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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.
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
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.
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.
Piracy has been going on since dial up modem times.
Well... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea Peoples who threatened the ships sailing in the Aegean and Mediterranean waters in the 14th century BC.
[ Perhaps they had *really* long landlines ... ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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. . . .
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.
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.
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?
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.
Actually, in the meaning of copyright infringement, perhaps since 1603 and the 1886 Berne convention mentioned it by name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
What has change is that "piracy" meant for profit copyright infringement until recently when referring to peer to peer sharing.
Me, I was taught that sharing was good and showed a positive character.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
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.
Ewww, Bill wouldn't stoop that low...
Joe Biden would, though...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
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?