AfterDawn: News

Judge: ISP must reveal subscriber's identity to RIAA

In rather surprising decision, a Manhattan -based U.S. federal judge Denny Chin, decided against an earlier ruling by Washington D.C. appeals court. Judge Chin decided that Cablevision, an ISP that operates in New York, New Jersey and Conneticut, has to provide personal details of its subscriber to RIAA even before RIAA has sued the individual for copyright infringements.

The earlier decision in December forced RIAA to sue P2P users as "John Does". It meant that RIAA had to drag the P2P users, who it suspected to violate copyright laws, to court before it could even know their names. Before that decision, RIAA was able to use DMCA legislation to force ISPs to hand out personal details of their subscribers, whether RIAA eventually decided to sue them or not.



However, there were some good aspects in recent ruling as well; court recognized that RIAA (and other copyright holders as well, who opt to use DMCA against individual users) had to have solid case against the user before it could force ISP to hand out the identification details of the user.

Source: ZDNet

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 28 Jul 2004 15:13

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• 7 comments

• coraggio

  I know there is still a lot of young people doing some sharing, but are these the people the hated and misguided RIAA really want to taint, harrass and take money from?
  I wish they would see the forest for the trees.
  I buy from i-tunes and also use Ripcast 1.9 a great program for ripping off the internet radio and legal and fun.
  This constant RIAA drone is really getting boring. The percentage of swappers stays the same and they are young innocents, not pros or criminals.
  Let this phase pass and they will become customers. Houd they and they will become enemies.
  Congress is in RIAA pocket. Sen Orren Hatch even has some kind of music out, a clear conflict of interest yet he is one of the hashest critics of "scofflaws.
  I vote the RIAA disband.
  I also have been buying from some artists directly at artistshare.com
  One in the fight,
  coraggio

  28.7.2004 21:06 #1

• Vular

  I only download music all the time, I buy what I really like and stuff that only sounds good for about an hour that isn't worth buying I don't.
  Also the Judge was probably trying to make a name for himself or he was bribed most likely.

  29.7.2004 06:10 #2

• rfcf2

  I'm curious. www.anonymizer.com claims that if you subscribe to their service your IP address will be hidden. It states that you go through their server first and then they keep changing the IP address when you are going to other websites so the website owner doesn't know what your real IP address is. If that is true, then can RIAA go to Anonymizer and somehow track all of the websites you went to through Anonymizer? I don't know if Anonymizer keeps track of that info.
  Just a thought.

  29.7.2004 07:23 #3

• djgizmo

  Anonymizer is probably over seas and because they're probably hosted by an server thats out of the country, its next to impossible to get them to appear in court etc.

  29.7.2004 18:44 #4

• JSRife

  Good point. If someone is from another country other than USA, how in the hell can they get you to appear in court when you live in another country? They say downloading free music on p2p is illegal, how can they bust you for downloading this from the UK? or other countries outside the US? The USA cannot enforce the law in other countries. The problem is technology, you can access anything from anywhere in the World on the internet. You cannot stop technology. Technology has no rules, and technology doesn't listen to written rules on paper. You pay nothing to download files on P2P, on the other hand the user you are getting the file from is making no money off the file either. The music isn't being sold, it's just given away for nothing, and that hurts sells for the record company because you won't buy an album you already got for free right? Oh well, no money is being made on the deal, it's just money the record company assumes they lost, they shouldn't assume anything.

  30.7.2004 14:42 #5

• zombieman

  the usa enforces law all over the world. What do you think the past 3 wars in a irag have been over. technically.

  30.7.2004 19:18 #6

• Rodgers

  Another example of an activist Judge going off the deep end. I wonder if he was paid off by the RIAA?
  Best to all!
  Rodgers

  2.8.2004 08:41 #7