Pac Bell takes RIAA to court

Following the MIT and Boston College lead, Pacific Bell Internet Services is defying the RIAA's attempts to use it to get the names of Pac Bell users it claims are illegally downloading copyrighted files.

Pac Bell questions the constitutionality of the Big Five's attempts to nail file sharers and is, "seeking a declaration that the subpoenas served against it by the Recording Industry Association of America are overly broad in scope and should have been issued from a California district court, not the District of Columbia," says an Associated Press story in the
New York Times. "The complaint also seeks a jury trial to have the constitutional issues addressed."

MIT and Boston College both chose to litigate rather than hand student names over to the record labels.

Pac Bell says it acts only as a "passive conduit" for the activity of its subscribers and "does not initiate or direct the transmission of those files and has no control over their content or destination," says the AP story, adding:

"A RIAA spokesman called the lawsuit an attempt at 'procedural gamesmanship' and insisted that Internet service providers must reveal the identities of online copyright infringers."