GristyMcFisty and spacegrass used our news submit to tell us about a U.S. appeals court that has challenged an RIAA lawyer about its subpoenas and lawsuits.
A U.S. appeals court Judge Roberts's challenged Donald B. Verrilli Jr. a lawyer from the Recording Industry Association of America on whether music downloading & sharing is any different from maintaining and sharing a library in their home.
With file sharing, the file-sharing software maintains a library of downloaded music an presents it in a way on the internet that others can browse at. It is equivalent to maintaining a library (CD collection for example) and leaving a door open for visitors to come in a browse the library. If a visitor decides to copy a CD, it does not necessarily mean that the library owner is liable for copyright infringement. Robert said that the same could be said for the computerised version of a music library.
The 1998 DMCA law allows the music industry and other organisations to issue subpoena's. These force an internet service provider to reveal the customer details of a suspected host sharing copyrighted files. A judge's signature is not required. The RIAA have issued at least 1,500 such subpoenas over this summer, filed 261 lawsuits against people suspected of illegal music file sharing and promised thousand's more to come. Verizon argued without success that users should only be liable for a subpoena if they make their music available on a website.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan, said that he planned on Tuesday to introduce a bill to protect Internet Service Providers from such subpoenas. His proposal would not allow subpoenas except if the user is pending civil lawsuits or where the user makes copyrighted files available on web sites. Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee said that it is too early to consider changing the 1998 DMCA law. He asked lawyers on all sides as well as consumers to report their experience with these subpoenas to his office over the next six months.
Judge John Roberts of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenged Recording Industry Association of America lawyer Donald B. Verrilli Jr. on whether computer users downloading music were any different from people who maintain libraries in their homes.
Roberts questioned whether the fact that copyrighted files were publicly accessible on someone's computer necessarily means the Internet user is illegally distributing those files. File-sharing software typically stores downloaded music in a computer folder that is freely available for other Internet users to browse.
"Isn't is equivalent to my leaving the door to my library open?" Roberts asked. "Somebody could come in and copy my books but that doesn't mean I'm liable for copyright infringement."
Roberts and the other two judges hearing the case also posed tough questions for Verizon Communications Inc., which is challenging the constitutionality of the subpoenas under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. U.S. District Judge John D. Bates earlier had approved use of the subpoenas, forcing Verizon to turn over names and addresses for at least four Internet subscribers. |
It would be nice to see something done with the 1998 DMCA law. These subpoenas seriously violate the ISP customer's privacy, since all a company needs is an excuse about an online user to issue a subpoena, thus forcing the ISP to reveal their details. As argued by Roberts, it would be better to issue subpoena's only in cases where the user advertises their music collection for download, such as putting links on their website. The same would hold true for a physical library, as it would be like putting a banner out saying something like "Come on in and feel free to copy away music from my CD library!"
At least we see a bill proposed to actually go against the RIAA's weapon 😀 The biggest players in music piracy have to be those who set up stalls (or websites) and sell copied CDs illegally. If one purchases a pirated CD, then they are less likely to purchase the real album, but the same does not hold true for file sharing. As reported in previous articles, some users actually use peer-to-peer downloading to 'sample' music and others oddly use it to get an MP3 version of a song they purchased (from a legal website) for their MP3 player!
I would
recommend reading the full article here.
Source: Yahoo Technology News
