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Music Labels Sue Charter, Complain That High Internet Speeds Fuel Piracy (arstechnica.com)
The music industry is suing Charter Communications, claiming that the cable Internet provider profits from music piracy by failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who illegally download copyrighted songs. The lawsuit also complains that Charter helps its subscribers pirate music by selling packages with higher Internet speeds. Ars Technica reports: While the act of providing higher Internet speeds clearly isn't a violation of any law, ISPs can be held liable for their users' copyright infringement if the ISPs repeatedly fail to disconnect repeat infringers. The top music labelsâ"Sony, Universal, Warner, and their various subsidiariesâ"sued Charter Friday in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado. While Charter has a copyright policy that says repeat copyright infringers may be disconnected, Charter has failed to disconnect those repeat infringers in practice, the complaint said: "Despite these alleged policies, and despite receiving hundreds of thousands of infringement notices from Plaintiffs, as well as thousands of similar notices from other copyright owners, Charter knowingly permitted specifically identified repeat infringers to continue to use its network to infringe. Rather than disconnect the Internet access of blatant repeat infringers to curtail their infringement, Charter knowingly continued to provide these subscribers with the Internet access that enabled them to continue to illegally download or distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted works unabated. Charter's provision of high-speed Internet service to known infringers materially contributed to these direct infringements."
The complaint accuses Charter of contributory copyright infringement and vicarious copyright infringement. Music labels asked for statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work infringed or for actual damages including any profit Charter allegedly made from allowing piracy. The complaint focuses on alleged violations between March 24, 2013 and May 17, 2016. During that time, plaintiffs say they sent infringement notices to Charter that "advised Charter of its subscribers' blatant and systematic use of Charter's Internet service to illegally download, copy, and distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted music through BitTorrent and other online file-sharing services." The music industry's complaint repeatedly focused on BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks, saying that "online piracy committed via BitTorrent is stunning in nature, speed, and scope."
The complaint accuses Charter of contributory copyright infringement and vicarious copyright infringement. Music labels asked for statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work infringed or for actual damages including any profit Charter allegedly made from allowing piracy. The complaint focuses on alleged violations between March 24, 2013 and May 17, 2016. During that time, plaintiffs say they sent infringement notices to Charter that "advised Charter of its subscribers' blatant and systematic use of Charter's Internet service to illegally download, copy, and distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted music through BitTorrent and other online file-sharing services." The music industry's complaint repeatedly focused on BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks, saying that "online piracy committed via BitTorrent is stunning in nature, speed, and scope."
Seriously though, the first claim is at least plausible and might go somewhere. The second however is just batshit straw grasping crazy.
We need to sue music labels for trying to sell annoying thumping noises as "music".
I wonder if the music labels still consider anything over 56k to be "high speed", as any internet connection capable of streaming acceptable video at SDTV resolutions, much less HDTV, makes downloading audio, which is generally about 1% of a video stream, trivial.
Even with just a megabit connection, I could download months worth of audio traffic in a single day.
But then, music labels still haven't figured out:
1. They need to make buying music from them convenient.
2. They can't charge prices higher than video content producers.
It's crazy that buying the soundtrack to a movie often costs more than the movie.
I don't read AC A human right
I don't buy music from major labels anymore. Not that they sell anything worth listening to, anyway. If it can't be found on Bandcamp, or an indie label, it's probably not even worth listening to these days.
high internet speeds are what is causing all the downloads of me and chelsea Clintons sex tape.
Regular folks can't even bring a suit against a company like Experian, which they can't even boycott, and who loses their information. Because there's no damage to show. And, somehow these clowns can get this lawsuit off the ground!?
CAPTCHA: defraud
What a bunch or morons.
Piracy has been going on since dial up modem times.
Further, they're still relying on the argument that this sort of piracy cost the stakeholders anything. A lot of minor piraters wouldn't buy the piece in the first place. Yes it's theft of services, but not piracy.
Going after the small fry is pointless, and doesn't do a damn thing about real piracy.
Stupid old men. Get off my lawn!
While the idiot is out front yelling at the kids, the real criminal has snuck in the backdoor and stolen the goods.
Google censors it in search result but if you search for the song names it still turns up.
