Verizon Loses Suit Over Subpoena of Subscriber Info

Brian Golden writes "As a result of a suit filed by the RIAA, the identity of a Verizon customer with a penchant for mp3's was ordered to be released. Man, how many people are now sweating bullets trying to remember what they downloaded?" News.com.com also has a story. If you've forgotten about this case, see our earlier story. Verizon wasn't making any sort of principled stand to protect its users' privacy, it just wanted to avoid the costs of complying with the (many) subpoenas it will now receive.

too easy...

[Sparr0]

It wasnt me, it was my brother/son/wife/cousin/neighbor/someone-using-my- WAP

cash money

[Ptahian]

Finally the money to RIAA will really start rolling in. If they can just put a few more of
their custom^H^H^H pirates in jail it'll be good times for artis^H^H^H shareholders.

http://www.boycott-riaa.com/

Re:More than 1.1 billion pigs are killed each year

[Anonymous Coward]

Pigs are certainly more intelligent than you! Lets start eating trolls instead!

Trolls! The other white meat!

sky.isFalling() = True

[Amsterdam Vallon]

Let me get this straight.

We now live in a world where anonymity no longer exists, we have to pay for music, and an ugly 18 year old Canadian chick is at the top of the US music charts?

I need a Tums...

Re:More than 1.1 billion pigs are killed each year

[Anonymous Coward]

>Just to enjoy the transient pleasure of tasting their flesh?

Yes.

Mmmmmm. bacon.

Where's Johnny Cochrane and the Chewbacca Defense

[snowpuppy]

Johnny Cochrane: It does not make sense. Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and Gentlemen I'm am not making any sense. None of this makes sense. And so you have to remember when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No. Ladies and Gentlemen of this deposed jury it does not make sense. If Chewbacca lives on Endor you must acquit. The defense rests.

Re:too easy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for bringing a 3rd grader's view of law into this discussion.

Re:That'll show him

[tsetem]

So why is Microsoft entering the argument? Are they getting into Broadband now?

Re:User in question is serving 600 songs?

[SoVeryWrong]

I doubt the RIAA knows what IRC is.
I think the only reason they know about P2P apps is because it was on 60 minutes.

Re:The cost is complying with the request

[Tackhead]

> If the subpoena is particularly broad and the ISP is large, a subpoena can mean keeping gigabytes of data that the ISP would normally send to /dev/null.

If I were the ISP, I'd comply with any request RIAA gave me for customer logs. I'd send 'em every byte every customer transmitted or received.

I mean, what else am I gonna do with the half-dozen old line printers I found in the basement? :-)

RIAA forces Slashdot to divulge names

[Anonymous Coward]

The next step will be for the RIAA to force Slashdot to hand over the names of people who have posted items expressing extreme dislike of the RIAA because they are "probable downloaders". NAZI Germany, here we come.

Caller ID : RIAA

[keller999]

"Now that the court has ordered Verizon to live up to its obligation under the law, we look forward to contacting the account holder whose identity we were seeking so we can let them know that what they are doing is illegal."

RIAA : Now we know that you didn't know that all of this was illegal, so we're not going to press charges, sue you, or suck every last penny out of your lifeless corpse that we can under (over?) the law. We're just friendly people who want the best for the consumers!

Yeah, right...

Re:They're monitoring P2P, not sniffing the intern

[cybermace5]

Does anyone else think the subject size limit worked out REALLY funny this time?

Leave the RIAA alone

[Billly Gates]

We all know from unbaised sources [cnn.com]that the RIAA is going out of bussiness. An executive in the article even admitted that some record companies may even go out of bussiness because a mere %6 loss is sooo much money! Thats %94 of the income thats only still there. OMG how horrible. This is from CNN the ultimate unbaised news from AOL-TIME-WARNER.

The RIAA produces the best music in the world like Nsync, Britney Spears, and uh, uh well my mind is blank right now on any new bands. But anyway since the bands listed above are such high caliber and will be remembered for centuries to come like Mozart and The beatles I am sure piracy has to be the real reason.

After all the RIAA is such a popular group of friendly, ethical, and hard working folks that consumers just love to buy from. They would have no incentive to boycut anyway. After all nobody even used napster back in 99 when they made record profits. Morpheous is so much more popular today and I am the big retailers are also hurting do to piracy. What they made money??? Well, uh I am sure its really still piracy. The economy is so strong right now and music is priced so low that it should just be flying off the shelves.

Poor RIAA they are the true ethical and honest victims of piracy.

Re:Obscure..

[Anonymous Coward]

create some music, copyright it. Make an mp3 of it, change the file name to say some new pop song, log the visits you get. When you get a download from one of the companies that looks for music for the RIAA, sue the shit out of them and demand the blood of their children in court.

It won't work, but would be nice to see a few thousand cases like these get some major publicity. Showing the public that the RIAA henchmen and RIAA are just as guilty

Re:These things are going to continue.

[DerFeuervogel]

Wrong. It's the organizers who are the most valuable, which is why they tend to make the most money.

This got me thinking. Why not get rid of the performers all together since they are unimportant. I am a musician, and I would love to hear my booker do my gigs - really. That the music cartells have monopolized music distribution to the point where unless you kiss their nether sections it's hard to get work says that we have a problem with the music distribution mechanism not that the "Organizers" have anyinherent greater value to the process. Or maybe I'm totally off base and my booker is really hot on stage. I doubt it though.

That explains a lot!

[dark_day]

...now those "your computer is broadcasting an IP address" banner ads make sense ;)