed over my 25Mbit connection.
They are in this for the profit. If they got a percentage of the shakedown take, you'd bet they be out there actively turning folks in before they got asked. They are simply making a business decision that it will cost less and maximize profits to take this route, and given that there seems to be legal justification now for saying "Nope!" that the court is accepting you can bet this will continue. If alternate legal tactics alter the economics for the ISP's, you can bet they will be turning folks in once more. If it proves profitable to start the "warning" process with their customers, even before a copyright holder complains, you can be the will do that too.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If government winked out of existence this evening, what makes you think the RIAA wouldn't start sending out goon squads a minute later.
Nobody wanted melamine in the baby food. 'Don't buy it' won't resurrect the baby. Nobody wanted poison in the cough syrup either, but it was in there.
In this one speciality situation where the right thing to do coincided with the easiest thing to do and the most profitable.
And you saying that the right thing to do is always the easiest or most profitable?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
FARKIN TIME!
ah... must be April's Fool day in the Mayan calendar... else some sneaky ninja has changed the dates on all my clocks/watches/phones at home again!
The plaintiffs in case are in the adult entertainment business. 90+ comments so far and not one "Or vagina" comment when it is now appropriate.
What is wrong with you people?!!
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Wow - two sleazy set of company lawyers at odds - this should get good! Maybe the only way to defeat evil, is with more evil...
Nobody wanted poison in the cough syrup either, but it was in there.
But how did the MAFIAA get it into the cough syrup?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
They mistook the plaintiff for one of their customers.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
I'll applaud this 1%, now just need to fix the rest.
That's not what capitalism is about at all. Those things are human nature and will show up in any economic system. In fact, you WANT an amoral system, because morality is just someone imposing their beliefs on you.
I'll take it to the next level!
Since we know the **AA and the ISP's are Rule 34'ing with each other, just what if they switched from a lawsuit business model to a data-cap model? There would be a few other things to solve, but I'd consider being satisfied with higher bandwidth caps *if it meant an ironclad guarantee, in law, to no more piracy lawsuits*. So then the user can make a pricing decision if they really want that movie or not. Or that song, or not. Or that Lolcat pic or not.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
My kids and I don't want Aspartame in gum. But nobody in the US sells any anymore without it (Dentyne Fire is the only one now, if I can find it).
So, my choices are...?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Bubble Yum.
Really? Because when I Google aspertime free gum I find a lot of matches:
Such as Glee Gum (either sugar or Xylitol), and Pur Gum (uses Xylitol)
It just takes a bit of looking around. You can buy Glee Gum online on their site ( http://www.gleegum.com/order_now.htm ), And Pur gum can be found on Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/Pur-Gum-Peppermint-gum/dp/B005G238YM/ref=sr_1_6?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1339626146&sr=1-6&keywords=pur+gum )
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Ideally, but Comcast isn't fully subject to the market. Subpoenas may have become annoying, but Comcast has agreed to deny internet service to customers after "six strikes" in exchange for payment from the copyright industry
Commenters above have demonstrated clearly why this should not be regarded as a sudden dawning of divine light on the brows of Comcast executives. Yet I still hold out a little bit of hope here. IANAL, but if YOU are, can you tell us whether Comcast (and Verizon) putting forth defenses like that can help establish precedents to be used in cases involving other parties? Are we getting any fresh ammunition out of this?
Interesting.... then would that make some forms of compression illegal? Similar to how not watching (or downloading) the commercials is stealing?
Would that make data transfer outside of approved channels become smuggling? Flash drives become contraband?
That huge bandwidth of a truck full of tapes going down the highway would be the equivalent of a bank robbery?
Comcast sucks...don't make me like them. please..
On a more cynical note, why should they care about piracy of their competition? Remember, they are also a content creator.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I wish we lived in a world where I could calmly tell you straight in your face that you're a deluded conspiracy nut. Alas, I can't. There will be probably an Ivy MBA somewhere who will think of this, implement it, and get a bunch of golden parachutes for his efforts :(
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
But there's such a thing as liking capitalism without liking to most extreme form of libertarianism one can possibly imagine.
Mainstream libertarian thought holds that the government has a role: retain it's monopoly on force, plus enforce contracts, prevent fraud, and standardize weights and measures (and arguably some public infrastructure projects would still be mainstream libertarianism, as long as the actual work was done at market rates).
