The RIAA and Your Rights

"A federal judge ordered Verizon Communications yesterday to give a record industry trade group the identity of an Internet subscriber suspected of making available unauthorized copies of several hundred songs." read on...

What really bothers me is that this person is only "suspected" of distributing copyrighted content. This judgment will allow the RIAA to obtain a subscribers information "without requiring a copyright holder to file a lawsuit." This is troubling because if this judgment is upheld, then anyone who subscribes to an ISP's service may find their private information in the hands of the entertainment industry. This article does a nice job in questioning if it's a good idea to empower search bots/technology and unqualified people to decide if the person in question is in violation of copyright/infringement laws.

What about due process? What about an individual's right to privacy?

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Well, here's the pertinent section of the Digital Millenium Copryight act (17 USC 512):

h) Subpoena To Identify Infringer. -
(1) Request. - A copyright owner or a person authorized to act on the owner's behalf may request the clerk of any United States district court to issue a subpoena to a service provider for identification of an alleged infringer in accordance with this subsection.

The scary thing is this was enacted long before the Bushies decided they should keep track of every financial and medical transaction Americans conduct (TIA, anyone?). Given their predilections towards gathering information about us (all the while hiding as much information as they can from us), what's next?

A pity. I was really excited about the case. The RIAA versus a pimply-faced geek is one thing. The RIAA versus Verizon promised a much more fair fight.

I don't know the specifics of the law (except to know that the DMCA is very flawed). But I can't abide the simple fact that a private company motivated by its own interests is empowered to be in a position even remotely resembling a legal/criminal investigative body.

That TIA business is creepy too. But the back-hacking folks have been doing on that agency is pretty entertaining.

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