"Born to be lied to" is a good one.
Maybe Charter should block music streaming sites. Charge the music industry a huge monthly fee for access to subscribers. There's no net neutrality, so it shouldn't be a problem.
Apple charges for access to Apple users, not a lot different really.
That will teach you all good, Freedom only requires 56K.
fail to disconnect repeat infringes did a court prove that they are infringes?
The music industry profits by selling bank robbers the music they use to get themselves psyched up for the big hit.
..... is stunning in nature, speed, and scope. Indeed. And I take great pleasure in fucking over you music industry douchebags.
I find other ways to support the actual artists, they have value to society. The RIAA otoh, has none at all.
...and we're all being played. Has anyone verified the court filing? (No, I didn't RTFA, just skimmed the summary.)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Yep, a relative few folks are downloading your intellectual material via Torrent, who wouldn't otherwise actually purchase your product, and a thousand unregulated Chinese companies are reproducing copies of your life's work as fast as the paying market demands.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Comcast owns universal. Thatâ(TM)s one of the biggest labels in the MPAA. This seems like Comcast attacking a competitor. Look for a valuation drop and a Comcast takeover move
The lawsuit also complains that Charter helps its subscribers pirate music by selling packages with higher Internet speeds.
That's like, like claiming the music industry encourages piracy by producing better, more desirable or just music that gets you on the Iron Throne. Flabbergasting!
The music labels have decided to sue the US postal service for still delivering packages sent by infringers who mailed copied CDs. Music labels say priority mail enablles the CDs to be shared even more rapidly.
If the music industry is suing because people download crappy music, can we upload really crappy music and then sue the music industry?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Tell me more about how high speed limits enable auto theft...
Even sneakernet is too fast.
HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC!!
Anyone remember that 'Chicken Little' routine? And who fessed up and admitted, "actually, we were wrong"? Hehehehee...
AC
Need a class action lawsuit against the MPAA and its members for conspiring to do material harm to every internet user in the country.
This lawsuit should be for 78 quintillion dollars, in keeping with the precedents they set with their ridiculously large demands of music "pirates" who it turned out made them far more money than non-pirates.
Music labels sue slow ISPs, which force people to pirate individual tracks and get together to exchange them in person, which decreases the labels' revenues from streaming services.
You can easily find a direct download that isn't traceable of 99% of musics these days... Not to mention you can simply rip the audio from a youtube video.
Shit i haven't even pirated any music in a decade.
I've got it all already. And don't listen to it now.
"We can't profit from it so we don't want you to either."
I listen to Synthwave on youtube and download free as in beer songs from soundcloud all day long.
I download free code from Github to learn, and use free learning tutorials all over the internet to do my job every day.
If I want Pr0n, there's a hundred sites, all with quality content.
The music labels are obsolete and so are their lawyers. If your business model is predicated on accusing people of harming you then collecting like some highwaymen, and not Innocent until prooven guilty, then you are a parasite and need to be out of business.
ISPs are required by the DMCA to have a repeat infringer termination policy and to follow that policy. The exact subtext that lays out this requirement reads: "[for an ISP to be eligible for limited liability status]...it must adopt and reasonably implement a policy of terminating in appropriate circumstances the accounts of subscribers who are repeat infringers," I propose this as a layman's version of that policy:
"If a court of law issues multiple judgments (or multiple counts in a single judgment) against you that find you guilty of copyright infringement, and finds that those acts of copyright infringement were performed while directly using our services for access, your high-speed internet account with us will be terminated immediately. DMCA takedown notices are considered to be unproven allegations and will not be treated as proof of infringement without the previously mentioned court order being provided."
This appropriately balances the interests of the rightsholders and the alleged infringers while following the requirement set forth in the DMCA. A DMCA takedown notice has never constituted proof of infringement; they exist to have allegedly infringing content taken down quickly and a process exists by which the affected person can challenge the notice and force the rightsholders into court if they still want it taken down. The entire problem here is that DMCA takedown notices are being treated as having equal legal weight to a court judgment of copyright infringement when that's clearly not the case.
