GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us
about an article over at Yahoo! News. As we all know the Recording Industry
Association of America has been sending out a lot of subpoenas lately, sueing
people for illegally downloading music via peer-to-peer software. However,
it seems that the music industry is using
the subpoenas to learn the names of people who allegedly pirate songs over the
Internet. This 'abuse of power' is coming under increasing fire from civil
liberties groups and members of Congress:
 The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 gives
copyright holders wide latitude to demand that Internet service providers
turn over the names and addresses of people suspected of illegally trading
song files.
Over the summer, lawyers for the
music industry -- under the umbrella of its trade group, the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) -- used that power to
serve more than 1,500 "information subpoenas" on phone and cable companies
and other Internet providers in an attempt to learn who owned the Internet
accounts belonging to the users of file-sharing
services.
With that information, the industry filed
lawsuits against 261 people on Sept. 8, and it has promised thousands more
suits are coming.
The music industry said it needed to take
the action to slow the free sharing of digital music over the Internet, a
trend it blames for a 31 percent slump in sales over the past three years.
But the industry's aggressive use of the subpoenas has drawn the ire of
Internet service providers, which believe it violates their customers'
privacy, and some lawmakers, who blanche at seeing children and
grandparents getting sued by powerful commercial interests. A Senate
hearing on the subject is scheduled for
today. |
The article adds that the information subpoena does not require a
judge's order but merely a clerk's stamp and a small payment. During this
summer the RIAA even turned a small office at the U.S. District Court into
a subpoena factory.
Source: Yahoo! News
