Recording Industry vs The People: Getting official statement from Comcast

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Getting official statement from Comcast

I'm so excited. I've made contact with "ComcastBonnie", one of Comcast's official representatives on Twitter.

In a few minutes she's going to be giving us an official statement of Comcast's position vis-a-vis RIAA.

Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

6 comments:

Alter_Fritz said...: Ray wrote:
"I'm so excited. I've made contact with [...] one of Comcast's official representatives[...]"

Wow, you get excited just because you actually got someone from customer care "on the line"?
Must be a bad company then if it is so hard to archive that... or you are just the extra emotional guy that gets excited for minor incidents?!
*just kidding of course*

But seriously, why took it comcast nearly 3 month for this "denial"?
Could it have to do with the confidentiality thingy that RIAA claimed was in place in those negotiations/talks with ISPs they claimed to have?
Could it be that comcast is NOW simply fearing the public backslash given how the public around the world is reacting to this overreaching demands of Organised Music?

Because lets not forget, it was the same comcast here that was caught interfering (and afterwards "lying" about it) with your comunications. They spoofed IP addresses and send messages to your partner to terminate the connection with you when you wanted to share the bible with friends and relatives for example.

For those non techies out there: picture a telefon call where a allegedly nice looking comcast person muted your call between you and your mother and then telling to your mother in your voice that you want to quit the call and vice versa.
And in doing so effectively making it impossible for you two to talk to each other.

I remain skeptical about the motives and the "truth probability" of this comcast announcement/statement.
(In a picture by the way, and we all know that digital pictures indeed do lie easily and with difficulties to spot that the picture is fake); March 27, 2009 at 12:53:00 AM EDT
raybeckerman said...: No what was exciting was the 'social networking' aspect. I made the contact just by checking my Twitter stream.; March 27, 2009 at 1:12:00 AM EDT
Alter_Fritz said...: Oh, the Social networking thingy... I see!
:-/

Twitter is just another hip and cool thing of the moment IMO.

Look out for a newsreport by (canadian) CBC titled
"'A computer network called internet'
Broadcast Date: Oct. 8, 1993". (*)

Really OLD(!) and funny stuff explaining "the internet" and showing this old thingy called IRC (internet relay chat).

The granddaddy of twitter if you will :-)

(*) http://archives.cbc.ca/science_technology/computers/dossier/1738/; March 27, 2009 at 2:07:00 AM EDT
Alter_Fritz said...: correction:
sorry, it wasn't about IRC but about usenet in that clip. Had it wrong in memory.
My fault.; March 27, 2009 at 2:12:00 AM EDT
Alter_Fritz said...: "I made the contact just by checking my Twitter stream."

And the world can read how you "made contact". Isn't THAT amazing? ;-)

following people on twitter, the new sport for stalkers? *a seriously concerned A_F* (lets hope twitter at least logs all search queries and works with law enforcement agencies)

http://search.twitter.com/search?&from=RayBeckerman&to=ComcastBonnie; March 27, 2009 at 3:56:00 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: Declaring they follow the DMCA without explaining how they do it is not much of a declaration. There is a lot of leeway as to how an ISP responds to a take down request because they have to make a good faith determinion as to whether content is infringing or not.

The DMCA is "one strike and you are out for at least 10 days". You are responsible for convincing the Service Provider that you are not infringing to regain your service.
As a non-infringing user of an ISP, the DMCA gives me very little protection. The DMCA protests an ISP from its subscribers and the complainers as long as it acts in good faith.
The best I can do is recover my expenses from the original complainer. To do that I have to prove that they intentionally made a misrepresentation.
While USC 17 512 (c) (3) (A) i, v, and vi require the original complainer to fully disclose their identity, 512 (c) (3) (B) (ii) requires the ISP to act without it and makes the ISP responsible for requesting it (but only if they want to ???).

