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RIAA Can Unmask Anonymous File Sharers, U.S. Court Rules
A recent decision handed down from the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals states that the identities of individuals charged with illegal peer-to-peer file sharing can indeed be revealed to the copyright holder who is filing the charges. As Wired reports, the ruling comes after a student at SUNY Albany appealed a federal judge's order that the university reveal the student's identity to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The RIAA had detected infringing activity on the university network, and traced the IP address back to the individual. After filing something known as a "John Doe" lawsuit, the RIAA managed to force the ISP to hand over the user's identity.
The student cited a First Amendment-protected right to privacy on the Internet in arguing for the protection, and insisted that the fair-use doctrine had permitted the download of the six songs in question. In its ruling, however, the Court wrote, "To the extent that anonymity is used to mask copyright infringement or to facilitate such infringement by other persons, it is unprotected by the First Amendment." The court added that even if an individual claims fair use in defense against a copyright holder, the plaintiff maintains the right to know the defendant's identity before starting a lawsuit.
Privacy may be becoming a scarce commodity on the Internet today, but we think this is one area where it should be preserved. In a situation where frivolous lawsuits against college kids have already tarnished the recording industry's public image, this only digs the RIAA into a deeper PR grave. We understand the fact that the recording industry wants to do everything it can to protect intellectual property, but forcing its way into people's private lives might be going too far. [From: Wired]
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Comments
11
Subscribe to commentsbastion78May 3rd 2010 9:34PM
the riaa can kiss my @ss
toneiiMay 4th 2010 11:33AM
I produce and record my own music that I distribute as MP3s. I will be sharing them via Peer to Peer.
Just try to come after me for distributing my own works RIAA...
TheMaddestHatterMay 6th 2010 3:10AM
They dont care if you distribute your own music, they care if you distribute theirs..
hecktorMay 4th 2010 1:01PM
Actually a torrent is a library. Ever Library in the world buys ONE COPY of book, CD, DVD and lends them out to thousands of people who NEVER BOUGHT IT. So I hope these morons are going to CLOSE EVERY LIBRARY in the world for ILLEGAL FILE SHARING. Cos it's the SAME THING.
bronsonMay 4th 2010 2:52PM
Actually, the library argument doesn't fly. Library's LOAN books, CDs, DVDs, etc. with the understanding that one copy will be used by one person at a time. Sure, people check out CDs or DVDs and make illegal copies, but that is outside of the library's control. Online file sharing of copyrighted works would be similar to libraries making copies of the books, CDs, DVDs they have purchased and giving those copies out free to anyone who asks.
GonzobotMay 5th 2010 2:19PM
Libraries also have photocopiers. The only reason they don't let you straight up copy every page of every book, is because they have to pay for the paper and the toner.
SpecMay 29th 2010 9:14AM
Distributing copyrighted material over torrents is NOTHING like a library. A library BUY's one or two copies that it loans out to one individual at a time. Two people cannot be reading a single book at a time. Libraries are also tied to the locale and are limited to those individuals who are members of the library who pay taxes to support the purchase of those books. If every library had a copy, you'd have thousands of legally purchased books. With a torrent, and unlimited number of people can have their own copy all simultaneously playing with only one legally purchased copy. If these videos were made available for an individual who was paying for a membership, then it would be fine... Wait, they have those services... called Rentals such as NetFlix, etc...
(you know libraries aren't free, they are tax supported right?)
I also agree with TFCreate, if you don't like something, don't support it. But this means that you'll have to forgo watching movies or listening to music you might have liked. It's a choice and while you may not like it, that's the result of the freedom of choice.... To think that you'll always have the option of getting what you want is ignorant.
~SB
TrekkieMay 4th 2010 3:49PM
I'll be honest, both the music industry and a lot of pirates are defending something that (in my opinion) is dead anyways. We have the music industry trying to have their main format be physical copies, and we have the pirates insisting on free to use digital music that's stored on their hard drives.
I disagree with both stances. I know if I download something properly, I could get whatever songs I want easily. The issue is, like many people, my taste in music varies based on my mood - sometimes I want to listen to one artist, sometimes I want to listen to another. I also love high quality music, so I want all my music to be high quality.
"Well that's great" the pirate might say, "You just need to download the high quality versions of the songs and make sure you have enough hard disk space."
My question is, why should I go through the effort? There's plenty of places that I can get my music free - and apparently legally - and have a far larger collection of high quality music tailored to how I feel than if I stored it all locally. Even with all the music being completely free, I would never get a large enough music collection to manage myself to get the same experience as I do elsewhere where playlists are created based on what I define my mood as, or what band I want to listen to. I can constantly get new music that I've never heard before, or listen to old favorites, and I can save on hard drive space for other things (I like to rip my DVDs, for example, though Hulu makes it look like eventually I might even be able to get my movies the same way as my music).
I won't pirate music. I'm not afraid of getting caught. I have no ethical issues with it - with most of the music I like the artists are either obscenely rich already or not getting anything from music sales. But I just don't think actually owning a copy of the music is for me.
I think the library concept is pretty good here - someone buys the rights to stream the music, and they let people listen to it. Unless something major changes, I think I'm going to always prefer that to having to scroll through thousands of songs to listen to one that fits my mood.
Sam I AmMay 6th 2010 4:49PM
If you think the first amendment should shield unlawful online activity in copyright related issues, what other online illegal activity do you think it should be able to shield?
Is there a line you draw at which point the activity should no longer be facilitated through anonymity?
Tthis is a no-brainer: "legal" should be shielded, "illegal" should not. This court got this decision right.
tfcreateMay 11th 2010 8:59PM
If RIAA is such a pain in the ass, why are you listening to RIAA affiliated artists?
They are know to screw both artist and listeners alike.
Avoid them or get screwed one way or another.
Jack SparrowMay 29th 2010 10:39AM
P2P is dead, but piracy is alive and well.
Most people are using file sharing sites like Rapidshare.
If I were a pirate (I'm not), I'd create a local trading group where people could get together and trade files with their laptops through wireless networking. A single city park could easily accommodate a couple hundred pirates on any given weekend. Similar groups spread around the globe could trade portable hard drives (1 TB for as little as $60).
Still want to use P2P? Go to your nearest coffee shop with free wifi and do your downloads there. Totally anonymous. Or buy an iPad with 3G ($30 per month unlimited use) and create an anonymous account. Totally possible since they're month to month with no contract.