p2pnet.net News:- Big Music can’t force ISPs to identify users, a US court has ruled in another major North American defeat for the music industry.

“We are confident that the [Canadian] court will require internet service providers to disclose the identities of alleged digital music infringers,” CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) general counsel Richard Pfohl said in March last year.

However, justice Konrad von Finckenstein turned down a CRIA demand that, had it been met, would have forced five Canadian ISPs to hand over the names of 29 people the record label cartel claimed were, “each illegally distributing hundreds if not thousands of music copyright files to millions of strangers”.

The decision is under appeal.

Now, “The Recording Industry Association of America can’t force Charter Communications Inc. to turn over the names and addresses of Internet subscribers suspected of illegally sharing copyrighted music, a U.S. appeals court ruled,” says Bloomberg News.

“A three-judge panel of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis quashed subpoenas issued in 2003 by a federal judge. The appeals court said the Digital Millennium Copyright Act doesn’t allow the RIAA to subpoena Charter for user information because the files at issue aren’t stored in the company’s computers.”

However, there was one dissenting opinion, says the story, adding:

“U.S. Circuit Judge Diana Murphy issued a dissenting opinion in which she said the other two judges defined the copyright act too narrowly. ‘To interpret the statute in the way Charter urges, and the court adopts, is to block copyright holders from obtaining effective protection against infringement through conduit service providers,’ Murphy wrote.”

The ruling affirms another appeals court’s decision in Washington in December, 2003.

The decision means Big Music will have to continue suing ‘John’ and/or ‘Jane Doe’ defendants based on their IP addresses, instead of being granted almost instant access to confidential information on ISP customers.

Guilty until proven innocent
The cartel members, EMI (UK), Warner US, Sony BMG (Japan, Germany) and UMG (France) claim they’re being “devastated” by p2p file sharing and thorugh thier RIAA, have now ’sued’ 7,706 men, women and children said to have been sharing music with each other online.

None of the cases has ever been heard in a civil court, however, and not one of the RIAA’s (Recording Industry Association of America) victims has ever been found guilty of anything.

EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and UMG knows the people being ’sued’ can’t afford a court appearance. So it makes ‘settlement’ offers which its victims are forced to accept.

This also allows Big Music to imply it’s successfully sued thousands of people for ‘illegally’ sharing files online; and, that the suits are reducing the nukmbers oif peoole sharing online when in fact, the contrary is true, as shown in US and Canadian academic studies, and in a new Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study, OECD Information Technology Outlook, 2004.

The number of people logged on to p2p file sharing networks simultaneously grew to nearly 10 million in April 2004, a 30% increase from the same period a year earlier, it says.

‘Changed its tactics’
The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), with 21 other groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Consumer Federation of America (CFA), and Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), filed a ‘friend of the court’ brief in the Charter case, urging the Eighth Circuit to determine that the same strong protections applied to anonymous speech in other contexts also apply when copyright infringement is claimed but has not yet been proven.

“EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer noted that the RIAA has already changed its tactics for the better in current suits against filesharers,.” it says.

“In these new cases, record companies generally file suit against ‘John Does,’ says Seltzer. “In the ‘Doe’ lawsuits RIAA members are currently filing, a judge oversees the discovery process and can help protect ISP customers before their names are revealed.”

The EFF says it’s filed amicus briefs in several of the Doe cases, and that some judges have limited the record labels’ discovery of identities through mass lawsuits.

Revised @ 12:36 pm Pacific

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See:-
forced – Keep on swapping! Cdn file sharers told, p2pnet, March 31, 2004
suspected – U.S. Appeals Court Quashes Subpoenas for Charter Subscribers, Bloomberg News, January 4, 2005
7,706 – RIAA sues another 754, p2pnet, December 17, 2004
contrary – P2p file sharing is increasing, p2pnet, January 4, 2005

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