Judge Rules Verizon Must Give RIAA the Name of Mega-Music Downloader

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,108889,tk,dn012103X,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article...n012103X,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div>"The recording industry can get its hands on the name of an Internet user who downloaded more than 600 songs in a single day, a federal judge has ruled. Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday ordered Verizon Internet Services to turn over the name of one of its customers to the Recording Industry Association of America. The ruling is a victory for the record companies in their fight to control how music is downloaded from the Internet."<br /><br />This should be a bit sobering for those of us that use file sharing services - the DCMA is a big bat, and the RIAA is swinging it around seeing who they can hit. Ouch!

[sponge]

At least Hilary Rosen is leaving the RIAA, in an attempt to "soften their image on the Internet"

[Fzara]

This is hypocrisy. So the RIAA's new plan is to go around and try to get big file sharers to go to court/jail? This is definitely a very weak strategy by the RIAA. In fact, an 18 year old college student like myself can make a better strategy. Why attack the users, when the technology allows for it? The RIAA has been told numerous times that the internet is becoming, heck, has BEGUN the music revoultion.

The RIAA needs to start lowering prices on albums while offering music which can be listened to by individual users on the computer, WITHOUT limitations.

Maybe the RIAA will hire me :wink:

[Paragon]

I realize the implications of this can get a bit deep, but 600 songs a day! Oh, I'm sure that is all for personal use. I think we should be carefull not to harbour the people who are abusing the file sharing system. It's those type that are making it difficult for those of us that use it as a BUYING tool.

Dave

[vetteguy]

I'd like to be a fly on the wall of one of these meetings where some consultant tells the moronic executives that this type of action will actually DISCOURAGE people from downloading music. I'm pretty sure that over the course of time, the more you tell someone not to do something, the more likely they are to try. Especially for something as easy to do as this. This is going to be like trying to prosecute everyone who has ever exceeded any speedlimit in any car on any road, EVER. Riiiiiiiight.

[dhettel]

Ok let me see if I have this correct.

First this guy did not go out and get 600 mp3, but what he did, was supply 600 downloads to other users? It could have been as simple as he had a "HOT" song on his machine that was want by a large number of people?

To me that makes the 600 number more reasonable. But if that is correct, how do they know how many users downloaded from his site? The RIAA can come into my home, and count the number of people connecting to my server? But not know who, or where I am? I find that a lot more scary myself! :evil: :twisted: Either way if they have a means of getting into this guys computer to count, they can get into yours or mine. Or is it just a case of the RIAA guessing, and everyone taking their guess as a fact?

David

[cyclwestks]

I guess "right to privacy" just went right out the window. If an employer turns in a social security # that doesn't match a name the Social Security Admin has, they send a letter to the employer asking him to check the ss# with the employee, while at the same time telling the employer that the employee doesn't have to "show" the card. Verizon could say "Oh, sorry the server crashed."

[Christian]

Unless I'm missing something, I also read that article as implying that the Verizon user only shared hundreds of files, or perhaps contributed to hundreds of downloads. Neither of these equals downloading hundreds of mp3's per day, and neither is that outrageous given P2P.

Either way, the news is disconcerting.

[Paragon]

Isn't anyone curious to know what song it was?! :)

Dave

[TheBacklash]

Things like this make me *want* to download every song I see on the net (p2p)

The more they try to tax the music, yes taxing the internet p2p users has been put out there as a new way to crack down on everyone..., the more people will move away from buying CD's and just download them.

They want to blame the net for ruining the Music business? lol
Maybe when the music industry puts out worthwhile music, i'll buy a CD again...
I use p2p here and there, but rarely do I download music. I rarely listen to music period... Nothing to do with the net that turned me away from buying music... the music itself turned me away from buying music. :roll:

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Well, it would be interesting to hear the real story about what this guy did. I agree with Paragon, as much as I hate the RIAA, if this guy did actually download 600 songs in a day (which is mind-boggling), then I'd have a hard time justifying his defense.

