Verizon Ordered to ID Song Swappers
Expanding on his earlier order, a federal judge ruled Thursday that Verizon Communications Inc. must reveal the names of two alleged music pirates to the Recording Industry Assn. of America, rejecting arguments that the RIAA’s tactics violated consumers’ rights to privacy and free speech.
The decision by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington could open the door to a new anti-piracy campaign by the record companies, one targeting individual users of online file-sharing services. The RIAA has been expected to launch such a campaign for several months, but the dispute with Verizon put that effort on hold.
At issue is a provision in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act designed to let copyright owners quickly obtain the names and addresses of alleged pirates. Under the provision, copyright owners with evidence that their works are being pirated through an Internet service provider’s network can obtain a subpoena from a federal court clerk requiring the Internet provider to disclose who has the infringing material.
The RIAA obtained a subpoena July 24 that demanded the identity of a Verizon Internet customer in Pennsylvania who was offering hundreds of songs for copying on Kazaa, a popular file-sharing network. Verizon refused to comply, saying the subpoena provision applied only to customers who stored infringing material on an Internet provider’s network, not on their own computers.
The case went to Bates, who ruled in January that Verizon had to comply with the subpoena. Shortly after Verizon asked Bates to suspend the ruling pending an appeal, the RIAA slapped the company with a subpoena for a Kazaa user in New York offering hundreds of songs for copying.
Verizon and its allies, including several other Internet providers and civil liberties groups, challenged the second subpoena on constitutional grounds. Among other things, they argued that the subpoena provision violates privacy rights, endangers anonymous speech and threatens public safety by giving a powerful tool to stalkers and other abusers.
Bates disagreed. There is no constitutional protection for piracy, he wrote, and the 1998 law includes “substantial protection for Internet users against baseless or abusive subpoenas.”
He added, “If an individual subscriber opens his computer to permit others, through peer-to-peer file sharing, to download materials from that computer, it is hard to understand just what privacy expectation he or she has after essentially opening the computer to the world.”
Bates ordered that his ruling not take effect for two weeks, giving Verizon time to seek a suspension from the Court of Appeals.
Although RIAA officials praised the ruling, three consumer groups complained that it allows the RIAA to go on “fishing expeditions for private information.”
Sarah Deutsch, vice president and general counsel of Verizon, said the decision exposes any Internet user to “identity thieves and stalkers,” adding that the company would ask the appeals court to suspend Bates’ ruling.
Paul Goldstein, a copyright expert and law professor at Stanford University, said Internet providers concerned about abusive subpoenas can do what Verizon did: contest them in federal court. “There’s no evidence to date that it is being abused,” he said.
