Music fan named and shamed for download habit

NEWS The record industry has claimed its latest dramatic victory in the war against illegal music downloads, by forcing a US court to order ISP Verizon to name a peer-to-peer user who downloaded more than 600 songs in one day. In what is widely viewed as a test case, US District Judge John Bates said the wording of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requires Verizon to give the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) the name of a Kazaa subscriber who allegedly has shared hundreds of music recordings. Bates said: "The court disagrees with Verizon's strained reading of the act." Verizon was ordered to comply with the DMCA request from the record labels. The dispute is not about whether the RIAA will be able to force Verizon to reveal the identity of a suspected copyright infringer, but about what legal mechanism copyright holders may use. The RIAA would prefer to rely on the DMCA's turbocharged procedures because they are cheaper and faster than other methods, but Verizon and civil liberties groups have said the DMCA does not apply and that it does not adequately protect privacy. Bates rejected those arguments, saying in a 37-page decision that Congress used "language that is clear" when crafting the DMCA. "Under Verizon's reading of the act, a significant amount of potential copyright infringement would be shielded from the subpoena authority of the DMCA," Bates wrote. "That would, in effect, give internet copyright infringers shelter from the long arm of the DMCA subpoena power, and allow infringement to flourish." This case represents the entertainment industry's latest legal assault on peer-to-peer piracy. If its invocation of the DMCA is upheld on appeal, music industry investigators would have the power to identify hundreds or thousands of music pirates at a time without filing a lawsuit first. That could presage filing lawsuits against individual copyright infringers, a legal club the RIAA has been hesitant to wield so far.