Record Labels' War On ISPs and Piracy Nets Multiple Settlements With Charter (arstechnica.com) 29
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter Communications has agreed to settle piracy lawsuits filed by the major record labels, which accused the cable Internet provider of failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who illegally download copyrighted songs. Sony, Universal, Warner, and their various subsidiaries sued Charter in US District Court in Colorado in March 2019 in a suit that claimed the ISP helps subscribers pirate music by selling packages with higher Internet speeds. They filed another lawsuit against Charter in the same court in August 2021.
Both cases were settled. The record labels and Charter told the court of their settlements on Tuesday in filings (PDF) that said (PDF), "The Parties hereby notify the Court that they have resolved the above-captioned action." Upon the settlements, the court vacated the pending trials and asked the parties to submit dismissal papers within 28 days. Charter subsidiary Bright House Networks also settled (PDF) a similar lawsuit in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida this week. The record labels' case in Florida was settled one day before a scheduled trial, as TorrentFreak reported Tuesday. The case was dismissed with prejudice (PDF) after the settlement.
No details on any of the settlements were given in the documents notifying the courts. A three-week jury trial in one of the Colorado cases was scheduled to begin in June 2023 but is no longer needed. The question for Internet users is whether the settlements mean that Charter will be more aggressive in terminating subscribers who illegally download copyrighted material. Charter declined to comment today when we asked if it agreed to increase account terminations of subscribers accused of piracy. "Even if the settlements have no specific provision on terminating subscribers, Charter presumably has to pay the record labels to settle the claims," adds Ars' Jon Brodkin. "That could make the country's second-biggest ISP more likely to terminate subscribers accused of piracy in order to prevent future lawsuits."
Both cases were settled. The record labels and Charter told the court of their settlements on Tuesday in filings (PDF) that said (PDF), "The Parties hereby notify the Court that they have resolved the above-captioned action." Upon the settlements, the court vacated the pending trials and asked the parties to submit dismissal papers within 28 days. Charter subsidiary Bright House Networks also settled (PDF) a similar lawsuit in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida this week. The record labels' case in Florida was settled one day before a scheduled trial, as TorrentFreak reported Tuesday. The case was dismissed with prejudice (PDF) after the settlement.
No details on any of the settlements were given in the documents notifying the courts. A three-week jury trial in one of the Colorado cases was scheduled to begin in June 2023 but is no longer needed. The question for Internet users is whether the settlements mean that Charter will be more aggressive in terminating subscribers who illegally download copyrighted material. Charter declined to comment today when we asked if it agreed to increase account terminations of subscribers accused of piracy. "Even if the settlements have no specific provision on terminating subscribers, Charter presumably has to pay the record labels to settle the claims," adds Ars' Jon Brodkin. "That could make the country's second-biggest ISP more likely to terminate subscribers accused of piracy in order to prevent future lawsuits."
Encryption Is Your Friend. (Score:5, Insightful)
Support your favorite artists. Go to concerts.
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Buy used CDs. Break the law and convert to whatever format makes you happy. Keep the CD too.
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It's cheaper to settle a lawsuit than go to a concert these days. I wanted to go see RHCP and tickets started at $300 for the nose bleed sections.
Re:Encryption Is Your Friend. (Score:4, Funny)
Just inject yourself into the venue as an encrypted payload. Problem solved. Also, stay out of the pit if you don't want a nosebleed. ;)
Sounds like easy money (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. In 1997, my Internet speed was a fraction of what it is today, and I pirated tons of music thanks to Napster and friends. Today, with my faster Internet speed, I buy my music.
I hope the settlement was small. I can understand the ISP not wanting to go to court and leave it up to a jury, but this is absurd.
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...What? (Score:4, Insightful)
in a suit that claimed the ISP helps subscribers pirate music by selling packages with higher Internet speeds.
And the government helps bank robbers get away by building roads.
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And GM helps them by making cars.
And Nike helps them by making running shoes.
It's turtles all the way down. Charter are idiots if they agreed to settle because this will never end. What they need is a new judge.
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And media companies make movies glorifying this type of behavior which encourages people to live a life of crime.
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Charter are idiots if they agreed to settle because this will never end
Charter also sells cable TV. And pays for channels owned by many of the same companies that own record labels. These companies have a lot of ways of making threats. They aren't called the MAFIAA for nothing.
