Verizon must comply with RIAA's DMCA subpoena

[Declan McCullagh]

At 06:15 PM 1/21/2003 -0500, William Allen Simpson wrote:
>He's placed the decision here:
>   http://www.politechbot.com/docs/verizon.riaa.decision.012103.pdf
>
>All this to learn the identity of a computer at a particular IP address.
>Presumbly, Verizon will now be smart enough to say: "All of our IP
>addresses are assigned using DHCP, and we have no record of the name
>of any subscriber associated with an IP address."

I was thinking along the same lines. This seems to be a market opportunity 
for an Internet provider that keeps no IP address<->identity records for 
more than a few minutes or hours.

The DMCA subpoena process requires that a copyright holder contact "the 
clerk of any United States district court (for) a subpoena to a service 
provider." There's a hint in the law (digital signatures) that this can be 
done electronically, but I presume there's still a delay.

>This raises the question in my mind, how would the RIAA know?

Unfortunately, those details aren't in the court record. If RIAA ever files 
suit against a p2p user (which they have never done to date, to the best of 
my knowledge), we'd find out. I asked RIAA today about their plans to sue 
individuals -- they're breaking the law, right? -- and they wouldn't talk.

Still, we shouldn't overlook the obvious: It doesn't need to be anything as 
advanced as monitoring; it could be a tip from an informant at a university 
computer lab... Or a corporate administrator who tipped RIAA off in hopes 
of thwarting a lawsuit...

My understanding of Kazaa is that it's easy enough to find out who is 
distributing files and what those files are. That doesn't answer your 
questions about identifying who's accumulating them, though.

-Declan


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