Court Orders Verizon To Name Song Swappers (Yet Again)

from the due-process-be-damned dept

Once again, a court has sided with the music industry over due process and has told Verizon to hand over the name of a suspected file sharer immediately. Verizon has said they'll reluctantly reveal the name in the next day or so, but they plan to continue the fight against having to reveal such names when no lawsuits have been filed. Back in April, a federal court had told Verizon to reveal the name immediately, but Verizon appealed to a higher court, saying that it was a violation of their customer's privacy to reveal the name without a court ordered subpoena. The way the DMCA is written, if the music industry suspects anyone of violating copyrights, they can just get a court clerk to approve a court order for the ISP to reveal the name. Verizon, of course, is afraid that with this ruling, they're now going to get swamped with requests from the RIAA to reveal names of their subscribers. They also point out that this same method could be used by stalkers to get personal information - though, that's a bit far fetched. Considering the RIAA's history of sending out erroneous takedown requests, though, they don't appear to be too careful about verifying who they're attacking before they dig in.

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