[ricksfiona]

Folks, EVERY ISP keeps track of the traffic that goes in/out of your Internet connection. What URL's you visited, what files you uploaded/downloaded, it's all logged into a database. I don't know all the reasons why they do this, but part of it is for police/legal stuff. I believe the authorities have to get a warrant to get this information, but we all know a warrant is not a difficult thing to get.

[Pony99CA]

"The recording industry can get its hands on the name of an Internet user who downloaded more than 600 songs in a single day, a federal judge has ruled. Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday ordered Verizon Internet Services to turn over the name of one of its customers to the Recording Industry Association of America. The ruling is a victory for the record companies in their fight to control how music is downloaded from the Internet."
The way that story makes things sound doesn't sound like what I heard the suit was about. The way I heard it, the guy didn't download 600 songs, he was sharing 600 songs on his computer for others to download. Check out this ZDNet link (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-960838.html) for details.

Steve

[sponge]

Isn't that what we want? To go after the users, not the services? All these people cry horrendously when a P2P service is under attack, because of it's legit uses. So now the RIAA defends itself by going after HEAVY users, and it's still wrong! You can't have it both ways here.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Isn't that what we want? To go after the users, not the services? All these people cry horrendously when a P2P service is under attack, because of it's legit uses. So now the RIAA defends itself by going after HEAVY users, and it's still wrong! You can't have it both ways here.
Personally, I'd rather have them go after the users then to continually come up with ultra-lame copy protection schemes which make it more and more tedious for me to create digital files from.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

BTW, anyone know why these quote tags sometimes work and sometimes don't? (See my post above...)

[ender]

Personally I am not too worried about it.

1. Verizon will appeal and will be tied up in the courts for months or even years. We will not see the results of this for 2 years at least.

2. By then someone will have come up with software that encrypts and decrypts the files you share and download so that no one but you know what you are downloading.

Don't worry the RIAA is fighting a losing battle. :lol:

[GregWard]

Folks, EVERY ISP keeps track of the traffic that goes in/out of your Internet connection. What URL's you visited, what files you uploaded/downloaded, it's all logged into a database.

There's a big difference between :

a. HAVING this information
b. KEEPING it
c. being able to USE it

The easiest way of using it is probably to set up a query to look for extremes - like downloading lots of mp3 files. Which reveals this story to be (what it probably is) an attempt to make an example of somebody (anybody!!!).

[GoldKey]

I went to a class a few months back on computer forensics. One of the things we discussed in detail was that if you are attacked, you need to contact the ISP immediately, because many only keep the logs for 24-48 hours. So, the real question is, does Verison even still have the logs for this incident?

[cludwig]

Folks, EVERY ISP keeps track of the traffic that goes in/out of your Internet connection. What URL's you visited, what files you uploaded/downloaded, it's all logged into a database. I don't know all the reasons why they do this, but part of it is for police/legal stuff. I believe the authorities have to get a warrant to get this information, but we all know a warrant is not a difficult thing to get.

That's one of the most interesting things about this case. The RIAA is arguing (and won!) that the DMCA allows them to force the ISP to release the information _WITHOUT_ a warrant. The DMCA has as much to do with a "tradeoff" between ISPs and the copyright owners as it does with protecting copyrights. By agreeing to take action when a copyright holder alleges an infraction (without requiring a court order) the ISPs bought themselves relative immunity from being sued as the "conduit" for the material in question. This tradeoff is pernicious because the copyright holder has only to accuse the alleged violator and the ISP is then compelled to remedy the alleged violation in the absence of a ruling from a third party.

The DMCA (as worded and as I understand it) didn't compell an ISP to _reveal information about the alleged violator_ in the absence of a warrant or order, just to _remedy the violation._

RIAA wants the act interpreted more broadly because (due to the anonymous nature of the file-sharing service used), they couldn't identify the alleged violator. RIAA won the right to force identification of the alleged violator in furtherence of their already-granted right to accuse and compell action against the alleged violator. That's where Verizon's disagreed... they feel that the DMCA doesn't (by letter) compell them to reveal identity without a warrant or order. Unfortunately the ruling didn't go that way.

