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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.
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/
Well it takes lawyers to say NO too. And they don't work for free.
The best they can hope for is to establish a precedent and make the nuisance subpoenas reduce in scope.
Fighting a validly issued subpoena is a costly legal move. A minimum wage clerk can knock out a hundred
replies to these in half an hour with automated tools. That would be the cheap approach.
So there is some financial outlay involved with this approach, and the return on that investment is
probably questionable and short lived, and may blow back in their face if they lose safe harbor
protection by fighting these subpoenas.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
P.S. I just noticed all four companies that Comcast is saying "no" to are pornography companies. I wonder what the downloaders acquired which made them targets for extortionate letters?
FREE magazine : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior/
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.
fightcopyrighttrolls.com is a good site for finding out what exactly has been going on. Specificyally, yes, this has been a copyright shakedown in which the companies involved have almost never actually taken anyone to court. They've been filing lawsuits with hundreds or thousands of defendants and mailing them threatening letters regarding how embarassing it would be to have their name publicly associated with a lawsuit regarding this type of content. If they drag it out long enough, many people don't know or are to scared to fight it and settle out for 2,500 or so a piece. Anyone who fights back, or in many cases simply ignores them is eventually dropped from the lawsuit.
Some of the site owners have been bragging that they made more from the lawsuit settlements than all their memberships fees for the year.
"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.
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.