Thanks to Shark7 we have a follow-up story on yesterday's report on the RIAA winning an important legal case against Verizon Communications. The RIAA was demanding the ISP to disclose the identity of an alleged KaZaA pirate for sharing about 600 songs in one day.
Verizon has promised to appeal against the decision and said it would not immediately provide its customer's identity. According to Verizon's counsel, Sarah B. Deutsch, the ruling will have "troubling ramifications" for future growth of the Internet:
"The case clearly allows anyone who claims to be a copyright holder to make an allegation of copyright infringement to gain complete access to private subscriber information without protections afforded by the courts," she said. |
Deutsch said Verizon planned no immediate changes to disrupt sharing of computer files among its customers.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association, which fought the music industry on this issue, predicted its rival "will be cranking up its presses pretty quickly" to send threatening letters to Internet users sharing songs and movies.
"We're just sort of shaking our heads," said Will Rodger, a spokesman for the computer group, whose membership includes one firm, Streamcast, that creates file-sharing software. "This has the potential to really mushroom out of control, to be very burdensome."
When the RIAA wins the legal case you can indeed be sure they'll use it to address other ISPs. You can read the complete follow-up article here.
Source: Salon
