Texas ISP Slams Music Industry For Trying To Turn It Into a 'Copyright Cop' (theregister.co.uk) 99
An ISP based in Texas has complained to a judge that the music industry is trying to turn internet providers into the "copyright police." From a report: "This case is an attempt by the US recording industry to make Internet service providers its de facto copyright enforcement agents," reads the latest filing in an ongoing court case involving ISP Grande Communications. It goes on: "Having given up on actually pursuing direct infringers due to bad publicity, and having decided not to target the software and websites that make online file-sharing possible, the recording industry has shifted its focus to fashioning new forms of copyright liability that would require ISPs to act as the copyright police."
Grande Communications is a high-speed ISP that is the main provider for several university campuses in Texas. It was sued in April 2017 by 18 music companies including Universal, Capitol, Warner and Sony, who accuse it of allowing its users to "engage in more than one million infringements of copyrighted works over BitTorrent systems."
Grande Communications is a high-speed ISP that is the main provider for several university campuses in Texas. It was sued in April 2017 by 18 music companies including Universal, Capitol, Warner and Sony, who accuse it of allowing its users to "engage in more than one million infringements of copyrighted works over BitTorrent systems."
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Lolwut? It is an equally sick animated photo of a dangling hanging McCain from a noose with a countdown timer. Might want to take another look.
wait ... common carrier? (Score:3)
Ok IANAL, but wouldn't Grande Communications have common carrier status? In that, they just provide the pipeline and aren't responsible for the content?
Re:wait ... common carrier? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:wait ... common carrier? (Score:5, Insightful)
The really frustrating thing is that the problems with the DMCA could be easily be solved, if the congresscritters weren't so despicably corrupt. It'd take just two simple steps:
1) Abolish mass and automated takedown notices. Mandate that every takedown be reviewed by a single, responsible, and identifiable individual who swears, under that currently-uninforced "penalty of perjury" clause, that he is the owner or their representative thereof of the copyrighted work and that the online content is, in fact, infringing. Require these notices to be delivered, in writing, via a tracked and audible service such as FedEx, DHL, or certified or registered mail.
2) Put some teeth into the "under penalty of perjury" that accusers of infringement are supposed to swear upon. If the content is found to be owned by someone else, or by someone the accuser doesn't represent, or fair use, or satire, or journalistic, or in any other way non-infringing; off to jail with the perjurer. A nice schedule, I think, would be 30 days in county for the first offense, 90 days for the second, and a year in the state pen plus permanent disbarment and a ban on holding corporate office or trading on the stock market for the third offense.
Easy-pasey, lemon-squeasy... the fraudulent and frivolous DMCA filings would evaporate overnight.
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This puts you back to the same position, where a reperesentitive states that they believe that the company owns the rights, and since they did believe it to make the claim, no charges of purgury are ever laid.
So? Before inconveniencing a user, prove that you own the rights to a judge.
The music industry wants to be judge and jury but leave the dirty and expensive job of executioner to someone else.
How about just saying no?
Copyright should be about public distribution, not snooping in private communication.
If they have to go bother the ISP about it then they don't have enough on their feet to begin with.
If they have a case then they can just use the regular justice system, but then they can't go on a fishing exped
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Step 1 cannot work.
Sure it can, add or replace it with "or must put up a $100 fee to be forfeited to the accused party should your notice be found to be incorrect" Now you have to put money into each request, nuisance mass automated takedown notices instantly solved since they now can be a source of income
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Put some teeth into the "under penalty of perjury"
It does have teeth, it just doesn't mean what you think it means because it's a rider attached to a really really astoundingly stupid clause.
IIRC, the clause is that it's perjery if you don't represent the copyright holder making the claim. So, if you as an agent of Sony make a DMCA claim against the moon landings, that's 100% legal because you do, in fact, represent Sony.
If however you file a DMCA on behalf of Sony when you don't represent them then that is
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Even that isn't enforced though. There are examples of take-down notices being sent by people who don't represent the copyright holder on an automatic basis, and nothing happens to them.
Who is responsible for prosecuting people who do this?
