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."

Comments

wait ... common carrier?

[roc97007]

Ok IANAL, but wouldn't Grande Communications have common carrier status? In that, they just provide the pipeline and aren't responsible for the content?

Re:wait ... common carrier?

[starblazer]

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.

Re:wait ... common carrier?

[e3m4n]

when the RIAA and the MPAA are directly, and indirectly, responsible for MILLIONS and MILLIONS or campaign contributions, we get laws that make it a felony to copy their shit. Lets say I am a software developer, and lets say I make a product (I actually do but thats not relevant to the analogy). If you copy my product and go about selling it as your own, It's my responsibility to file a civil suit against you, fight it out in court for years, just to keep the other guy from continuing to make money selling something that's my intellectual property. The exact same crime, selling bootleg movies or music, is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Is that equal protection under the law? Nope. Im not a rhino, but historically its the Dems that pushed for all these damn laws, mostly because these companies represent a lot of Hollywood doners. When my software get the same legal protections and felony charges that the MPAA and RIAA get for violating copyright, I'll give a fuck about those over protected pieces of shit. Until them I hope their whole fucking house of cards comes down around them. If there is ever a 'zombie apocalypse' (as in total anarchy devoid of any sort of law and order) I will personally make sure that those assholes are not around by the time law and order ever gets restored. Maybe I'll arrange for them to be exiled to a deserted island in the pacific where they eat what they can catch or kill; even If I have to haul them there myself. So sick of those over protected pieces of shit.

Re:wait ... common carrier?

[SvnLyrBrto]

The really frustrating thing is that the problems with the DMCA could be easily be solved, if the congresscritters weren't so despicably corrupt. It'd take just two simple steps:

1) Abolish mass and automated takedown notices. Mandate that every takedown be reviewed by a single, responsible, and identifiable individual who swears, under that currently-uninforced "penalty of perjury" clause, that he is the owner or their representative thereof of the copyrighted work and that the online content is, in fact, infringing. Require these notices to be delivered, in writing, via a tracked and audible service such as FedEx, DHL, or certified or registered mail.

2) Put some teeth into the "under penalty of perjury" that accusers of infringement are supposed to swear upon. If the content is found to be owned by someone else, or by someone the accuser doesn't represent, or fair use, or satire, or journalistic, or in any other way non-infringing; off to jail with the perjurer. A nice schedule, I think, would be 30 days in county for the first offense, 90 days for the second, and a year in the state pen plus permanent disbarment and a ban on holding corporate office or trading on the stock market for the third offense.

Easy-pasey, lemon-squeasy... the fraudulent and frivolous DMCA filings would evaporate overnight.

Time for a class action against record companies

[Anonymous Coward]

for releasing noise, and mislabelling it music.

Re:Just another revenue source

[viperidaenz]

They don't like suing individuals, because once they're declared bankrupt, there isn't enough money left in their assets to pay their own lawyers, because they had to sell their house to pay their own lawyer.

Charge the MOFOs

[rojash]

ISPs just need to charge the damn studios for tracing and/or tracking vile downloaders (no I am NOT one...I insist!!)

Re:Charge the MOFOs

[CharlesAKAChuck]

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?

Re:Charge the MOFOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the copyright holders don't want to pay ISPs to investigate the copyright infringement that the ISPs are enabling. They way they see it, copyright infringement is already the ISPs fault, and the ISPs profit from it (in user subscription fees), so the ISP should be required to find a way of preventing it, on their own dime.

That's all just doublespeak, of course. Really, copyright holders feel that since they created something, they should get paid ridiculous amounts of money for it, for the rest of eternity, and everyone BUT them should be obligated to ensure that they never get cheated out of a penny of what they are due. They feel completely entitled to this, and further feel that the notion that copyright should ever expire is a moral transgression.

Entitled, greedy bastards if you ask me.

How thing (supposedly) work in Brazil

[morcego]

(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.

Re:How thing (supposedly) work in Brazil

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually read about the facts in the McDonald's lawsuit you have a very different view.

The lady had 3rd degree burns in her pelvic region requiring skin grafts and two years of medical treatments.
FYI the award was reduced by the judge to 640k.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants

If you don't like reading then watch Hot Coffee on HBO you will get a very different view than the media that is pushing tort reform:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_(film)

Grande is Great

[XXeR]

I had Grande service for years, and they were by far the best internet provider I've ever had. Low and consistent price, and rarely any connectivity or speed issues.

I recently moved to an area they don't service and am stuck with Spectrum...which has been a horrible experience all around. This article makes me miss them even more.

Repeat Offender Termination

[fafalone]

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.

Letting someone else do your dirty work

[nehumanuscrede]

Is basically what it boils down to.

Why spend your own money on litigation ( lawyers are expensive ) when you can
rent a Congress Critter to draft a law forcing the rest of the world to do it for you ?

Seriously, the MPAA / RIAA have been trying to stop this since the days of cassette
tape and Beta-Max and they have NEVER been successful. It sounds to me they're
just tired of wasting their time and money and want to force everyone else to waste
theirs for a while.

One might think the smarter move would be to put that money to better use so folks
won't have much need to pirate anything. Example they fought tooth and nail against
streaming / digital downloading claiming the end was nigh . . . . .

But here we are and legitimate streaming / downloading is pretty much the de-facto
standard method of delivery now.

I swear I don't think the folks in charge over there look much past tomorrow when it
comes to long term planning.

Re:Just another revenue source

[SuricouRaven]

It's not about the money, it's about the deterrent: Ruin a few people, scare off the rest. The industry only stopped this approach because it was producing too much bad publicity. Rendering whole families homeless just to scare others into obedience is a good way to make people hate you.