Comcast Refusing To Comply With Piracy Subpoenas 224
New submitter nbacon writes with news that Comcast, apparently tired of the endless BitTorrent-related piracy lawsuits, has stopped complying with subpoena requests, much to the chagrin of rightsholders. From the article:
"Initially Comcast complied with these subpoenas, but an ongoing battle in the Illinois District Court shows that the company changed its tune recently. Instead of handing over subscriber info, Comcast asked the court to quash the subpoenas. Among other things, the ISP argued that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over all defendants, because many don’t live in the district in which they are being sued. The company also argues that the copyright holders have no grounds to join this many defendants in one lawsuit. The real kicker, however, comes with the third argument. Here, Comcast accuses the copyright holders of a copyright shakedown, exploiting the court to coerce defendants into paying settlements."
The Twilight Zone (Score:5, Insightful)
For a second I thought I was pulled into an episode of the The Twilight Zone. Comcast is the last company I expect this from. Go Comcast?
Hooray! Copyright fight becomes meaningful (Score:4, Insightful)
Finally. This is the only way that the RIAA/MPAA will change its ways: when other massive corporations start to fight back in court. Triple bonus to Comcast for calling this what it is: a shakedown organized through the legal system. I normally hate Comcast with a passion, but I will cheer them on in this fight. Bring out the popcorn!
Re:Who would have thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't kid yourself.
Comcast is only fighting back because having its subscribers targeted by subpoenas is bad for business.
Re:The Twilight Zone (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right. They aren't doing it, because it's the right thing to do, but I'm still happy they're doing it.
Re:The Twilight Zone (Score:5, Insightful)
Well it takes lawyers to say NO too. And they don't work for free.
The best they can hope for is to establish a precedent and make the nuisance subpoenas reduce in scope.
Fighting a validly issued subpoena is a costly legal move. A minimum wage clerk can knock out a hundred
replies to these in half an hour with automated tools. That would be the cheap approach.
So there is some financial outlay involved with this approach, and the return on that investment is
probably questionable and short lived, and may blow back in their face if they lose safe harbor
protection by fighting these subpoenas.
Re:SOPA (Score:5, Insightful)
The real reason is money. (Score:5, Insightful)
A few Subpeona's here and there are fine, sure they cost you, but it's a cost of doing business.
That's that right up until some company wants to subpeona 4,000 of your users, per week.
And the thing is these subpeona's, they aren't for john doe at 127.0.0.1 on 6/15/2010, they're for MAC addresses, traffic usage reports, etc and the requestor gets NASTY if they don't get what they want.
Either you spend an ungodly amount of cash complying, or you go the cheaper route; get the lawyers to tell them to go pound sand.
A financial decision presented as ethical (Score:4, Insightful)
If you get bills through the mail (from Comcast included), then you've been urged to "Go Green!" by going paperless. We know they don't give a crap about saving a few trees. They're trying to reduce their costs (paper, stamps, design, etc.) If emailing statements was more expensive, they would not push us in that direction.
I'm guessing Comcast is doing this exclusively for the same reason (saving money) and covering it up with the same moral wrapping paper.
They're sick bastards but, hey, if it puts a stop to this....
Re:Who would have thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Rubbish. If Capitalism hits on a morally good outcome, it's by pure fluke.
Capitalism is often exploited by people who are following their human nature to lie, cheat, steal, and other stuff. You know, things like putting melamine into baby formula.
Capitalism doesn't give a fuck about you, and is in fact amoral (note I don't say immoral, but it does yield a lot of immoral things).
If you believe what you wrote, you're an idealist who still believes the system works -- it doesn't, it only works for those who have money and can pay to exploit the rules.
As it exists, Capitalism is mostly about trying to make sure the loopholes are all stacked in your favor instead of anybody else. This great wonderful thing you call Capitalism which always arrives at good outcomes is a myth. Companies would make skin care products out of 3rd world children if they could get away with it and if it was profitable.
Re:Yay Comcast. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are looking at it the wrong way.
This is Comcast not complying, that is their standard operating procedure. If they can find a way to not do something, they will not do that thing.
The fact that this actually helps their customers is purely unintentional.
Re:Who would have thought (Score:2, Insightful)
See, the only reason companies are profitable in pure capitalism is because they provide things that people want in ways that they want them, otherwise they go bankrupt and even if someone else wanted to support them by buying their product. You would not have to spend a single penny. There is not a single thing (outside of government) that I buy that does not improve my standard of living. If they didn't, I wouldn't buy them, I wouldn't support the companies.
Re:Yay Comcast. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a step in the right direction, but I'm not sure if it's out of any charity towards their customer base, or if it's because the previous policy of blindly complying with all these subpoenas was an expensive PITA for them.
I'd still rather masturbate with a fistful of broken glass than voluntarily use their services, but this act is a good first step towards reversing that opinion.
Re:Yay Comcast. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's simple math. The more money Comcast's customers shell out to copyright trolls, the less money they have to shovel into Comcast's coffers.
Re:Who would have thought (Score:4, Insightful)
If government winked out of existence this evening, what makes you think the RIAA wouldn't start sending out goon squads a minute later.
Nobody wanted melamine in the baby food. 'Don't buy it' won't resurrect the baby. Nobody wanted poison in the cough syrup either, but it was in there.
Re:Hooray! Copyright fight becomes meaningful (Score:4, Insightful)
Finally. This is the only way that the RIAA/MPAA will change its ways: when other massive corporations start to fight back in court. Triple bonus to Comcast for calling this what it is: a shakedown organized through the legal system. I normally hate Comcast with a passion, but I will cheer them on in this fight. Bring out the popcorn!
Make no mistake, their motive is profit and nothing more. Now that there is legal grounds that allows you to say "no" every ISP will be doing the same thing because it will eventually make this whole legal shakedown route impassable. Fairly quickly the shakedown artists will either figure out this doesn't work anymore and stop, or they will go broke trying. Once the message gets out that it doesn't pay, folks will stop doing it and the ISP's won't have to deal with it anymore and they can stop paying lawyers and admins to handle such requests.
It's all about profit....
Re:While it's nice that Comcast is standing up.... (Score:5, Insightful)
While it's nice that Comcast is standing up to them, if you read through you'll find that it's four porn companies. In other words, they're not standing up (in this case, at least) to any of the MAFIAA members.
True, but precedent doesn't care who the parties in the case were. If Comcast succeeds, this argument can be used in the future just as effectively against Comcast's overlords.
Re:Yay Comcast. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now if only you'd stopped dropping me off the Internet every five minutes during the weekend I'd probably recommend your service, if you provided a decent, non-laggy DNS server I'd even praise you from time to time.
Keep bitching to them. My service almost never goes down.
And stop using their DNS. Google's 8.8.8.8 is free and fast.