I wish someone would email this suggestion to the ISPs so they could implement it and make this stupid crap go away already. If the ISPs did this, rightsholders would be forced to support their allegations in court to disconnect alleged infringers rather than expecting their completely unproven and potentially baseless say-so to automatically result in a permanent disconnection.
needs something like the Locomotive Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
To cover the speed of operation of your new modem in terms of mph (mp3 per hour)
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Because shitty, overly promoted mainstream music, an antiquated business model, an arrogant attitude and a complete misunderstanding of their audience are what fuels piracy. Hell, we can toss in income inequality as well. ( Tip: You're not gonna sell your product to those who can't afford it. )
Oh and. . . . because some people just want to watch the world burn :D
The next time I get a speeding ticket, I'm going to sue the government for paving the road.
In other news Banks are suing car companies claiming faster cars fuel bank robberies.
Simple to solve:
1) ISP need to counter-sue companies like Sony, etc. They are causing issues that are not there.
2) Smart ISPs would split off services from physical hardware. They were better off having loads of companies that delivered services. The more services the harder it is for the labels.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
... for not stopping repeat infringers from driving to a friends house to grab a copy. By providing smooth, fast-flowing freeways, the Highway Department is encouraging repeat offenders.
With services like Spotify and Apple Music where you can listen to pretty much any song ever released any time for only a few bucks a month, is music piracy still such a big problem?
Of all the things people should be suing the telecoms for, this is low on the list.
Table-ized A.I.
Railways, Coal and Iron are a threat to the horse, carriage making business. Or that is what they said back then. My grandfather's first profession was wooden wheel maker that he learned exactly in 1919, when he was 16. The story is that he knew how to make wooden wheels, but his skills wee used to making furniture and doing carpentry. High speed internet or not internet, people would not buy shitty music, so no need to blame highspeed internet.
Music Labels Sue Charter, Complain That High Internet Speeds Fuel Piracy
Clearly they've never had Charter as a service provider.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
... repeat infringers ...
Why in simple hell didn't they go after those individuals?
ISPs and the Internet infrastructure need to be classified as a utility.
By the music industry's logic, they could also sue electric companies for powering pirate-enabling devices, right?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Complaining about piranha.
Pay the artists for a fucking change.
“But we have no customers!”
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Comcast owns universal. That's one of the biggest labels in the MPAA.
True, but not entirely relevant to the present article. Both Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group were spun off from their respective movie studios in 2004. Comcast has owned NBCUniversal since 2011, but Vivendi still owns Universal Music Group. Among major labels, only Sony has managed to hang on to its movie studio.
It's a serious question. Maybe albums you don't find on Spotify, or youtube or any other streaming service. But I think it's a very small percentage. So who are they suing?
so we can sue the record labels for encouraging piracy by making music.????
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Optical discs? Does anyone actually use those any more?
...so, when we will sue the firearms industry? Because firearms facilitate crimes you know?!, Then firearms producers must be held accountable. Maybe we can get a shot to the automotive industry too, because after a bank heist usually criminals run away with a car. There's plenty of work to do, let's get started.
I wonder how many GPL violations the music industry commits?
I wonder what would happen if GPL licenses were enforced for the music industry?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
so what is with these clowns really ? so eager to enforce because they are leeching all the way, they can't make anything themself and are always leeching of others work. But acting entitled always. Typical for leeches and parasites. Blame everyone but themselves.
If the music execs were tortured over the course of a month or so, with their corpses left lying in public spaces, they would stop this utter shit. Why the fuck should any ISP be in charge of policing their users? If you know who the infringer is, sue them or have them arrested. Leave the ISP out of the punishment phase.
100GB? That's... it? I've got more than that.
Contributions to the library should be sent to t4r4nk1ng@gmail.com
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
And sue for what? You idiot Americans think suing is the answer for everything, when it's half the reason your country is in such a mess in the first place.
Why no answer? Why just your standard false accusations and then running away?
Where's the honour in that?
Despite these alleged policies, and despite receiving hundreds of thousands of infringement notices from Plaintiffs, as well as thousands of similar notices from other copyright owners
Maybe this is part of the problem.
All those infringement notices are legally required to be researched to be accurate by the party sending them.
Does anybody truly believe this has happened?
Why should Charter foot that bill?
Music taste gets defined between 12 and 18 years of age. To download all the music you ever heard in these years you'll need about 10 minutes of torrenting nowadays.
