How Big (Or Small) Was The Verizon Win Over RIAA Subpoenas?

from the it-all-depends-on-how-you-look-at-it dept

While lots of people were celebrating on Friday when the Appeals Court overturned the rulings against Verizon and said that the RIAA had to file lawsuits before they could get subpoenas for customer info from ISPs, many people were realizing that this wasn't that big a victory. Lots of us expect that the RIAA will just get its friends in Congress to amend the DMCA to change the law to include these types of subpoenas (though, I still think opening up the DMCA for amending is a risky thing for them to do, as it could backfire on the RIAA). Others point out that all this really means is that the RIAA will now file John Doe lawsuits first, which will compel the ISPs to reveal the names anyway. The difference here, though, is that the RIAA can get in a lot more trouble if it comes to light that they're filing a number of frivolous lawsuits, rather than just filing bad subpoenas.

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