Petteri Pyyny
21 Aug 2002 13:26
RIAA has asked federal judge to order Verizon Communications to reveal the name of its customer who, RIAA says, has traded copyrighted MP3 files using P2P networks. Verizon hasn't complied yet, because this is first time ever that RIAA uses DMCA law to squeeze individual P2P users' names from ISP.
Normally, DMCA requires ISP to reveal its customers' names if they store illegal material on ISP's servers, but as this case is somewhat different -- user used his own computer to connect P2P network -- Verizon has decided to play it safe, so it doesn't get sued by the customer.
Even RIAA seems to understand -- according to their staff, they think that Verizon is more than willing to hand out the name, but they simply want to do it through the court so that they don't get into nasty legal trouble with their customers. And obviously, its bad press to comply something like this without pushing it little bit further in the legal system.