Judge orders Verizon to give up file swappers info

"we look forward to contacting the account holder"

[john316]

Pretty sure the guy was only "sampling for a later purchase", he only d/led 600 files in one day..hehe

[chron.com...]

[Brett_Tabke]

But why is this news? All the majors including WSJ reported this yesterday. Why?

I was under the impression this sort of thing happens all the time.

[martinibuster]

This puts the squeeze on the ISP to become a cop and monitor users for "illegal" actities.

Privacy issues aside, this could come back to haunt folks like us who upload and download quite a lot of html and graphics, and inadvertantly set off alarms at the isp.

[hannamyluv]

Is downloading a song really any different than in the 80s where you copied your best friend's michael jackson tape? I don't remember the music industry going after electronics makers who put duel cassette decks in boom boxes, which greatly facilitated the copying of tapes.

[martinibuster]

They went after the manufacturers of cassettes. There was a royalty paid on every cassette sold, by the manufacturer of said cassette to the recording industry.

[Fiver]

don't we have the same taxes on CD's today?

there was a big row over it in Canada a couple of years ago... from what I remember there were plans to tax CD media so much, they'd pretty much be a buck a pop these days.

needless to say that tax never went through (stocking up on cds before hand did nothing for me but develop an addiction to data) ... but whats the status in the US?

[hannamyluv]

I could understand the tax, sort of. Maybe not agree, but understand. I believe the copyright law reads that you can not copy and distribute the copies. The person who bought the CD and ripped it was the one who distributed it, not the person who downloads it (unless they continue to distribute). Therefore, under music industry logic, you punish the person who buys the CD. Ummm... which is kind of like their logic that got them into this mess in the first place. Make a product cheaper than you have in the past and sell it for twice what you sold it for in the past.

[jimbeetle]

This almost seems backwards. In most piracy cases, CDs, videotapes, etc., they go after the distributor, not the buyer. (I can just imagine the cops chasing every tourist who bought a fake Rolex on Madison Avenue!)

Shouldn't the enforcement action be against the distributor making the unauthorized material available? In this instance that would appear to be the people from whose machines the songs were downloaded.

Give me something for free...

[sun818]

don't we have the same taxes on CD's today?

Yes, but taxes only apply to the "music" CD-Recordables. Of course, there no physical difference between the "music" and "data" CDs other than the tax. RIAA is going after the ISPs because Kazaa/Morpheus is peer-to-peer and there is no central server to take down like Napster. But this makes as much sense as going after the phone company because two individuals are committing a crime over the phone.

[homegirl]

The 2 things I read about this case on CNN are:
1. the subscriber "offered" more than 600 songs for download; whether he actually downloaded any himself is a separate issue.
2. despite the ruling, because the case is under appeal, the subscriber's identity is still private.

There was a similar case in Norway:
[cnn.com...]

where the teenager being sued was actually acquitted. The circumstances are different (he created a system which defeats the copyright protection on film dvds). His argument is that he wasn't able to view the dvd (which he owned) on his computer so he created a system that allowed him to do that. "Fair use by consumers of their own property."

I don't see why that argument can't be tried in the case of music. It's not as if the subscriber was trying to make money by offering any of the downloads for a price. I guess there are too many interests at stake in the music industry. But I'm guessing that if you or I wrote an article that was widely disseminated on the net, we wouldn't sue to protect it unless either 1) credit wasn't provided or 2) the persons or groups disseminating it started charging for it.

[lgn]

Well on the good side, Hillary Rosen (Head of RIAA), will resign at the end of the
year. Good Ridance.

This lady is personally responsible for the collapse of the record industry by fighting technology rather than embracing it.

Hopefully her replacement will embrace P2P and find a mechanism where everybody can get their respective royalties when people download music.

I am all for paying for music, but I will not subscribe to a music service that

a) music that has a best before date
b) restrict the mechanisms I can play the media on
c) has a very small selection.
d) that is still interested in lining the record companys pockets with gold, well starving most artists.

Well thats my two cents worth

[edited by: lawman at 9:59 pm (utc) on Jan. 24, 2003]
[edit reason] edit Ms. Rosen description [/edit]

[homegirl]

FYI, there's a good article on Rosen called "Hating Hilary" in Wired:
[wired.com...]

It presents a very balanced, interesting portrait. (And of course, is topical to the current battles being fought.)