All the dangers you warn about are from SciFi novel capitalism, not what fans of capitalism are actually talking about. The profit motive is great, and needs only the above-mentioned limited governmental role to keep it on the rails.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When two people on opposite ends of a trade are both happy with that trade (and there was no fraud), then yes, profit is closly tied to the right thing to do.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I've been a Comcast subscriber for nearly 2 years and unlike many of you, have always been happy with their service, despite having misgivings about Comcast behavior which I believe to have been truthfully reported.
However, my respect for Comcast has now soared. They not only grew a pair, but they're big and they're solid brass :D
See, that's the great thing about capitalism. It doesn't attempt to change human nature, it allows human nature to work as is and get the same results as you would with super-moral people who care immensely about others.
Go read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
That was during a time of massive economic growth, industrialization, and the purest laissez faire capitalism you could ask for.
Of course, all that laissez faire capitalism led to monopolies, child labor, rivers on fire,
and a host of other social ills ultimately culminating in the Great Depression. So there's that.
Corporations dueling over whether or not to preserve your rights and privacy is not the kind of capitalism anyone should desire.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I don't understand what you are trying to say.
What is the point of making an augment about trade that is only valid when both parties end up happy with it and their was no fraud?
Of course that trade was good (assuming there was not some third party influenced).
And how does this tie into profit?
Are you saying that if people trade, and are happy with said trade, and neither of them lied, then the more profit both of them made the more morally right that trade was?
Assuming specific definitions of a few of those words, I cannot say I disagree with you, but using those definitions the statement is so self evident that I cannot see why anyone would say it, and does not appear to be applicable to my comment or this article in the least.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
That makes no sense whatsoever ... do you think anybody wanted baby formula with melamine in it? No, some greedy bastard decided to bump up his profit margins by putting what is essentially a toxic filler. (Or are you going to pretend that since it was a Chinese company it could never possibly happen here?)
If everyone had to find out that common goods were essentially toxic on their own, everybody would be dead. If there isn't an agency, namely a government, enforcing product standards and laws we'd all be eating toxic sludge, and driving Ford Pintos which burst into flames on impact, and living in houses that collapse under the first wind that comes along.
Oh, want drinking water ... here, have some. Oh, well, sorry about the toluene and other stuff. You should have had it tested at 3 labs. Can't afford the clean stuff? Well, too bad for being poor ... us rich folks are doing fine here behind the security fence.
And, pray tell, where is an example of this? An actual working, stable system in which there are no rules yet somehow the invisible hand (when it's not picking your pocket) comes up with optimal solutions to everything? You're talking about an equilibrium that could only be reached after a very long time -- but which has never happened, and which could never happen without someone to force it to happen. Contrary to what you think, it is not a natural outgrowth of anything and nobody actually wants to play by those rules.
What you call pure capitalism is an intellectual abstraction which has never happened. In reality, people will lie, cheat, steal, and otherwise take every opportunity to game the system and fuck everybody else over. And they'll try to do it in such a way as to become the only game in town -- so when your natural monopoly or oligarchy happens, they'll just go back to selling you substandard, dangerous goods to maximize profits.
There isn't, and never has been, a working example of the kind of Libertarian fantasy capitalism you describe. I will go so far as to say what you're describing can't exist, despite a whole lot of people apparently building what amounts to a religion around that very notion. Such a system would turn inwards on itself.
You're either lying, self deluded, or so completely unrepresentative of the rest of the populace as to be a cloistered monk living in a cave. People make imperfect choices, for irrational reasons, based on incomplete data.
Ever bought gum? Soda? Alcohol? Cheezits? A t-shirt which says something cool? A second pair of pants? These are things which people like, and enjoy, but which don't actually improve the standard of living. They give you some form of pleasure or perceived status. Take an inventory of your stuff, and ask yourself if every item truly improves your standard of living. I think you might come to realize that it's not quite so cut and dry as you think it is.
You're describing a form of anarcho capitalism which will eventually turn into the strong preying on the weak, and corporations/criminal organizations (same thing really) running the show with extortion rackets. It would be like Mad Max ... want to try it out? Go to Mogadishu where there is nobody to look out for the rules and attempt to keep people safe.
I sincerely hope you don't find yourself harmed or injured by a product that was built shoddy or downright dangerously. But if it ever happens, remember, the logical conclusion of w
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Sudden outbreak of IT'S A TRAP!
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
You'd then be shocked and amazed what so many people on /. seem to believe. The age-old meme that "profit == evil" is quite alive and well, it seems.
