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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.
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.
An article featuring Comcast in a positive light on Slashdot, truly this is the end of days.
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.
They're fighting against having to spend the time to do this all the time and the associated costs.
Undoubtedly, they get fairly constant levels of requests for this information, which they need to expend a lot of resources getting the information.
I would be skeptical about them doing it for customers ... but it might just be convenient to use that as a legal argument to get them off the hook for paying the costs of policing the internet for the rights holders; all of whom believe it should be the ISPs footing the cost of this.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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 know you're joking, but people seriously needs to get away from such black-and-white thinking.
You can like or love specific things about something you hate, and hate specific things about something you like.
Or be completely neutral. And get flamed by ideologues on both side for "not taking a stand."
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.
See, the thing to me is charging per GB makes no sense. Comcast already had the correct technical solution in place, throttle all data from heavy users when the uplink from the cable head end is nearing saturation. It's content agnostic and solves the problem of the real limited resource. They can receive additional revenue from heavy users by offering them better top end speeds when the network is not congested.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
They mistook the plaintiff for one of their customers.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
If the Court issues a written order granting the motion to quash, then yes, it can become ammunition in other court cases. It wouldn't be binding authority, but federal courts have no problem following the reasoning set forth in other federal courts.
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?
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.
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!