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Appeals court: RIAA can't get subscriber info without suing them

22 December 2003 7:56 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny | 3 comments

Washington D.C. appeals court delivered a major blow to RIAA's legal tactics yesterday by making a decision that RIAA can't force ISPs to hand out their subscribers' personal information before RIAA has officially sued those customers.

Original decision in this case, between Verizon and RIAA, was delivered by a district court judge in January, 2003 and it was heavily positive towards RIAA, allowing RIAA to squeeze personal details of ISPs' users without filing a lawsuit against those users first. Privacy groups, such as EFF have lobbied heavily against the original decision, stating that it makes it possible for any intellectual property owner to get anyone's personal details from ISPs without proving their claims of illegal activity of the user.

So, at least now it should be less of a possibility to get "randomly" sued or harassed by the RIAA. But it also means that there's no way of settling the lawsuits before they're filed, as RIAA will be required to file the lawsuits before they can get the contact details at all.

It is highly likely that all existing subpoena requests to ISPs will be "vaporized" and will be replaced by actual lawsuits later. RIAA says that it plans to launch yet another wave of lawsuits against P2P users in January, 2004.

Source: SFGate.com

Permalink to this article | Topic: Lawsuits & Legislation

Supreme Court rejects RIAA appeal (12 October 2004)

RIAA sued by P2P company for alleged patent infringement (8 September 2004)

Judge: ISP must reveal subscriber's identity to RIAA (28 July 2004)

RIAA sues yet another 482 P2P users (22 June 2004)

RIAA sues yet another 493 P2P users (24 May 2004)

Court orders P2P users to be sued individually (8 March 2004)

RIAA sues more P2P users (17 February 2004)

RIAA files suits against 532 individuals (21 January 2004)

ISPs reluctant to co-operate with RIAA (16 January 2004)

The number of music downloads plummets according to study (6 January 2004)

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Discuss this article!
GrayArea (Member) 22 December 2003 10:55
Hey! A judge who understands the Constitution! Cool! [ + quote]
Ghostdog (Senior Member) 2 January 2004 11:00
I didn�t even know how messed up the original arangement was. [ + quote]
BitTorren (Newbie) 26 June 2004 16:19
So why don't the ISPs just not keep logs of user activity after a month or two passes so they can tell the RIAA to fuck off since there is no record of their users... THINK HERE PEOPLE! [ + quote]