Slashdot Mirror
Texas ISP Slams Music Industry For Trying To Turn It Into a 'Copyright Cop' (theregister.co.uk)
An ISP based in Texas has complained to a judge that the music industry is trying to turn internet providers into the "copyright police." From a report: "This case is an attempt by the US recording industry to make Internet service providers its de facto copyright enforcement agents," reads the latest filing in an ongoing court case involving ISP Grande Communications. It goes on: "Having given up on actually pursuing direct infringers due to bad publicity, and having decided not to target the software and websites that make online file-sharing possible, the recording industry has shifted its focus to fashioning new forms of copyright liability that would require ISPs to act as the copyright police."
Grande Communications is a high-speed ISP that is the main provider for several university campuses in Texas. It was sued in April 2017 by 18 music companies including Universal, Capitol, Warner and Sony, who accuse it of allowing its users to "engage in more than one million infringements of copyrighted works over BitTorrent systems."
Grande Communications is a high-speed ISP that is the main provider for several university campuses in Texas. It was sued in April 2017 by 18 music companies including Universal, Capitol, Warner and Sony, who accuse it of allowing its users to "engage in more than one million infringements of copyrighted works over BitTorrent systems."
here's the thing though, they keep pushing thousands upon thousands of takedown notices, quite a few that are illegitimate upon these ISPs. They have to act on them or face losing common carrier status. Even if acting on them is stating "We looked, no infringing content found, go away" However, because they aren't the *AA, they will be dragged into court if they are found to be lying/mistaken, unlike the *AA when RightsCorp lies/"mistakes" for them.
(IAAL. This is how thing work on paper, how they are supposed to work according to the law. In practice, ymmv)
In Brazil, copyright infringement is a crime. Actually, a set of crimes. The smaller one being a simple copyright violation, which carries a penalty of 3 month up to 1 year jail, or a fine. The bigger one carrying a penalty of 2 to 4 years jail.
Once the part if found guilty, the holder of the copyright can sue him in civil court of ACTUAL damages. And although the existence of the damage is already establish in the criminal court, the extent still have to be proven on civil court. And that damage is limited to restitution. There are no punitive damages, since there is already a criminal conviction. Also, in the Brazilian legal system there is a rule that forbids enrichment without a cause. That also helps limit the extent of the civil indemnity.
This limitation on "enrichment without a cause" is quite interesting, actually. It means that punitive damages must never be a source of money for the autor of the suit. In a cause like the famous McDonald's "hot coffee", those $3mil punitive damages would not go do the consumer that got burned. Instead, it would go to a non-profit of some kind, probably one that fights for consumer rights. The consumer herself would only get actual damages (material and moral damages), probably in the order of $50 grand.
This all is to stop "get rich" lawsuits.
morcego
THIS! This is what the ISP should say:. Send all the notices you want, we'll investigate each and every one of them, but you're getting the bill for every bit of it, no matter the outcome of our investigation. If the notice is valid, we'll let you know all of the offender's details so you can take them to court. We'll also bill the offender for the time (cause we're an ISP and double billing makes us giddy), and if they don't pay, no more service for them. If the industry sending the notices doesn't pay our bill for our services rendered, then we stop worrying about your notices. Music industry, movie industry, whatever-you send us a notice, we'll check it out and bill you for it. Since we're getting paid, we'll actually do a real investigation, and it won't hurt our feelings to send letters and even terminate the occasional repeat offender's account. Plus the music and movie industries could actually back up their claims of losing multiple billions of dollars a year due to piracy, because they'll have the invoices from the ISPs to prove it.
ISPs get a new practically unlimited revenue source, music and movie industries actually get their piracy claims investigated, and individuals no longer blame the music/movie industry for stupid lawsuits, they'd be mad at the ISP.
How is this not already happening?
They're welcome to have their '3 strikes and you're out' policies, but naturally each strike has to come from being found to have infringed by a real court of law. This nonsense where the infringed party themselves determine your guilt is absurd. Not only do they have a conflict of interest, their tools that identified you can't be examined and are notoriously unreliable. There's good reasons why we don't allow guilt-on-accusation.
And not only that, there should be a 'repeat offender' termination policy for the *AA and their ilk too. 3 abusive notices like accusing a printer, targeting birdsong/noise/other things clearly not their work, or targeting what's clearly obvious fair use, and they lose their ability to accuse.