Petteri Pyyny
29 Aug 2003 12:34
The only case so far where an alleged file swapper has decided to fight against a subpoena requested by the RIAA is heating up. The Californian woman, known by the court only as "Jane Doe" and by the RIAA by her Kazaa username Nycfashiongirl, has stated through her attorneys that she is innocent to the alleged copyright infringements.
Now, the fact remains that whether she is guilty or not, doesn't have any relevance whatsoever to the subpoena clause in DMCA law that allows copyright owners to find out alleged copyright violator's personal details. Earlier this year Verizon, American ISP, lost its case where it tried to protect the personal information of one of its subscribers and was forced to hand out the subscriber details to RIAA.
So, according to the DMCA, if copyright holder has any proof whatsoever that the user might be responsible of copyright infringements, the ISP of that user has to hand out the personal details to the copyright holder. Copyright holder is not required to sue the user after they've got the personal details.
Now it seems that Ms. "Jane Doe" and RIAA are already preparing for the actual court fight instead of fighting the subpoena. "Jane Doe" claims that she bought her computer second-hand and that the HDD was full of music and she used Kazaa for listening those tracks and tried to prevent the program from sharing several times without succeeding in that. RIAA is obviously claiming that her P2P usage pattern shows signs of "frequent and significant participant in illegal downloadig and distribution of music".
Anyway, the current issue -- the subpoena case -- relates to the fact that "Jane Doe" claims that handing out her personal details to RIAA violates her privacy and various constitutional rights.
Source: Silicon.com