Then you don't have to pay for Spotify, Amazon or Apple music, ever.
all broadband will be destroyed and everyone must connect via a 56k modem to 100 year old telegraph lines
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"ISPs can be held liable for their users' copyright infringement if the ISPs repeatedly fail to disconnect repeat infringers."
Um. No. They actually can't, because they are common carriers. ISPs are not responsible for content on their networks and have no duty to police it. Good Christ, could you imagine? They'd all be in jail for child porn right now were that the case.
What the MPAA and RIAA should be doing is using due process to obtain a court order to terminate a violator's account. That woud be the legal way to do it, but since Charter has grown so much and has lots of cash, they just figure they will go for the cash grab.
It's not the high speeds.
It's the business model of the music industry...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Would it help if ISPs phrase their TOS repeat infringer policy to read: multiple CONVICTIONS for copyright infringement and they will be disconnected?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
FUCK YOU!
Nobody wants or needs you.
You could all die and no one would miss you.
Drug cartels can haul large amounts of drugs with trucks at high speed over motorways. Therefore motorways are to blame for drug addiction and should be banned.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
suing hard disk vendors for allowing too much storage space, suing cpu vendors for making cpu's that are so fast they can play music easily, suing hifi vendors for making devices that allows to play music at any time of your choice, suing people for having ears.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I'm Suing the Banks, because they lend money, and money lending leads people into debt, and debt is bad.
There is a cure for this though, and it involves the banks lending money at 0.00%, eliminating all service fees, and increasing office hours to 24x7x365.
I see no problems with this.
Let's slow everyone down so it will stop piracy!!!
Give me a break. Even when I had a lowly 2400 baud modem I'd just dial up, queue my downloads, and let it run "in batch" if you will overnight. You can't stop me if I really, really want that content, don't want to pay for it, and it is available from the local pirate-area.
Perhaps make content that is good enough that I want to actually BUY? What a novel idea!
While we at it, why don't we sue public transportation for making it easier for poor people to get to rich people's houses to burglarize them?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Curse you, Music Industry. You're making me defend Charter! Do you know how much I hate Charter? A lot. I'd drop them in a second if I had any alternative in my area. However, your lawsuit is so laughable and groundless that I'm forced to take Charter's side in this. Stop it right now so I can get back to complaining about how bad Charter is.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I've often wondered about how I would react if some music industry person one day decided to take me to court for piracy. I've had a number of letters from Virgin, suggesting that my connection has been used to download such-and-such via BitTorrent. (note: no, it wasn't Natalie Portman Naked & Petrified Hot Grits Porn © Slashdot 2001). The letters are worded such that it suggests that the copyright owner has 'seen' my computer 'offering' the content via Bittorrent sharing. I'm not convinced that the industry peeps have a very good case - in fact a case at all - as otherwise they'd surely be doing more than asking my ISP to send a letter. So I thought about how they collect their "evidence", and what going to court actually means.
1) First up, in case law, it's now been established (to the best of my knowledge) that an IP number does not identify an individual. So if all the "evidence" they have is an i.p. address, then that should get thrown out straight away.
2) OK, so let's say they now get hold of a hard drive that the pirate dropped in my house (amazingly it turns out that it fell into my NAS). "Here your honour," they say, "here's lots of movies and music that was pirated!". Well actually, the law says that the burden of proof is on the accuser, so... PROVE that those movies are not on the hard drive legally. The doctrine of fair use allows an individual to make backup copies of movies/songs/whatever that they have purchased, so.... prove I have never legally purchased each movie you are claiming has been illegally shared. That's actually quite a difficult thing to do - so difficult in fact, that without access to every single purchase I have ever made, it's pretty much impossible.
3) Let's say that a judge buys the "IP" argument, so now the industry bod is showing how at the same time a movie was being downloaded, it was also being uploaded as well. So... how did you come via that data? To obtain such data you would have required access to data from my computer, and permission to access that has never been granted by me. That would mean an offence has been committed in collecting the "evidence", and thus it would be dismissed from the case.
Ultimately it seems to me that the data is more likely than not collected illegally, and even if something in the t&c says that I have granted permission for anyone to access my data on the offchance I might be doing something naughty, then it's not a fair condition under contract law, and would be thrown out. So they'd have to prove their case without any data from my PC... and that in itself is surely nigh-on impossible?
