Courtesy of Reuters...
RIAA Song-Swap Subpoenas Spur Senate Inquiry
Fri August 1, 2003 12:43 AM ET
By Brooks Boliek
WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - The decision by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to seek out individuals who illegally trade music on peer-to-peer networks sparked a congressional inquiry Thursday.
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., asked the recording industry trade group to turn over copies of the subpoenas it issued to Internet providers under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Coleman said he feared that the RIAA was being too heavy-handed in its pursuit of Internet music pirates. Coleman chairs the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations.
"The industry seems to have adopted a 'shotgun' approach that could potentially cause injury and harm to innocent people who may have simply been victims of circumstance or possessing a lack of knowledge of the rules related to digital sharing of files," he said.
Coleman asked the RIAA for, among other things, copies of its subpoenas issued to Internet providers and description of its safeguards against targeting innocent people.
While Coleman questioned the RIAA's tactics, he said "the industry has every right to develop practical remedies for protecting its rights."
The RIAA has issued about 900 federal subpoenas against computer users suspected of illegally sharing music files on the Internet, with about 75 new subpoenas being approved each day, court officials say. The RIAA said it will comply with Coleman's request.
"It will confirm that our actions are entirely consistent with the law as enacted by the U.S. Congress and interpreted by the courts," the RIAA said in a statement. "It will demonstrate that our enforcement program, one part of a multipronged strategy, is an appropriate and measured response to the very serious problem of blatant copyright infringement confronting the entire music community."
Coleman's move came a day after SBC Communications Inc.'s Internet division filed a lawsuit challenging the RIAA's use of the DMCA subpoenas, issued under the DMCA provision that allows copyright holders to obtain the identities of suspected infringers on an expedited basis.
In a complaint filed Wednesday, SBC Internet Services alleges that many of the subpoenas were improperly prepared and filed. The suit also challenges some of the DMCA provisions, claiming that they violate customers' privacy.
The RIAA won a case against Verizon Inc.'s Internet arm in the District of Columbia federal district court that raised similar issues. Verizon was forced to turn over the identities of subscribers.
SBC spokesman Joe Izbran said the suit in California underscores the difficulty of complying with the DMCA lawsuits as they get flooded with requests under the act. In the Verizon case, the judge did not foresee that hundreds, if not thousands, of DMCA subpoenas would be filed, Izbran said.
"The Verizon case opened the floodgates," he said. "Not only the RIAA, but other companies have asked for the identities of subscribers."
The RIAA dismissed SBC's objections as "procedural gamesmanship," saying the issues in the case are "old news."
"Pac Bell is simply recycling many of the same arguments already raised and twice rebutted by a federal court," the RIAA said. "We had previously reached out to SBC to discuss this matter but had been rebuked. This procedural gambit will not ultimately change the underlying fact that when individuals engage in copyright infringement on the Internet, they are not anonymous and service providers must reveal who they are."
Attorneys active in this area of law are following the suit closely. Charles Sims of Proskauer Rose said the telco had no case.
"It's a PR move to make themselves seem more user-friendly to their customers, but the claims don't have any merit," he said. "They know about massive amounts of infringement that are taking place, having been alerted, and they are immune from certain lawsuits if they respond to those requests. But the immunity is in return for their cooperation, and they want to have it both ways."
Sims successfully represented eight movie studios in their suit against the hacker magazine 2600 regarding DMCA violations.
Ira Rothken of Rothken Law Firm, on the other hand, thought the ISP's action was sensible. "SBC understands that the value of their network goes down if its customers cannot surf the Internet and read and listen to things online with privacy and anonymity," he said.
The lawsuit "is sending the proper message that it cares about its customers" by insisting that subpoenas under the DMCA's provisions first "convince a federal judge that such subpoenas have merit and provide such targeted customers with due process."
Rothken is on the team representing a group of consumers in Newmark v. Turner et al., a suit asserting the right to time- and space-shift television programs using digital video recorders.
(Chris Marlowe in Los Angeles contributed to this report) Reuters/VNU
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jht ... ID=3200913
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SBC Sues to Halt Music Industry Subpoenas
Thu July 31, 2003 06:44 PM ET
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - SBC Communications Inc. . said on Thursday it had filed suit to stop a flood of recording-industry court orders that seek to track down Internet users who might be illegally copying music.
SBC subsidiary Pacific Bell Internet Services sued the Recording Industry Association of America in federal court in San Francisco, saying the music industry trade group has been overzealous in its pursuit of suspected song-swappers.
The RIAA has issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to SBC and other Internet providers over the past few weeks, seeking to find the names of those who use "peer to peer" services like Kazaa and Morpheus to copy music, movies and other files from each others' hard drives for free.
The trade group says a digital-copyright law requires Internet provider to comply, and a federal court in Washington agreed this spring.
But an SBC spokesman said that ruling has opened the floodgates to hundreds of questionable subpoenas from anybody who claims that their copyrighted material is being illegally distributed.
Pac Bell has received 207 requests from the music industry to turn over the names of some of its customers, one request from a pornography company for the identities of 59 customers, and more than 16,000 warnings from an independent copyright investigator, the company said in its suit.
"The action we are taking is intended to protect the privacy rights of our customers," SBC spokesman Larry Meyer said.
"It's about the fact that anyone can without any effort obtain one of these DMCA subpoenas," said Meyer, referring to the 1998 Digital Music Copyright Act.
The RIAA said it had already settled such questions in a court battle with Verizon Communications earlier this year. Verizon is currently appealing that decision.
"Pac Bell is simply recycling many of the same arguments already raised and twice rebutted by a federal court," an RIAA official said. "It's unfortunate that they have chosen to litigate this, unlike every other ISP (Internet service provider) which has complied with their obligations under the law."
Meyer said the Verizon decision only contemplated whether the subpoenas should be issued or not and did not address how they should be handled. For example, the RIAA has filed all its subpoenas in Washington even though Pac Bell is based in California, he said.
Also named in the suit were San Francisco pornography firm Titan Media and copyright investigator MediaForce.
RIAA members include AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music; Sony Corp.'s Sony Music; Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group; Bertelsmann AG's BMG; and EMI Group Plc .
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jht ... ID=3199875