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Amusingly, that's all already in the law:
17 U.S. Code 512
1) Elements of notification.—
(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following:
(i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
(ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been i
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...and
17 U.S. Code 512
(f)Misrepresentations.—Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section—
(1) that material or activity is infringing, or
(2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification,
shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as
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I use a VPN for all my torrenting anyway, but my ISP still gets bogus notices for stuff I have not downloaded. Honestly some of it is quite insulting, I mean how dare they insinuate that I like those Twilight movies?!
Anyway, my ISP is obliged to forward the notices to me. I asked them if I need to do anything and they said no, it's just a legal obligation on their part. So I blocked the email address (with a bounce message stating that copyright warnings are not accepted) and that was that.
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The big ISPs are throwing a lot of money around to specifically prevent common carrier status in the US. I believe the music industry is the only other industry throwing a wrench into their operations, not counting the occasional political "save the children" issue. I've heard of people receiving form letter warnings but nothing ever came of it. Turns out asking a business to voluntarily spend extra money to lose customers doesn't get a lot of traction.
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They *could* but then they would lose all the legel monopolistic practices of cablecos all over the US.
Well then, screw 'em.
Re:wait ... common carrier? (Score:5, Insightful)
when the RIAA and the MPAA are directly, and indirectly, responsible for MILLIONS and MILLIONS or campaign contributions, we get laws that make it a felony to copy their shit. Lets say I am a software developer, and lets say I make a product (I actually do but thats not relevant to the analogy). If you copy my product and go about selling it as your own, It's my responsibility to file a civil suit against you, fight it out in court for years, just to keep the other guy from continuing to make money selling something that's my intellectual property. The exact same crime, selling bootleg movies or music, is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Is that equal protection under the law? Nope. Im not a rhino, but historically its the Dems that pushed for all these damn laws, mostly because these companies represent a lot of Hollywood doners. When my software get the same legal protections and felony charges that the MPAA and RIAA get for violating copyright, I'll give a fuck about those over protected pieces of shit. Until them I hope their whole fucking house of cards comes down around them. If there is ever a 'zombie apocalypse' (as in total anarchy devoid of any sort of law and order) I will personally make sure that those assholes are not around by the time law and order ever gets restored. Maybe I'll arrange for them to be exiled to a deserted island in the pacific where they eat what they can catch or kill; even If I have to haul them there myself. So sick of those over protected pieces of shit.
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US Copyright law, section 506 (criminal offences), under definitions:
'Work being prepared for commercial distribution' means: (A) a computer program , musical work, a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or a sound recording... (emphasis mine).
The entire premise of your rant is incorrect.
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You made a claim, now back it up. Give some examples. I don't want examples of people being prosecuted for leaking movies, we all now that happens. I want examples of complaints made by software developers, that fit the criteria of the law, that were not persued.
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In order to be 'fined' or 'jailed', an infringer must commit CRIMINAL infringement. The criteria for criminal infringement is:
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by ma
Time for a class action against record companies (Score:3, Funny)
for releasing noise, and mislabelling it music.
Copyright is a crime like theft, robbery and fraud (Score:1)
If all I get, is a mere *copy* of the result (information/data/media/) of somebody’s hard work,
then all they will ever get from me for it, is *also* just a mere copy of the result (money) of my hard work!
And if they don't accept my worthless copies as pay for their worthless copies, then I'm gonna yell at them that "I worked hard for that money, you thieves!". Deliberately confusing the original work and the worthless copy, just like they do to steal our money.
If they aren't even the ones who made the
Just another revenue source (Score:2)
Suing has become just another revenue source. The music industry would sue the mothers of college students for giving birth to children who are infringing copyrights, if they think they'd net any money from it. The reality though is that it costs more to sue individual people, so they'll go after large entities first. Next up, they might sue each university for copyright infringements their students may be doing (they won't go after specific examples, they'll sue for average estimated number of infringement
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They don't like suing individuals, because once they're declared bankrupt, there isn't enough money left in their assets to pay their own lawyers, because they had to sell their house to pay their own lawyer.
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It's not about the money, it's about the deterrent: Ruin a few people, scare off the rest. The industry only stopped this approach because it was producing too much bad publicity. Rendering whole families homeless just to scare others into obedience is a good way to make people hate you.
