Verizon Is Ordered to Give Name of User in Music Dispute

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Tuesday, January 21, 2003 | ANNA WILDE MATHEWS

[TroutStalker]

In a victory for entertainment companies that are seeking to defend their works against digital copying, a federal judge ordered Verizon Communications Inc. to turn over the name of an Internet subscriber who allegedly made songs broadly available online.

The decision from the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., concerned a subpoena that record-label members of the Recording Industry Association of America had sent to Verizon's Internet unit, demanding that it turn over the name of a subscriber who was allegedly distributing hundreds of songs online. In a written opinion, Judge John D. Bates said that he granted the "RIAA's motion to enforce, and orders Verizon to comply with the properly issued and supported subpoena from RIAA seeking the identity of the alleged infringer."

[lmr]

I love reading all your posts. Again, you are spot on.

[lmr]

I love reading all your posts. Again, you are spot on.

[Petronski]

Always remove MP3s from the 'shared folder.' Of course, if everyone does this, there is nothing to download.

[You Dirty Rats]

A thief is not a customer.

A boycott by thieves is an oxymoron.

There is no constitutional right to steal.

Pursuing lawbreakers via civil and criminal avenues is a legitimate and necessary function of government.

If an individual band or music company wishes to give up their intellectual property rights, that's their right. Those who choose to keep their rights should be respected, not attacked by freeloaders who aren't willing to abide by the law.

This issue reminds me of the 1980s "bar wars" between theiving bar owners and the NFL. The latter objected to their signals being pirated by local bar owners in violation of the blackout rules. The bar owners took the attitude that everyone does it, the NFL owners wouldn't sue and upset their fans (freeloading fans, mind you), and there were too many bars to sue them all. The NFL owners responded by suing individual owners -- a few at a time -- and won financial damages and cease-and-desist orders. Now no bar owner would risk piracy and having his business sued.

Capitalism 1, Anarchy 0.

[George from New England]

Is there any wonder why I closed my ISP biz in '91? I saw all this crap comming even back then.

Back in '91 (1991) I don't think there were ANY ISPs around.

What planet are you from?

Did you mean another year?

[Nataku X]

The only way that anti-piracy laws can be enforced is to monitor internet connections on a country-wide scale, and possibly monitoring them under the discretion of the federal government.

Even if the federal government isn't going to monitor all ISP activity, they will still have to pass a law that gives them right to look up the logs of any ISP, and to force these ISPs to hand over customers' sensitive data. PERIOD. That's the least scary of options--can you say hardware-chip identification (required in the US or punished by jail), anyone?

As a programmer, I'm well aware that if I ever do develop anything that's popular, I'll be losing a lot of business to piracy. However, the trade-off in privacy just ain't worth even a trillion dollars to me.

[Poohbah]

OK, fine.

You say you're a programmer. Then get used to the idea of YOUR code that you sweat blood to produce being put onto a shared-file system for everyone else to plagirize, and get used to not getting paid for it.

You think that MUSIC is the only IP that will ever be stolen?

BTW, someone publicly brags about stealing doesn't HAVE any legally enforceable privacy protection anymore.

[Poohbah]

I'm not sure anyone's life should be ruined for the intellectual property equivalent of trespassing.

These people are not victims...only volunteers.

[Mr_Magoo]

That will learn me to post before coffee.

2001

[Nataku X]

You say you're a programmer. Then get used to the idea of YOUR code that you sweat blood to produce being put onto a shared-file system for everyone else to plagirize, and get used to not getting paid for it.

Let's see. Being penniless. Or having Big Brother monitor my Internet activity. What a tough choice. Why don't you go to a tech school and ask the professors and the students what they think of anti-piracy laws, when they'll be the ones directly affected?

You think that MUSIC is the only IP that will ever be stolen?

Nope. Anime, big name software, video/computer games are the other three major offenders.

BTW, someone publicly brags about stealing doesn't HAVE any legally enforceable privacy protection anymore.

My point is that the only way you're going to find those who offended piracy laws is to track ISP activity. You really want that?

[Poohbah]

So their lives should be ruined?

Like I said, they volunteered. Who am I to deny them the fruits of their labor?

Ever make a mix tape?