There is so much wrong with the DMCA that it's hard to know where to begin. Sigh.

[Jason Dunn]

BTW, anyone know why these quote tags sometimes work and sometimes don't? (See my post above...)

That happened because sponge had bbCode disabled in his profile. When you quote someone who posted with bbCode disabled, for some odd reason is inherits the properties and breaks your post. I went into sponge's profile and turned bbCode on (hope that's ok sponge!) - we need to find a global way to turn bbCode on for all users - I don't know why people disable it, or even why phpBB allows it. :?

[dbrahms]

Ummmm....anyone notice that this case involves American entities only? The RIAA and Verizon are US companies....which means the (RIAA) has no juristiction outside the US...which means that a file sharing service can be based out of another country (russia, china, veitnam, poland, etc) and not be subject to our laws...BUT we'd still be able to get the media!!!! just as foreigners can download from other countries. I'm no lawyer, but it doesnt seem likely that the copyright holder will be able to police the entire world.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

BTW, anyone know why these quote tags sometimes work and sometimes don't? (See my post above...)
That happened because sponge had bbCode disabled in his profile. When you quote someone who posted with bbCode disabled, for some odd reason is inherits the properties and breaks your post. I went into sponge's profile and turned bbCode on (hope that's ok sponge!) - we need to find a global way to turn bbCode on for all users - I don't know why people disable it, or even why phpBB allows it. :?
Ah. Thanks for the explanation Jason. That makes sense... it's only happened to me a few times, but the first time it happened, I stared at my post for a couple of minutes thinking I did something wrong. :?

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Ummmm....anyone notice that this case involves American entities only? The RIAA and Verizon are US companies....which means the (RIAA) has no juristiction outside the US...which means that a file sharing service can be based out of another country (russia, china, veitnam, poland, etc) and not be subject to our laws...BUT we'd still be able to get the media!!!! just as foreigners can download from other countries. I'm no lawyer, but it doesnt seem likely that the copyright holder will be able to police the entire world.
What I'm kind of worry about though is whether the actions in the US will eventually be viewed as a model to be followed in other countries. For example, Japan is now following in the US' footsteps in terms of CD copy protection. It's taken to a higher extreme there in fact... pretty much all the new CDs even say that they won't play in Mac's and some claim you may have issues playing them in PC's. In countries where the recording industry is making HUGE $$, I can easily see the same type of actions taking place.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

...
RIAA wants the act interpreted more broadly because (due to the anonymous nature of the file-sharing service used), they couldn't identify the alleged violator. RIAA won the right to force identification of the alleged violator in furtherence of their already-granted right to accuse and compell action against the alleged violator. That's where Verizon's disagreed... they feel that the DMCA doesn't (by letter) compell them to reveal identity without a warrant or order. Unfortunately the ruling didn't go that way.
That was a fascinating read... do you practice law cludwig?

[smittyofdhs]

Folks, EVERY ISP keeps track of the traffic that goes in/out of your Internet connection. What URL's you visited, what files you uploaded/downloaded, it's all logged into a database. I don't know all the reasons why they do this, but part of it is for police/legal stuff. I believe the authorities have to get a warrant to get this information, but we all know a warrant is not a difficult thing to get.

Do you really believe this? There's no way possible that AOL is tracking every single user's activity, that's totally absurd. Just think about it, they have millions of users. Each user goes to say 5 sites per dialup, I doubt AOL is keeping track of more the 5 million URL's that people visit.

They do track which user had which IP address throughout a day which is probably how they tracked this guy down. And, they can track the info you mentioned above, but they don't track it without a warrant.

Just do the math and you'll see it's impossible to track that much info for that many users 24/7.

