High Court Bounces Latest RIAA Effort
The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected the music industry's effort to revive a controversial practice that briefly forced ISPs to reveal the identities of thousands of accused peer-to-peer (P2P) music pirates with no notice to the alleged infringers.
Source: Internet NewsIn denying a writ of certiorari to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the court upheld a December 2003 decision by an appeals court that reversed a lower court ruling ordering ISPs (ISPs) to comply with the subpoena provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Under the DMCA, a subpoena can be issued by a court clerk who only checks to make sure the subpoena form is properly filled out. This differs from a standard subpoena, which requires some underlying claim of a crime. On the basis of the lower court ruling, the RIAA issued more than 3,000 subpoena requests to ISPs and filed almost 400 copyright infringement actions.
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