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Maybe it's actually that the ISP lets you pay more for a higher plan to avoid being dropped. Comcast does this, if you get caught pirating enough times to trigger their termination policy, they will upsell you a home business internet plan to keep your service on.
Download? Or do they mean upload? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not too long ago, they left the people who downloaded songs and movies alone, as long as they weren't also uploading it at the same time. That implies the use of something other than bittorrent, which I suppose is also less noticeable and harder to detect and track.
If they are now triggering on just the act of downloading, that's a recent development that a friend of mine would like to know about. He uses a modified leech-only torrent client that cannot "make available" any of the content he downloads, assuming that makes him safe against criminal charges and too small to attract the labels attention.
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A combination of court rulings that require higher standards of proof before ISPs can be compelled to hand over account details and the difficulty of actually getting the money from the infringing users has made going after the ISPs much easier than going after the users.
I think its past time for laws that made it clear ISPs aren't legally liable for the actions of their users beyond passing on user information when presented with clear legal proof that the user is breaking the law.
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I'm very curious what the details of this case were.
subsection (a) [cornell.edu] seems rather clear.
copyright.gov [copyright.gov] seems to support the interpretation we're given.
My guess is that Charter is doing something besides being just an ISP that got them into hot water, here.
I.e., if you cache content or modify content in-flight,
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If they are now triggering on just the act of downloading, that's a recent development that a friend of mine would like to know about.
that's a nice big rock your friend has been living under because suing random citizens for millions in "lost revenue" has been integral part of the scare tactics since the 90s.
He uses a modified leech-only torrent client that cannot "make available" any of the content he downloads, assuming that makes him safe against criminal charges and too small to attract the labels attention.
yeah, well, i use vanilla qbittorrent and download anything i like because it is perfectly legal where i live. not particularly thrilled by the crap netflix, disney, whathaveyou et al produce nowadays, but i do have a looksee whenever i like, and i have not paid 1 euro in audiovisual entertainment for decades, nor will i going forward
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Have the labels given up chasing the uploaders with criminal charges
The labels are helping seed the pirate content on BitTorrent. With default settings, most torrent clients also upload the chunks they already have while downloading the rest. They're able to use their own systems to request file chunks back from the downloader.
But most P2P software has taken these ideas, so the ISPs are expanding their setup.
The labels do not want to file suits against individuals. It costs too much money and time. They want the threat of losing Internet access to have a chilling effect
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Have the labels given up chasing the uploaders with criminal charges and enlisted the ISPs in policing what is essentially only a civil copyright violation? Or is the press glossing over the difference between a civil infraction (downloading a product without a license) and a criminal charge (making a copyrighted product available to others)?
Steal a pack of gum from Walmart, and the state will both prosecute and punish you at its expense. Steal from your employer, they will do the same.
A company deliberate
Wait what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Something about this is very wrong, besides the obvious reasons stated in the lawsuit. I worked at Charter on the NSO team and worked closely with the team responsible for policing their network for copyright infringements. Charter has a massive sandvine system, if a user is caught sharing copyrighted content, they're forced to take a intellectual property course and sign off that you know what your doing is illegal and will cease doing it. The second infraction shuts off your internet for a short period of time and you have to take the course again. The third infraction shuts down the account for 12 months. Anyhow, Charter is trying to stop piracy on their network, saying they aren't, is a lie. I hate Charter with every fiber of my being, so it's hard for me to come to their defense.
Something not many people know, media companies give Charter millions of dollars to help enforce their copyrights. When I left in 2018, I believe the number was over 20 million a year.
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Something not many people know, media companies give Charter millions of dollars to help enforce their copyrights. When I left in 2018, I believe the number was over 20 million a year.
So they're taking money on the side to fuck over their customers.
That's quite the conflict of interest. Is this announced anywhere, even "merely" in the fine print to the contract with the internet service customers? "We're taking money from the copyright holders to rat you out to them, wag our finger under your nose on their behalf, terminate service with us on their say-so"? If not, probably grounds for unfair business practices and/or rico charges and/or mail fraud and/or whatever else applicable.
I was
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Charter could care less.... (Score:2)
Charter could care less, this is just the cost of doing business.
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Police sue automakers for making cars too fast (Score:2)
mafia (Score:2)
the mafiaa finally managed to exort pizzo from Charter...