The RIAA has been feeling their oats after their victory against Verizon back in April, where the ISP was forced to reveal the names of customers who had been engaging in illegal file-swapping. Since then the RIAA has issued at least 911 subpoenas and expect to file at least several hundred lawsuits in the next few weeks in what can only be described as a “shock and awe” fight for the mindeshare of the average American.
However, more recent demands for user information have been rebuked. Last week MIT and Boston College both challenged subpoenas for user identification on their networks on two points. First, the demands that come under the DMCA are in conflict with the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, which prohibits colleges from giving personal information without first informing the student. Second, they charge that the RIAA should have filed its subpoenas in Massachusetts instead of Washington, DC. And now Pacific Bell Internet Services is challenging more than 200 subpoenas on the same grounds: that they violate their user’s privacy and that they should have been filed in California, not Washington, DC.
The RIAA is correct in claiming that these challenges are only on procedural grounds, though already the RIAA’s shotgun approach has drawn the ire of Senator Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who chairs the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Another point I haven’t seen brought up in the news is that this “procedural challenge” could force the RIAA to change the venue in which its subpoenas are filed away from the court where their original Verizon case was won. (I’ll leave the analysis about whether that matters to someone with the necessary legal knowledge.)
Of course, the real battle is still for the hearts and minds of the American public. The RIAA could care less about the hundreds of college students and little-old-ladies they’re trying to sue for millions of dollars each, what’s important is the millions of Americans who think that sharing music is OK. And on that front they have more bad news: a recent survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that 67 percent of Internet users who download music say they don’t care about whether the music is copyrighted. If you accept the Ipsos/Reid finding that one quarter of Americans have downloaded music, that comes down to about 40 million Americans who have downloaded music and don’t care. And that, my friends, is a lot of subpoenas.
References:
- Americans Continue To Embrace Potential Of Digital Music (Ipsos-Reid, 4 December 2002)
- Verizon Gets 14 Days to ID File-swapper (C|Net, 24 April 2003)
- MIT responds to RIAA subpoena (MIT News, 22 July 2003)
- Music-Sharing Subpoenas Target Parents (Associated Press, 24 July 2003)
- ISP Sues Record Industry Over Subpoenas (C|Net, 31 July 2003)
- Senator Launches Probe Into RIAA Subpoena Blizzard (Internetnews.com, 1 August 2003)
- Music file swappers not cowed by subpoena threat (Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal, 1 August 2003)