Only for my own use, which is protected under fair use. I did not run a gazillion or so copies and hand 'em out for free to all and sundry, and then brag about how I was doing so in Variety.

[Poohbah]

The only folks with IP rights in your ideal world will be those who simply have no qualms about extralegal retaliation against those who violate those rights.

[babaloo999]

You're almost making me guilty for downloading a song or two and then purchasing a cd if it's available somewhere. Granted, I'll go to Best Buy or try to find it in the 'used' section somewhere.
I simply refuse to pay $16.99 for a cd at some of the higher priced outlets, not that I haven't given in and done that a couple of times. No more, there's nothing out there that I can't live without.

[Drumbo]

Ever make a mix tape?

Do you mean a mix tape made from CD's or LP's that I've bought and paid the copyright fee to own, or a mix tape made from songs downloaded from the Internet that I haven't paid for? Yes to the first, no to the latter. Or perhaps you mean tapes recorded from the radio - which has had the broadcast rights paid by the broadcaster? To me there's a huge difference between paying for what you own and stealing it.

[Poohbah]

I simply refuse to pay $16.99 for a cd at some of the higher priced outlets, not that I haven't given in and done that a couple of times. No more, there's nothing out there that I can't live without.

That's your call--and aside from a few movie soundtracks that I've enjoyed, I tend to agree. (To me, the music world went to hell when grunge took off.)

I just don't understand the folks who say "IT'S ALL WORTHLESS GARBAGE!" and then proceed to download it.

[Nick Danger]

The next step will be a court order requiring the ISP to keep track of everyone on their network that is involved in file sharing

Here you have touched on the nature of the problem. What you have written above is extremely easy to say. It sounds reasonable, and it is easy to imagine a judge or a lawyer saying it, or ordering it, without having the slightest idea what they are asking for.

There is nothing especially distinguishing about someone who is "involved in file sharing." To find such people in the haystack of users, we must examine every incoming packet, and try to determine its content. In a peer-to-peer system like Kazaa, there is nothing especially notable about the IP address of the sender; it is simply another user, somewhere in the world. It could be anyone. The data in the packet is a chunk of a song; it's a string of seemingly random bytes. Just looking at them, it's hard to tell whether any particular packet is part of a jpg picture, an executable program, a realplayer file, a pdf document... it could be anything. It's very difficult to tell just by looking at it. What's worse, the same song could look totally different depending on who encoded it, what the sampling rate was, what the base volume level is, and so on. It would be practically impossible to tell whether a steam of packets coming into my machine from yours was a "file sharing" involving a copyrighted work, or you sending me a Powerpoint presentation for use at a sales meeting. They look about the same -- a long string of random bytes.

So what is it, exactly, that such a court order demands that ISPs do? Examine every incoming packet, for every user, peek at it and poke at it, attempt to decipher its contents, and in 99.9% of the cases be looking at something that is none of their business anyway. The privacy implications of this are enormous.

Like I said... what we have here is lawyers running amok. They don't understand the technology, they don't understand what's reasonable, they don't even understand what's possible. They're just making demands for other people to carry out at other people's expense.

I predict a hard fall for the people doing this. Fundamentally they don't know what they're doing, and so they are doomed to lose. Had they had the slightest idea what they were playing with, they would have embraced Napster and made a deal with them when they had the chance. Everyone on the technology side warned them that if they killed Napster, they would send their problem into peer-to-peer land, and they would never get it back. Did they listen? No, they're a bunch of dumb lawyers. Now they're hosed. I have no sympathy.

[Drumbo]

I predict a hard fall for the people doing this. Fundamentally they don't know what they're doing, and so they are doomed to lose.

So, in the end it's just a personal choice - to steal or not to steal. As it is with shoplifting, auto-theft, rape and drug use . . . I guess I'm just missing out.

I've seen all the justifications for downloading and "file-sharing" - I've heard all the complaints against the capitalist pigs in the music industry and why copyrights shouldn't exist and some pseudo-socialism should rule intellectual property. It's an old argument that goes forever on.

I still choose not to steal - even when it's "free" on the Internet. I'm trying to avoid that "hard fall" doncha know, and be cognizant of what I'm doing. Imho, those who steal, with or without knowing what they are doing are the ones doomed to lose. But, that's just me.