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Reddit Tells Label It Won't Cough Up IP Address of Prerelease Music Pirate (arstechnica.com)
David Kravets, writing for Ars Technica: Reddit says it won't give Atlantic Records the IP address of a Reddit user who posted a link on the site of a single by Twenty One Pilots a week before the song's planned release. The song, "Heathens," was originally uploaded on June 15 to the file-sharing site Dropfile. That same day, the file landed on Reddit. According to a lawsuit (PDF) in New York State Supreme Court, the file was posted to the Twenty One Pilots subreddit with the title âoe[Leak] New Song -- 'Heathens'. The Poster submitted the link under the username "twentyoneheathens," according to Atlantic. Atlantic and its subsidiary label, Fueled by Ramen, want the IP address of the Reddit leaker. The company said the file fell victim to "widespread distribution" on the Internet, so the company released the single June 16, a week ahead of schedule; the label also said the early release hindered a planned rollout on Spotify, iTunes, and other platforms. Atlantic says the leaker must be an Atlantic employee who was contractually obligated not to leak the track, which is featured in the movie Suicide Squad that debuted earlier this month. Reddit, however, said that Atlantic "has failed to show that its claims are meritorious." Reddit claims Atlantic has embarked on "an impermissible fishing expedition."
They did not ask Dropfile for the IP of that user? That would make more sense because that guy definitely is guilty. The Reddit poster, although guilty of bad taste, just posted a link to something already on the internet. Good luck proving he actually uploaded it to Dropfile.
It's an extraordinary remedy called a"Norwich Order", and to oversimplify, the requester has to swear they're suing someone, and the suit has to have a "prima facie case of" an offence and the claim has to appear to be reasonable and made in good faith. See also http://www.canlii.org/en/on/on...
Ordinary suits are filed against John Doe, and the courts asked to issue a order to third parties to help identify the defendants.
davecb@spamcop.net
First, a grammar nazi would respond with a three paragraph long post with numerous insults for you not knowing that "begging the question" is a descendant of an old local expression that indicated something was a case of circular reasoning.
This would then be followed by replies from a different faction of grammar nazis who hold the interesting balance that the meaning of words is mutable, but things like punctuation and sentence structure are sacred above all.
Eventually, someone responds with a car analogy about the crash safety records of the Robin Reliant, confusing most readers even more than the original debate.
In a final culmination, someone who meant to click 'post anonymously' but forgot will post a link to the new iOS app: cow.hosts
What was posted to Reddit was a link to the file that was uploaded to Dropfile. The Reddit user who posted the link may not be (and, in fact, likely isn't) the same person who uploaded it to Dropfile; the Reddit user is, most likely, someone with whom the untrustworthy employee who needs to be prosecuted shared the download link.
They need to go after the uploader and only Dropfile can identify the IP address from which the file was uploaded.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Ah, from the TFA:
What's more, Reddit suggests that Atlantic is targeting the wrong website. "Notably, Atlantic has failed to describe its efforts, if any, to obtain such information from Dropfile.to, the website to which the song was uploaded," Reddit's brief said. It also said that "a petition for pre-action discovery should be granted only if a petitioner demonstrates that he has a meritorious cause of action and the information sought is material and necessary to an existing and actionable wrong."
At least someone at Reddit is on the ball.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
All these weird stories about the movie Suicide Squad.......it makes me wonder if someone is trying some kind of astro-turfing thing to give support to the movie. The studio themselves probably leaked the soundtrack. Maybe they hired people with sock-puppet accounts to complain about Rotten Tomatoes. The whole thing is weird.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That isn't Reddit's problem in any way, shape or form. The file was uploaded to Dropfile allegedly by an Atlantic Records employee. Reddit had nothing to do with it and are taking the right action by telling Atlantic to go get screwed.
All too true. If the record company really wanted the person responsible they would be going to Dropfile and try to get the address of the person who uploaded. That very well could be an employee. The person who posted the link to Reddit could have just read about the song elsewhere and thought it would be great to share the link and have no connection to the company at all.