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.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