So.... has anyone ever tried using these defences - which, to me, seem pretty obvious and legally sound (obviously IANAL but I have a fairly good understanding of the legal process and have won cases without any legal assistance) - and if so, what has been the result? I know no-one on here is a lawyer, but where's the obvious thing I'm missing?
While there, he robbed a liquor store at gunpoint, raped a 17 year old girl, bought some crack cocaine, smoked it, then shot a family of 5, killing 3 and permanently crippling the two others, a now-orphaned 9 year old and his 2 year-old baby brother. He was captured by police after a 45 minute standoff in which a hostage was severely injured, and a cop was shot and killed.
The bus company is expected to get 20 years to life for his crimes, since they’re who brought the guy downtown in the first place. They could have stopped him by not taking him there, so they’re legally liable for what he did. Right, “music” industry assholes?
Suddenly, the lawsuit against Charter seems kinda ridiculous.
TEN TIMES the piracy!
AAAAAAARRRRRR!!
Corporatism != Free Market
Copyright has run its course. Abolish it and move on as a culture.
It has been noted multiple times that the copyright infringement claims are bogus. Sometimes people are indeed copying music - that goes without saying (I am aware of at least one person who has a multi TB horde of illegal downloads that they represent as their personal collection).
However, the "complaint" still needs to be proven or at least strong evidence shown. We're all aware of the stories from years back where automated software was sending take-downs, and in many cases fair-use was a legitimate defense.
So as an ISP I'd require more "court orders" than arbitrary take-down "requests." I tend to put weight on the innocent until proven guilty.
Do all of them require court orders? No - I'm sure there are examples where strong evidence is shown that a person is probably guilty. At least pass them notice as a proxy "This giant multi-national has strong evidence, you have 90-days to respond or your service will be shutdown"
We really don't want courts involved in this. Courts are expensive and many people can't afford to properly defend themselves.
Best thing would just be to make the penalty for non-commercial infringement zero.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
OMG!!!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
tomorrow they will be suing the electric company for providing electricity that help facilitate piracy.
In criminal court the STATE has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt and you have an right to an public defender.
Literally. I worked in a CD store and stole about 8000 cd's during that time. It was amazing! Shitting all over the record companies, stealing everything I could. Sorry artists, you were casualty of war, I really have no sympathy for you.
Since about 1995, I've pirated EVERYTHING and not given the music industry a single $. I download all music off the internet for free. I try to pre-release and spread music just to piss off these industry dick lickers. Itunes? hahahahahaha,..
keep stealing from record companies folks, until the day you die. it is the only way to revenge these assholes
...Companies would rather hurt their consumers than change their business model or accept a slight loss in profit. 3+ powerful companies are banding together to try to bully an ISP into slowing down our internet, based on a "potential" enablement of piracy. Where do we draw the line at?
"The cause of fear is ignorance."
The lawsuit also complains that Charter helps its subscribers pirate music by selling packages with higher Internet speeds.
And highways help move illegal goods around at a fast rate, and allow criminals to move quickly from one state to another to avoid local law enforcement. Can we sue governments for putting up these roads that facilitate crime?
I have a hotel property that uses Charter for their guest internet access. They routinely get copyright violation notice emails from Charter, but they are pretty powerless as to what to do about it since the email is pretty vague as far as connection details that could possible be traced back to a guest that is long gone. They do have a guest agreement page that states that the guest wonâ(TM)t among other things âdownload copyrighted materialsâ(TM), but of course they do it anyway. If the recording industry was really serious about the problem, they would provide a IP blacklist to the ISPâ(TM)s that they could use for filtering. Even with TOR and VPNâ(TM)s to obscure location, the data requested still has to hit the open internet at some point where the filter would be useful. But, this would actually require them to be proactive instead of pushing their problem onto someone else. This recent whining by the recording industry reminds me of what happened back in the 80â(TM)s when they whined to the government about home tapers and how they were losing so much money because of it. So could you please Mr Senator put a tax on recording media, payable to us, to make up for those lost profits? Btw, hereâ(TM)s a brib âer campaign contribution towards your reelection.
Why do you always lie WindBourne? https://slashdot.org/comments....