Judge Wipes Out Safe Harbor Provision In DMCA, Makes Cox Accomplice of Piracy (arstechnica.com)

SysKoll writes: The DMCA is well-known for giving exorbitant powers to copyright holders, such as taking down a page or a whole web site without a court order. Media companies buy services from vendors like Rightscorp, a shake-down outfit that issues thousands of robot-generated take-down notices and issues threats against ISPs and sites ignoring them. Cox, like a lot of ISPs, is inundated with abusive take-down notices, in particular from Rightscorp. Now, BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music are suing Cox for refusing to shut off the Internet access of subscribers that Rightscorp accused of downloading music via BitTorrent. Cox argues that as an ISP, they benefit from the Safe Harbor provision that shields access providers from subscribers' misbehavior. Not so, says U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady. The judge sided with the media companies ahead of trial, saying Cox should have terminated the repeat offenders accused by Rightscorp. Cox's response is quite entertaining for a legal document (PDF): its description of Rightscorp includes the terms "shady," "shake-down," and "pay no attention to the facts." O'Grady also derided the Electronic Frontier Foundation's attempt to file an amicus brief supporting Cox, calling them hysterical crybabies.

Comments

Re:I think this is fair.

[Martin Blank]

Al-Qaeda affiliates and ISIS actually do fight each other. ISIS and al-Nusra Front have been at opposition for a while. Remember that ISIS came out of what was al-Qaeda in Iraq, and announced a merger with al-Nusra without discussing it with anyone else. Al-Nusra told them to get bent, AQI declared they were going ahead with it, Zawahiri told everyone to chill out, and AQI announced it was breaking from al-Qaeda. Al-Nusra has remained allied with al-Qaeda, and sometimes coordinates with the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups, especially when fighting ISIS.

This is one of the weirdest things about ISIS: even al-Qaeda is against them, says they go too far, and thinks they're more extreme than the Quran allows. They have basically the entire world--including most terrorists--against them.