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Federal ruling could chill music swapping

updated 11:10 am EST, Wed January 22, 2003

The New York Times reports that a federal judge ordered ."

"It's also a severe legal setback for critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a controversial 1998 federal law designed to prevent illegal distribution of copyrighted materials in digital form. Supporters of the law, including the recording industry, computer software makers, and Hollywood movie studios, say it's a vital weapon in their efforts to prevent theft of their valuable intellectual property. But critics argue the law gives major corporations unreasonable powers to restrict the freedom and invade the privacy of consumers."

by MacNN Staff

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01/22, 11:28am | report spam | close Reply |
Uhh...

Appeal?

jrbd

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01/22, 11:33am | report spam | close Reply |
although i do find it

scary to have a corp. look into my personal records.

I think in this case there was little left to do. verizon should have given this guy up and say it was because this pirate violated their policy instead of fighting it in court and now letting the corps. have precendent.

This guy was stealing and allowing others to do the same.

the said thing is that because of these skum bag napster thieves...

_all_ of us will soon be paying for metered broadband instead of the current alll that we can eat we currently enjoy.

think about it. as oreilly says.

"piracy is a slow tax on the rest of us."

stop stealing.

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01/22, 11:42am | report spam | close Reply |
How did they know

How did the RIAA know this guy downloaded 600 songs? I can't see what everyone downloads over gnutella or any other services, unless they are downloading from my server...Hmm, if I was the RIAA and I wanted to use the courts to get ISP's to identify users how would I do it? Lets see, I would set up a machine on gnutella, stack it with the best songs out there and connect it to a really fat pipe so that the downloads were fast enticing people to download more of my fat collection...Then some poor greedy sap would come along and spend the day downloading my entire collection. Then I could go to court and say "see see we told you look at how many songs just one person downloads in a day, imagine how many other people are doing it..."

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01/22, 11:49am | report spam | close Reply |
How did they know

How did the RIAA know this guy downloaded 600 songs? I can't see what everyone downloads over gnutella or any other services, unless they are downloading from my server...Hmm, if I was the RIAA and I wanted to use the courts to get ISP's to identify users how would I do it? Lets see, I would set up a machine on gnutella, stack it with the best songs out there and connect it to a really fat pipe so that the downloads were fast enticing people to download more of my fat collection...Then some poor greedy sap would come along and spend the day downloading my entire collection. Then I could go to court and say "see see we told you look at how many songs just one person downloads in a day, imagine how many other people are doing it..."

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01/22, 11:56am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: How did they know

Don't Gnutella, Napster, etc. show the IP addresses of the machines hosting these files - they probably made a list of what he was serving. He may own those songs, but chances are he downloaded them to his client, just like everyone else. Either way, hosting them is illegal.

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01/22, 12:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: How did they know

The article is confusing (or at least the one I read was), because it talked about a user who dowloaded 600 songs, but later talked about the user who had set up his machine to share the songs, so it sounded more like he was a host, not a client. So I don't know what he did (maybe both?)

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01/22, 12:17pm | report spam | close Reply |
Wrong and Scary

This is just wrong. The judge shouldn't have done this.

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01/22, 12:57pm | report spam | close Reply |
and the guy

hosting the stuff was.........like i said. verizon should have turned him because of a violation of their policy.

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01/22, 01:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
600 songs!!!

thats it? please, stop, i got like 30,000 songs. i must be in big trouble!

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01/22, 01:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
dare you to

tell the record companies!

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01/22, 01:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
30,000 songs?

don't know if you're in trouble but you're certainly a thief.

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01/22, 02:43pm | report spam | close Reply |
Due Process???

Folks, pirating music isn't so much the issue here.. what the h*** happened to due process? It seems the court ruling is saying that if one corp. entity wants private info from another corp. entity, that other corp. has to give it up???

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01/22, 03:09pm | report spam | close Reply |
Music should be free

Record companies are just milking us left and right. The prices of CDs are still high. We need a break. Why cant we get our songs on mp3 and put them on our ipods? I think the record companies should get with the times and think about a way for us to get access to music inexpensively via the internet.

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01/22, 03:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
suck it RIAA

All you anti-music sharing fools are just regurgitating what the damn RIAA feeds you. Piracy is not the issue here! It's about personal privacy rights. Besides, how many of you idiots have ever taped a song off of the radio, or taped one of those T.V. movies off to a VCR? It's the same damn thing, just because there aren't as strict of laws to govern it, that doesn't make it morally right.

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01/22, 03:18pm | report spam | close Reply |
Again folks ...

This entire issue has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH MUSIC ... OR RIGHTS OF MUSICIANS!!! The RIAA couldn't care less. This has everything to do with DISTRIBUTION. When you buy a CD, do you know how many channels and how many hands bought and sold it before you? That's the only thing the RIAA cares about .. and technology is the biggest threat to the old way of doing business. If the RIAA had its way, we'd be back in 1978 listening to vinyl and paying $25.00 for an album of 12 songs. Wake up people!

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01/22, 03:54pm | report spam | close Reply |
the above 3 posts

are spoken like true skum bag napster theives responses.

I DARE ANYONE TO WALK INTO A RECORD STORE AND SHOPLIFT THEN, WHEN CAUGHT, TELL COPS ITS ABOUT THE RIAA AND NOT STOLEN MERCHANDISE.

just wondering, do you steal food from the supermarket?

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01/22, 04:10pm | report spam | close Reply |
oh wait...

you don't have to steal from the supermarket since your mommy and daddy buy your groceries...

