AfterDawn: News

P2P subpoenas under scrutiny

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is taking the RIAA vs. Verizon case back to court to hear Verizon's appeal on the ruling, which opened to P2P subpoena floodgates earlier this year. RIAA used the turbocharged subpoena procedure of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to force Verizon to hand out details of a suspected P2P user.

Regular subpoenas require a claim of a crime, whereas DMCA subpoena can be issued by a court clerk, as long as the subpoena form is filled out properly.



Many interpret the DMCA law to apply only to material physically stored on ISPs servers and not the actions of their modem, DSL or cable subscribers.

A panel of three judges is taking a look at the case, and examining the minutiae of the DMCA to figure out what the Congress' intentions where when issuing the law. They will also try to decide whether permitting subpoenas when no lawsuit has been filed, agrees with the U.S. Constitution. So far the panel has not commented on Verizon's arguments about DMCA subpoenas endangering privacy and free speech.

Source:
News.com


Written by: Jari Ketola @ 16 Sep 2003 16:11

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• 3 comments

• mystic

  Wonder if the findings from yesterdays news that 80% of the origonally unpublished music and movies will help the judge see that it was the music and movie industry who released the media to the p2p networks in order to shut them down.... hey who knows maybe the judge will see there are good uses for sharing info like linux and other free ware like mods. programers are tring to break into the market. but with shutting down the tools we use will give the companies like microsoft the edge or will the fact that better software can be writen outside the corpret office scare the goverment ? while they chase 12 year olds and have parents pulling the plug on their kids online activities, we step back to the darker days when only people with a nanny watching jr. can surf and not be worried that the kids are racking up a bill that will be collected on in 6 months by an aggency who dosnt want to omite that the cds were not protected from being uploaded and or copied . the music industry needs to pull their collective shit together and fix the problum not piss off the fans who love their music.....

  17.9.2003 05:54 #1

• Finman

  /agree mystic

  17.9.2003 15:23 #2

• vudoo

  The judge said it best compairing the Internet to a library. So with that in mind does anyone really want to stifle the Internet and scare people who are not tech savy? Computer companies really need to get together and end this foolishness before it keeps getting worse.
  
  Voodoohippie

  17.9.2003 15:48 #3