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Music Publishers Sue Cox Communications Over Piracy

Posted by timothy on from the you-must-crack-the-whip dept.

wabrandsma (2551008) writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music have sued Cox Communications for copyright infringement, arguing that the Internet service provider doesn't do enough to punish those who download music illegally. Both BMG and Round Hill are clients of Rightscorp, a copyright enforcement agent whose business is based on threatening ISPs with a high-stakes lawsuit if they don't forward settlement notices to users that Rightscorp believes are "repeat infringers" of copyright. In their complaint (PDF), the music publishers also decided to publicly post IP addresses.

9 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What do you suppose they think would be "enough" to punish copyright violaters? (Maybe they could start by using proper terminology?)

    1. Re:I wonder.... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Rightscorp is on the verge of bankruptcy, as it has not been very successful with its lawsuits. It is also being sued right now by some of its "victims", who claim its practices have been illegally intimidating and coercive, and otherwise legally unsound.

      In other words, from what I read recently at EFF "Rightscorp" probably has little to do with IP "rights" at all... it is just another copyright troll looking to scare money out of Mom and Pop.

      But they haven't been very successful at that game. My guess is that this is a last-gasp effort to make some money before it goes under.

    2. Re:I wonder.... by meerling · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Rightscorp has followed a simple process all along.
      Make threats to intimidate and milk them for money (extortion) and not actually go to court. I know the lawyers have a legal term for this kind of bad faith, but I've no idea what it is right now.
      I suspect they are betting that Cox would rather fork over dough than actually go to court for anything if it's not too high of a cost, and that's what they are betting on. If Cox is dumb enough to do that, then they can use that for additional leverage to force other companies to pony up instead of going to court. Remember, often companies don't care if they are guilty or not, they just choose the cheaper method of resolution.

  2. Re:The real reason? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But they're not Common Carrier, and this lawsuit may push that over the last hump. The sooner, the better, honestly.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  3. No proof by bl968 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Rightscorp can't claim the subscriber is actually infringing their customers copyright, as their software tool can simply see if the information is available from the host in question but it cannot tell anything else about it. They have no way to know that anyone other than their self has actually downloaded the information in question. They can only guess and I hate to say it but you can't sue over speculation.

    54,000 claimed infringements over 64 days sounds like a lot, but it's basically just under once per second, and claiming each time is another incident of infringement. So basically their software is constantly checking the ip, and this could be argued constitutes theft of service since both Cox and the customer in question pays for the bandwidth.

    As for them downloading the information themselves, since the tool and the company that runs it is authorized by the copyright holder to search for and access their copyrighted files one could easily argue that no actual infringement taking place.

    I also think Cox should establish a reasonable handling charge for investigating and dealing with these automated complaints, I think 10$ per complaint sounds about right. So 54,000 x $10 = $540,000. Plus attorney fees and costs for this frivolous lawsuit.

    --
    "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
    1. Re:No proof by fafalone · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's worse than that; Rightscorp doesn't even verify that your computer is actually capable of sending the file. The one and only notice I ever received was on a torrent that I uploaded 0 bytes on since it was all seeders when I connected, dl'd, and disconnected 5 minutes later. They don't even download a single byte of the file, let alone enough to verify it is in fact their content. I can't say if they connected but didn't download and used that as "verification"; but I strongly suspect the connection was/would have been refused entirely since I run up to date blacklisting. And since the notice specifically claimed I was 'sharing' it I doubt they hosted the material, let me download it from, and want to claim that as infringement.
      So my IP was listed in a swarm for 5 minutes and didn't upload a single byte of their content, and my ISP took the time and money to respond their bs and pay to send me a physical letter about it. What I did to that notice is not just not appropriate to talk about here... /b/ would sure appreciate it though.

  4. youtube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The #1 piracy tool

  5. Re:The real reason? by Kjella · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They're not a common carrier, they got something in many ways better: USC 17512. Being an ISP is under section (a):

    (a) Transitory Digital Network Communications. - A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the providerâ(TM)s transmitting, routing, or providing connections for, material through a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, or by reason of the intermediate and transient storage of that material in the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections, if -
    (1) the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the service provider;
    (2) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider;
    (3) the service provider does not select the recipients of the material except as an automatic response to the request of another person;
    (4) no copy of the material made by the service provider in the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and no such copy is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing, or provision of connections; and
    (5) the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content.

    Notice anything in particular missing from this section? No DMCA notice, that only applies to (b) Caching, (c) Hosting and (d) Searching. They can send all those DMCA notices to /dev/null and it's legally kosher and they got full immunity. I expect Cox Communications will have this case thrown out quickly assuming they have a competent lawyer.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  6. Re:An act of infringement by TropicalCoder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How do they even know it was "Cox subscriber having IP address 24.252.149.211", as opposed to his neighbour who tapped into his WiFi?

    Lest someone think this is a lame excuse, let me tell you my own experience...

    The first month after I got the internet connection set up in my new place, my ISP noted my 64 gb data cap was exceeded, and they made a courtesy call to see if they could up sell me on more bandwidth. I was totally shocked, because I know my normal data usage would never come close to that limit. Somebody obviously cracked my relatively simple password and hacked into my modem. I immediately changed that to the longest password it would accept, and there has been no more data overages since. What do you suppose my WiFi was being used for? Could well have been for downloading copyrighted material, which certainly I hadn't been doing. What if the copyright police came after me for this? I would be pretty pissed off!