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01/22, 04:15pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Again folks

This entire issue has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH MUSIC ... OR RIGHTS OF MUSICIANS!!! The RIAA couldn't care less. This has everything to do with DISTRIBUTION. When you buy a CD, do you know how many channels and how many hands bought and sold it before you? That's the only thing the RIAA cares about .. and technology is the biggest threat to the old way of doing business. If the RIAA had its way, we'd be back in 1978 listening to vinyl and paying $25.00 for an album of 12 songs. Wake up people!

Wait, it has nothing to do with music? But you're whole argument is about music. Oh wait, no, its some lame "if they'd get their heads out of the sand and did business the way I think they should, I'd buy my music", which of course is probably untrue.

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01/22, 04:44pm | report spam | close Reply |
RIAA and more...

This is about our rights and the rights that we enjoy and are promised by law and by the constitution of the Untied States. No it doesn't say it is "ok" to steal.. but I believe this is more then the RIAA vs. you the consumer. If they can trace you and have the right to punish individuals for things they "might" or "might not" done/do while they are online, then where does it stop? what about sharing video files? iam not talking about movies you buy or pirate.. iam talking home movies iam talking any media that streams over telephone, cable or sat, this whole thing with the RIAA is setting a presedence(sp?) for other things namely the transmissions of music and video (ie. moving pictures) over these systems... there is a company that is already suing individuals because they "claim" they own the patent of Music and "moving pictures" across phone, cable and sat lines. If you think the RIAA is not going to jump into this you are wrong. They will support this effort because as their business model is setup now they stand to lose everything and gain nothing by having the internet as we know it today. You don't believe me? here is a link for info purposes on the patent:

http://www.acaciaresearch.com/index_pressroom.html

and for your information.. they have already started filing lawsuits against over 30 businesses and individuals, they hae over 38 million in capital just to sue people with and they have just restructured their company just in case to seperate this div with the rest... what does this company do? they sue people who violate patents bought or filed by them...

If i have mistyped something or misspelled a word(s) you will have to forgive me as iam using a spanish keyboard out of the country at the moment...

Anyway.. this is all related RIAA is going to go to bed with someone to fight all of us.

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01/22, 04:52pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: RIAA and more

So many people say its just about "our rights and the rights that we enjoy and are promised by law", but then the law doesn't say Napster is OK. Everyone complaining about the RIAA are always complaining when they go after some music sharing service or user. They then hide behind some "Its about fair-use! Its about our rights! We want to be able to copy our music to use for our personal use! Leave us alone!" I mean, its so lame sometimes listening to the whining and excuses for why they steal music.

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01/22, 04:57pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: lame excuses

I mean, its so lame sometimes listening to the whining and excuses for why they steal music.

Hey, they're up there with Bush's excuses for trying to start war in Iraq, despite the fact that it always sounds more vengeful than anything else. h***, if you listen to them talk, they sound like a bunch of trigger-happy warmongers. Actually more like spoiled teenagers. "Waah! I want to invade Iraq! I don't care if no one thinks we should. I want to invade nooowwwww! "

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01/22, 05:01pm | report spam | close Reply |
Well, DUHHH!!!

As long as it's legal for corporations to buy off politicians with lobbying gifts and campaign contributions, the RIAA will be in full force.

This is what happens when you make bribery legal.

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01/22, 05:07pm | report spam | close Reply |
Amazing...

The RIAA had evidence that an individual was breaking the law.

Verizon had the name of the individual who was breaking the law.

The court ruled that Verizon had to turn over the individual's name to the RIAA so that the RIAA could have him prosecuted for the laws that he had broken.

Gee, what has this country come to when the courts do not allow a corporation to hide the identity of a criminal?

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01/22, 05:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
High expectations

"The Boston Globe notes that the ruling may 'chill the practice of Internet music swapping.'"

I would hope so, but I would not count on it. People today are so morally bankrupt that they not only think they are justified in stealing music and software, but they even think that they are somehow entitled to take everything they want for free.

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01/22, 05:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: High expectations

People today are so morally bankrupt that they not only think they are justified in stealing music and software,

Haven't you been listening! Its not about stealing. These people are making a political statement!

The RIAA had evidence that an individual was breaking the law.

Verizon had the name of the individual who was breaking the law.

The court ruled that Verizon had to turn over the individual's name to the RIAA so that the RIAA could have him prosecuted for the laws that he had broken.

To me, there's no problem with this on a legal front (although I know Verizon wants to fight it not so much about their concern for the user's privacy - yeah, if they were concerned about privacy they'd unlist everyone's phone number by default - but they don't want to have to deal with the onslaught of paperwork and costs if everyone came up demanding to know who's at what IP when), the problem I have is that this case pushes the theory that the RIAA was right in demanding the name, and thus will use it to get other's name WITHOUT going to court. Let them go to court, show their evidence, and let a judge decide. But don't let them just show up at an ISP's doors and say "We know user at IP X.Y.Z.34 is stealing music. Give us his name!"

Oh, and I love this quote from the Reuter's article on this:
Now that the court has ordered Verizon to live up to its obligation under the law, we look forward to contacting the account holder whose identity we were seeking so we can let them know that what they are doing is illegal

I can just see it now. Knock-knock-knock. Yes, Mr. Johnson, we're from the RIAA. We've noticed you downloaded 600 songs using Kazaa several months ago. We just wanted to let you know that's not legal. What? Oh, we figured that you didn't realize that. That's why we dropped by. That's all from us, so unless you have any questions, we must be going. Nice meeting you, too sir."

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01/22, 08:01pm | report spam | close Reply |
please learn words

it's not "stealing"; at worst it is copyright violation, at best it is harmless activity that challenges the status quo

so to reframe the shoplifting example, suppose you went into CD store, paid full price for a CD, then burned copies of the CDs and gave them away free to your friends

the words stealing and piracy should be reserved for those who *sell* unlicensed copies of copyrighted material

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