Charge the MOFOs (Score:2)
Re:Charge the MOFOs (Score:5, Interesting)
THIS! This is what the ISP should say:. Send all the notices you want, we'll investigate each and every one of them, but you're getting the bill for every bit of it, no matter the outcome of our investigation. If the notice is valid, we'll let you know all of the offender's details so you can take them to court. We'll also bill the offender for the time (cause we're an ISP and double billing makes us giddy), and if they don't pay, no more service for them. If the industry sending the notices doesn't pay our bill for our services rendered, then we stop worrying about your notices. Music industry, movie industry, whatever-you send us a notice, we'll check it out and bill you for it. Since we're getting paid, we'll actually do a real investigation, and it won't hurt our feelings to send letters and even terminate the occasional repeat offender's account. Plus the music and movie industries could actually back up their claims of losing multiple billions of dollars a year due to piracy, because they'll have the invoices from the ISPs to prove it.
ISPs get a new practically unlimited revenue source, music and movie industries actually get their piracy claims investigated, and individuals no longer blame the music/movie industry for stupid lawsuits, they'd be mad at the ISP.
How is this not already happening?
Re:Charge the MOFOs (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the copyright holders don't want to pay ISPs to investigate the copyright infringement that the ISPs are enabling. They way they see it, copyright infringement is already the ISPs fault, and the ISPs profit from it (in user subscription fees), so the ISP should be required to find a way of preventing it, on their own dime.
That's all just doublespeak, of course. Really, copyright holders feel that since they created something, they should get paid ridiculous amounts of money for it, for the rest of eternity, and everyone BUT them should be obligated to ensure that they never get cheated out of a penny of what they are due. They feel completely entitled to this, and further feel that the notion that copyright should ever expire is a moral transgression.
Entitled, greedy bastards if you ask me.
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Because the ISP's are infringers, too. However, they only get immunity if they promptly remove the infringing material after notice. Put differently, they could do that, but then they'd loose their immunity.
How thing (supposedly) work in Brazil (Score:4, Interesting)
(IAAL. This is how thing work on paper, how they are supposed to work according to the law. In practice, ymmv)
In Brazil, copyright infringement is a crime. Actually, a set of crimes. The smaller one being a simple copyright violation, which carries a penalty of 3 month up to 1 year jail, or a fine. The bigger one carrying a penalty of 2 to 4 years jail.
Once the part if found guilty, the holder of the copyright can sue him in civil court of ACTUAL damages. And although the existence of the damage is already establish in the criminal court, the extent still have to be proven on civil court. And that damage is limited to restitution. There are no punitive damages, since there is already a criminal conviction. Also, in the Brazilian legal system there is a rule that forbids enrichment without a cause. That also helps limit the extent of the civil indemnity.
This limitation on "enrichment without a cause" is quite interesting, actually. It means that punitive damages must never be a source of money for the autor of the suit. In a cause like the famous McDonald's "hot coffee", those $3mil punitive damages would not go do the consumer that got burned. Instead, it would go to a non-profit of some kind, probably one that fights for consumer rights. The consumer herself would only get actual damages (material and moral damages), probably in the order of $50 grand.
This all is to stop "get rich" lawsuits.
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If you actually read about the facts in the McDonald's lawsuit you have a very different view.
The lady had 3rd degree burns in her pelvic region requiring skin grafts and two years of medical treatments.
FYI the award was reduced by the judge to 640k.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants
If you don't like reading then watch Hot Coffee on HBO you will get a very different view than the media that is pushing tort reform:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_(film)
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McDonald's big problems were:
1) they served their coffee much hotter than other fast food restaurants, which in turn, was causing much more severe burns when the inevitable happened
2) this had happened many times before i.e., McD's knew knew about the problem and didn't fix it.
3) McD's was doing it to save money (the high temps let them produce more coffee for the same grounds)
Grande is Great (Score:4, Informative)
I had Grande service for years, and they were by far the best internet provider I've ever had. Low and consistent price, and rarely any connectivity or speed issues.