If a reasonable market is operating (admittedly, not often the case with the ISP monopolies that local governments love to hand out), then trades will likely be voluntary, and thus on average make both sides happy. Thus, by simple aggregation of said trades, the most profitable thing to do will be the right thing to do. If you don't have your customers over a barrel, and you plan to be around for a while, it usually is.
Is that not similarly self-evident?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Given OP's tone, I got the impression he was, in fact, cheering for that Sci-fi version of 'pure' capitalism.
I'm a rightsholder, too. Copyrights, even. It's not to my chagrin.
Capitalism is amoral. That is correct. However, there's an old saying about not burning bridges. For every bad man or organization putting melamine into baby formula, there are a lot more capitalizing on creating more reputable products and services that can be trusted. For others, they make a completely different product all together that will test melamine in DIY home testing kits.
Capitalism is just an efficient form of the way we socialize that both benefits ourselves as well as others. It's far and away better than a top-down command and control scheme.
Life is not for the lazy.
That would depend on what "reasonable market" means.
Why would the trades likely be voluntary, are we talking about some sort of socialist society where government has gone to extreme measures to eliminate monopolies and feud? If it is in a market where involuntarily trades are possible then those kinds of trades will always be more profitable then the others and naturally propagate.
"you plan to be around for a while, it usually is." But immediate profit is always significantly more important then future profit. AKA percent value of future profits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounted_cash_flow)
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It's called local peer discovery.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
When you comply with a subpeona for information the flood gates on your ISP are opened... they all come flooding in and your time is wasted. By demanding a judge issue the order or fighting it the flood gates close and you free up resources that can be better allocated to making things or providing services people want.
Have you found an answer to my question yet?
Government supervision as a neutral referee to enforce contracts and stamp out fraud is *part* of capitalism.
The minute you have a monopoly stepping in and forcing the competition out of the market it becomes bastardized communism.
And oddly enough if the RIAA started sending in goon squads I don't think it would count as capitalism anymore.
That's not what capitalism is about at all. Those things are human nature and will show up in any economic system. In fact, you WANT an amoral system, because morality is just someone imposing their beliefs on you.
Imposing beliefs is called civilization. I'm sorry that this conflicts with modern in-duh-vidualism but you can only live in a large group like a city if [almost] everyone agrees with a set of shared moral codes (e.g. killing people is wrong, raping people is wrong, smashing up shit that doesn't belong to you is wrong, burning down other people's homes because you don't like the way they dress is wrong, etc). I dare you to try living in a place where murder is an acceptable everyday form of social interaction, or are you about to claim that not committing murder isn't a moral consideration? That would be stupid but could be funny to read.
What you want from a system is not amorality, you want a system that curbs the core set of immoral behaviors without seriously impacting or restricting people who aren't colossal dickheads. The problem you are alluding to with belief imposition is actually an inversion of this, it's a minority trying to control everyone else because what they believe is not universally accepted; that is a good reason not to accept those rules but our current system doesn't curb that behavior very well.
That's just the thing, without strong regulation, capitalism inevitably decays into other far worse things. Effectively, 'unregulated market' is an oxymoron. It may be one or the other, but never both for long.
"If government winked out of existence this evening, what makes you think the RIAA wouldn't start sending out goon squads a minute later."
The fact that we're better armed than the goons, and severely outnumber them? On top of that, no government to enforce murder laws? Shit, we're killing EVERYBODY.
Welcome to the slaughter.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Most trades are voluntary these days, despite much whining that "the seller wanted to make a profit, that bastard." Government-granted monopolies are rare, by historical norms. It's really only entertainment where there are regular "monopoly" issues, and even then really no one has a monopoly on "entertainment".
Regulatory capture is a whole different discussion, but again that rarely leads to actual monpolies, it merely slows the natural correctly aciton of the market (albeit significantly so).
Discounted future value is different from buring the company to the ground to get one more penny in earnings the quarter, with no concern for next quarter - which sadly does happen from time to time - but such companies do tend to remove themselves from the market pretty quickly, one way or another. It happens more often with specific products, when acquired by a new company that sees no future in that product, and knowingly sacrifices quality and reputaiton to get the most in the short term, then kill the product.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Bounties. They want a cut of the profits that rights holders are making via open-and-shut settlement cases. If they're going to incur the costs of meeting rightsholders demands, they want a cut of the pie.
I can see the slashdot article now "MPAA/RIAA sharing settlement earnings with ISPs that turn over customer data".
My kingdom for a donkey!