AfterDawn: News

Labels fight back to hold DMCA ruling

On Friday RIAA filed a brief in federal district court in Washington, in which they called the appeal made by Verizon earlier a brazen attempt by the telecommunications firm to "evade its responsibilities under the law."

According to Matthew Oppenheim, a senior vice president at the RIAA, Verizon is exaggerating the privacy risks caused by DMCA turbocharged subpoena process.



"In private conversations with the RIAA, Verizon has made it very clear that this is not a privacy issue," Oppenheim said. "They said they would be happy to turn over the names of some of their customers, as long as they don't have to turn over the names of a lot of their customers."

At issue in the RIAA's request is section 512 of the DMCA, which permits a copyright owner to send a subpoena ordering a "service provider" to turn over information about a subscriber. The service provider must promptly comply with that order, and no judge's approval is required first.

The fact that there's no legal process involved in the request, is what worries Verizon. And frankly it worries me too.

Source:
News.com


Written by: Jari Ketola @ 9 Feb 2003 14:14

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• 2 comments

• seamonkey

  great, there goes any privacy we had.. plot thickens..
  
  maybe we should just hack the RIAA and MPAA and divulge all of their personal info. they don't seem know jack about web security or preventing hack attacks...
  
  oh yea... (sorry about the venting you will see below)
  
  we are seeing some major things these days. the laws that are being pushed and lawsuits being won/lost are going to set the standard for the future of the internet and digital content.
  
  time is upon us now, we must stand up for our rights and let our voices be heard. it seems that WE are the ones these laws affects more than anyone (not your joe-smoes, but us tech savvy geeks) and i don't like what the Corps and Politicans are trying to do. They are taking away our privacy and our rights to CONTENT THAT WE RIGHTFULLY OWN. I don't think it is fair to charge me three times for the same song in three diff formats and i don't think it should be illegal for me to convert my cd to mp3s, midis, or wavs if i choose to; and it shouldn't be wrong for me to put the same song on different types of devices
  (ie i own the a SprintPCS Vision color phone, i have been converting mp3s to midis as ringers and then i put them on my own website and then download it from my phones browser, am i breaking the law?).
  
  who's with me?? hehehe, ok maybe not.. but we do need to make our voice and opinion heard. with that said, i'll quit my b!$%#ing
  
  peace
  seamoneky420
  

  'knowledge is power, spread the power'
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  http://www.geocities.com/daseamonkey420 or
  http://www.geocities.com/seamonkeyguides

  9.2.2003 15:19 #1

• Ghostdog

  "The fact that there's no legal process involved in the request, is what worries Verizon. And frankly it worries me too. "
  
  Everyone should be worried by this. It´s not OK that companies or groups like the RIAA simply have to ask for our personal information and get it, I bet they don´t even have to show any kind of proof that an illegal action has been commited.
  
  The situation in the states is looking worse by the day, it has to stop somewhere.

  10.2.2003 07:57 #2