I recently moved to an area they don't service and am stuck with Spectrum...which has been a horrible experience all around. This article makes me miss them even more.
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Interesting. To be fair, I only ever had their internet service after cutting the cord years ago, and handled my own wifi. The price was around 50/mo for years, and they periodically doubled my speed for free.
Repeat Offender Termination (Score:4, Interesting)
And not only that, there should be a 'repeat offender' termination policy for the *AA and their ilk too. 3 abusive notices like accusing a printer, targeting birdsong/noise/other things clearly not their work, or targeting what's clearly obvious fair use, and they lose their ability to accuse.
Re: Repeat Offender Termination (Score:2)
Letting someone else do your dirty work (Score:3)
Is basically what it boils down to.
Why spend your own money on litigation ( lawyers are expensive ) when you can
rent a Congress Critter to draft a law forcing the rest of the world to do it for you ?
Seriously, the MPAA / RIAA have been trying to stop this since the days of cassette
tape and Beta-Max and they have NEVER been successful. It sounds to me they're
just tired of wasting their time and money and want to force everyone else to waste
theirs for a while.
One might think the smarter move would be to put that money to better use so folks
won't have much need to pirate anything. Example they fought tooth and nail against
streaming / digital downloading claiming the end was nigh . . . . .
But here we are and legitimate streaming / downloading is pretty much the de-facto
standard method of delivery now.
I swear I don't think the folks in charge over there look much past tomorrow when it
comes to long term planning.
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ISP can't have it both ways: Common Carrier (Score:2)
This legal conundrum is exactly why common carrier status was created. The previous FCC tried to classify ISPs as common carriers, which would absolve them from policing the content that they carry. But ISPs don't want to be hamstrung by this status... so this is the result. ISPs then *can* be sued and held accountable for what it carries...
Slammed and Blasted (Score:2)
Has anyone else noticed how journalists seem to love the words "slammed" and "blasted" when quoting sources. They can't write "said" or "disagreed" or "objected" or phrases "offered a different opinion".
No, "Texas ISP Slams Music Industry".
"Slams" and "Blasts" are now the words for simply speaking against anything!
This World Wrestling Federation style language now seems to permeate all manner of mainstream journalism. What's up with that? Maybe it's simply what sells these days? Or maybe journalists cop
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Yeah, I've noticed that. Over the last couple of decades, it seems like the use of slang has become increasingly acceptable in journalism. I'm not militant about it, but it does tend to sound kind of unprofessional to me, and in particular it subjectively colors the headline/story. I thought journalists were supposed to be neutral in their reporting.
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I thought journalists were supposed to be neutral in their reporting.
Never happened. There is always bias. What is reported, how it is reported, when it is reported, to whom is it reported... all add up to tell you why it was reported. That's why we need competing media outlets, which in turn is why permitting a single entity to own multiple media outlets in the same market is a failure.
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I was speaking more of an ideal, really. I agree totally that there will always be some kind of bias, merely because journalists are people too.
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"Slams" and "Blasts" are now the words for simply speaking against anything!
He tried taking water from toilets, but it's Secretary Not Sure who finds himself in the toilet now. And as history pulls down its pants and prepares to lower ITS ASS onto Not Sure's head, it will be Daddy Justice who will be crapping on him THIS TIME.
21st Century Amish (Score:2)
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that's how Netflix has become as valuable as Disney in one tenth of the time
If you're just considering market cap, yes. By practically any other metric (particularly net income, i.e. profit), Disney and Comcast both dwarf Netflix, and that means a lot more money at their disposal for influencing legislation. Also, while Netflix's own programming has been successful, they're largely dependent on other content providers and on ISPs for their business.
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They fought tooth and nail against every new technology... vhs, audio compression, video streaming
LOL. Content owners *love* streaming - those laws are far more plaintiff friendly e.g., no first sale doctrine, the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA actually apply, they can write/update the terms of use, etc.
typo (Score:2)
It is pretty stupid... (Score:1)
But Net Neutrality! (Score:2)
If we're going to demand that ISPs just push bits around without throttling or special treatment, then demanding that they monitor all the data for copyright violations, spam, bogus ads, clickbait, fake news...that's a paradox, ain't it?