valy, Mgz, CatPuke, CiKutz and ckin2001 all let us know that according to this article the RIAA has won a legal battle in which they were demanding Verizon Communications to disclose the identity of an alleged peer-to-peer, KaZaA, pirate:
In what is widely viewed as a test case, U.S. District Judge John Bates said the wording of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requires Verizon to give the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) the name of a Kazaa subscriber who allegedly has shared hundreds of music recordings. Bates said, "The court disagrees with Verizon's strained reading of the act," and ordered Verizon to comply with the DMCA request from the record labels. |
This case represents the entertainment industry's latest legal assault on peer-to-peer piracy. If its invocation of the DMCA is upheld on appeal, music industry investigators would have the power to identify hundreds or thousands of music pirates at a time without filing a lawsuit first. That could presage filing lawsuits against individual copyright infringers, a legal club the RIAA has been hesitant to wield so far.
Verizon Communications said they plan to appeal the decision. Let's hope they succeed since else we can be sure that the RIAA will start sending other ISPs the same request: we want to know who your customers are and what they're doing on the internet. Read the complete article here.
Source: News.com
