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Piracy The Courts

ISP Must Unmask 100 Alleged BitTorrent Pirates In RIAA Lawsuit (torrentfreak.com) 27

Posted by BeauHD from the highly-confidential dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Altice, parent company of Internet provider Optimum, must disclose the personal details of a hundred alleged music pirates. The request comes from a group of prominent record labels and is part of an ongoing copyright infringement liability lawsuit (PDF). Altice, meanwhile, will receive anti-piracy information, including that related to a letter the RIAA previously sent to BitTorrent Inc., the owner of popular torrent client uTorrent. [...] Details are scarce, but the group will likely consist of subscribers who were repeatedly warned over alleged piracy activity. The music labels could use this information to gather further evidence to support their allegations. For example, subscriber testimony could help to strengthen the argument that the ISP failed to take effective measures against repeat infringers.

There's nothing to suggest that these people will be approached with any claims directly. The names, emails, and addresses of the subscribers are marked as "highly confidential" and can only be viewed by attorneys acting for the music companies. The subscribers will be informed about the forthcoming disclosure of their personal details and any objections will be heard by the court. [...] Subscriber details are just a fraction of the information requested by the parties during discovery. Altice, for example, will also gain access to some non-privileged documents and communications between the music companies and their anti-piracy partners, including the RIAA, OpSec, and Audible Magic.

This includes information regarding a letter (PDF) the RIAA sent to the company behind the uTorrent and BitTorrent clients in 2015. [...] The nature of information sought by Altice isn't clear. The company previously said that if music labels are concerned about piracy, they are free to go after developers of 'piracy' software. While neutral torrent clients don't fall into that category, the ISP will be interested in any related legal considerations that took place behind the scenes.

ISP Must Unmask 100 Alleged BitTorrent Pirates In RIAA Lawsuit More | Reply

ISP Must Unmask 100 Alleged BitTorrent Pirates In RIAA Lawsuit

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  • alleged piracy activity = failed to take effective measures against repeat infringers.

    Wait how can you be an infringers if no court has ruled you one.

  • People still use BitTorrent? I get it's easy for the average user but it's also the easiest to track folks. One would hope the distributors would be smart enough to use VPN and do a better job of hiding their identities.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by brad0 ( 6833410 )
      People are this clueless?

    • People still use BitTorrent?

      How else would you get your content from the high seas? What surprises me more is that anybody is actually still bothering to pirate music. I assumed most people just use any of the various free streaming services (or if you really want to pick your own tracks/playlists, one of the relatively inexpensive paid subscriptions).

      • Most likely these are folks leaking music early, before it's available on streaming services. And there are still data hoarders who want to download everything. But I'd guess the largest group of downloaders of this stuff these days aren't people in the US but folks in countries without the same access to streaming music subscriptions.

      • Soulseek is alive and well for all your mp3 and flac needs.

  • Is this lawsuit in the united states, or another country? If USA, which state?
  • I once got a fake letter threatening a lawsuit for having downloaded some movie.

    Turns out the letter was a scam. Pretty predatory, this kind of stuff.

    Frankly if given the choice between an ISP with a history of monitoring user traffic and one that doesn't, it's pretty obvious who to pick.

    That being said unfortunately some areas are only covered by a single ISP, which frankly should be illegal in the US considering how many times congress has given various ISPs millions of dollars (that we paid in t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Targon ( 17348 )

      Altice isn't monitoring, outside of how much bandwidth is being used when capacity in given areas may be getting close to capacity. The RIAA on the other hand, gets IP addresses from torrents, and can then go to the ISP that controls that IP address.

  • The true purpose (Score:3)

    by devloop ( 983641 ) on Thursday February 20, 2025 @07:32PM (#65183443)

    There's nothing to suggest that these people will be approached with any claims directly.

    The true purpose is intimidation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      There's nothing to suggest that these people will be approached with any claims directly.

      The true purpose is intimidation.

      Which I'm glad is why this kind of speculative law suit is quite illegal where I live.

      If there isn't enough cause for the police to go get the info... you can be sure as shit it's not going to be handed over to some corporate co-operative who operates like an organised gang of thugs.

      Also... LoL at the people who think regulation is bad... this is exactly what happens when you don't have strong regulations. /pats GDPR on the head, who's a good privacy regulation, you are, yes you are.

    • You forgot about extortion.

  • AI copyright (Score:3)

    by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Thursday February 20, 2025 @09:47PM (#65183685) Homepage
    I imagine these individuals will have to roll over due to the sheer cost of fighting even if it is just one album or movie. Meanwhile, the AI companies with deep pockets are fighting infringement over every single thing ever published.

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