[thepalmdefender]

actually aols ips are very strange.

their ips are almost constantly changing, like if you goto ipchicken and refresh a few times with aol you ip will have changed a few times. Im not sure if there is a word for it but i call them ulltra-dynamic. Verizon (DSL) i think it changes every time your comp reboots, but im not 100% on that. Verizon would be dynamic ips which, im sure are logged who had what ip and when. Some other isps it would be even easier to track, for example my isp has what i call semi-static ips(another one of my 'made up' names for the term) where i keep the ip for long periods of time and maybe every 6 or 9 months it changes. People with T1 or ISDN (i think) always keep the same ip, making them the easiest to track.

hopefully this gave you some insight on how the ips for different isps work.

[cludwig]

...
RIAA wants the act interpreted more broadly because (due to the anonymous nature of the file-sharing service used), they couldn't identify the alleged violator. RIAA won the right to force identification of the alleged violator in furtherence of their already-granted right to accuse and compell action against the alleged violator. That's where Verizon's disagreed... they feel that the DMCA doesn't (by letter) compell them to reveal identity without a warrant or order. Unfortunately the ruling didn't go that way.
That was a fascinating read... do you practice law cludwig?

Nope. If I did I would have spelled compel properly. :oops: Ugh. What is it about some words that makes you unsure when you look at them?

I do have a good friend who was corporate counsel for an ISP that I was CTO of... he and I sat down one day and discussed why our Terms of Service had to be _SO_ convoluted... there was huge DMCA section outlining how copyright holders could contact us, what the ramifications where for end users who where accused of copyright viloations, etc., etc. It was sickening.

[TheBacklash]

Folks, EVERY ISP keeps track of the traffic that goes in/out of your Internet connection. What URL's you visited, what files you uploaded/downloaded, it's all logged into a database. I don't know all the reasons why they do this, but part of it is for police/legal stuff. I believe the authorities have to get a warrant to get this information, but we all know a warrant is not a difficult thing to get.

Do you really believe this? There's no way possible that AOL is tracking every single user's activity, that's totally absurd.

It is true.... they do. But as like another said, most of the records are purged after a certain time frame. (24-48 hours)

See AOL needs to know *who* attempts to hack *them* hence the tracking of IP's and what users do online... If they track everyone, and just use what they need on the certain few... Purge the rest of the info on those that are doing nothing illegal...

Just one reason to track.

Besides, where do you think the FBI gets their info on people viewing child porn? Heavy child porn use could trigger AOL to call the FBI to investigate... AOL don't want their users veiwing child porn, and if they do nothing about it,they could really be a world of hurt in the media. possibly in the courtroom as well. It's in their best intrest to watch what thier customers do.

[cludwig]

Ummmm....anyone notice that this case involves American entities only? The RIAA and Verizon are US companies....which means the (RIAA) has no juristiction outside the US...which means that a file sharing service can be based out of another country (russia, china, veitnam, poland, etc) and not be subject to our laws...BUT we'd still be able to get the media!!!! just as foreigners can download from other countries. I'm no lawyer, but it doesnt seem likely that the copyright holder will be able to police the entire world.
What I'm kind of worry about though is whether the actions in the US will eventually be viewed as a model to be followed in other countries. For example, Japan is now following in the US' footsteps in terms of CD copy protection. It's taken to a higher extreme there in fact... pretty much all the new CDs even say that they won't play in Mac's and some claim you may have issues playing them in PC's. In countries where the recording industry is making HUGE $$, I can easily see the same type of actions taking place.

Unfortunately, just having the other end of the file sharing service being outside of jurisdiction isn't good enough. This ruling means that the copyright holder can get your user information from _your_ ISP. All the copyright holder has to do is allege that you were violating their copyright, then, if they couldn't figure out on their own who you were (because you were connecting to some anonymous service in another country) they can force whomever is providing your Internet access to reveal who you are.

[cherring]

I guess I'm safe for now while I'm outside the US.

[gfunkmagic]

Two worlds folks:

Kazaa lite