It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that a non-infringing user has NO protection.

just a biased observer; March 27, 2009 at 6:26:00 AM EDT

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JUDICIAL QUOTATIONS

"[T]he Court is concerned about the lack of facts establishing that Defendant was using that IP address at that particular time. Indeed, the [complaint] does not explain what link, if any, there is between Defendant and the IP address. It is possible that Plaintiff sued Defendant because he is the subscriber to IP address .... As recognized by many courts, just because an IP address is registered to an individual does not mean that he or she is guilty of infringement when that IP address is used to commit infringing activity." -Hon. Barry Ted Moskowitz, Chief Judge, S.D. California. January 29, 2013, AF Holdings v. Rogers
"The complaints assert that the defendants – identified only by IP address – were the individuals who downloaded the subject “work” and participated in the BitTorrent swarm. However, the assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time." - Hon. Gary R. Brown, Magistrate Judge, E.D.N.Y. May 1, 2012, K-Beech v. Does 1-37
"The concern of this Court is that in these lawsuits, potentially meritorious legal and factual defenses are not being litigated, and instead, the federal judiciary is being used as a hammer by a small group of plaintiffs to pound settlements out of unrepresented defendants."
-Hon. S. James Otero, Dist. Judge, Central Dist. California, March 2, 2007, Elektra v. O'Brien, 2007 ILRWeb (P&F) 1555
"The University has adequately demonstrated that it is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty...[C]ompliance with the subpoena as to the IP addresses represented by these Defendants would expose innocent parties to intrusive discovery....[T]he Court declines to authorize discovery and quashes the subpoena as to Does # 8, 9, and 14" -Hon. Nancy Gertner, Dist. Judge, Dist. Massachusetts, November 24, 2008, London-Sire Records v. Does 1-4
"[C]ounsel representing the record companies have an ethical obligation to fully understand that they are fighting people without lawyers... that the formalities of this are basically bankrupting people, and it's terribly critical that you stop it...." -Hon. Nancy Gertner, Dist. Judge, Dist. Massachusetts, June 17, 2008, London-Sire v. Does 1-4
"Rule 11(b)(3) requires that a representation in a pleading have evidentiary support and one wonders if the Plaintiffs are intentionally flouting that requirement in order to make their discovery efforts more convenient or to avoid paying the proper filing fees. In my view, the Court would be well within its power to direct the Plaintiffs to show cause why they have not violated Rule 11(b) with their allegations respecting joinder. [I]t is difficult to ignore the kind of gamesmanship that is going on here.....These plaintiffs have devised a clever scheme... to obtain court-authorized discovery prior to the service of complaints, but it troubles me that they do so with impunity and at the expense of the requirements of Rule 11(b)(3) because they have no good faith evidentiary basis to believe the cases should be joined." -Hon. Margaret J. Kravchuk, Magistrate Judge, District of Maine, January 25, 2008, Arista v. Does 1-27, 2008 WL 222283, modified Oct. 29, 2008
"[N]either the parties' submissions nor the Court's own research has revealed any case holding the mere owner of an internet account contributorily or vicariously liable for the infringing activities of third persons.....In addition to the weakness of the secondary copyright infringement claims against Ms. Foster, there is a question of the plaintiffs' motivations in pursuing them..... [T]here is an appearance that the plaintiffs initiated the secondary infringement claims to press Ms. Foster into settlement after they had ceased to believe she was a direct or "primary" infringer." -Hon. Lee R. West, District Judge, Western District of Oklahoma, February 6, 2007, Capitol v. Foster, 2007 WL 1028532
"[A]n overwhelming majority of cases brought by recording companies against individuals are resolved without so much as an appearance by the defendant, usually through default judgment or stipulated dismissal.....The Defendant Does cannot question the propriety of joinder if they do not set foot in the courthouse." -Hon. S. James Otero, Central District of California, August 29, 2007, SONY BMG v. Does 1-5, 2007 ILRWeb (P&F) 2535
"Plaintiffs are ordered to file any future cases of this nature against one defendant at a time, and may not join defendants for their convenience."
-Hon. Sam Sparks and Hon. Lee Yeakel, District Judges, Western District of Texas, November 17, 2004, Fonovisa v. Does 1-41, 2004 ILRWeb (P&F) 3053
"The Court is unaware of any other authority that authorizes the ex parte subpoena requested by plaintiffs."
-Hon. Walter D. Kelley, Jr., District Judge, Eastern District of Virginia, July 12, 2007, Interscope v. Does 1-7, 494 F. Supp. 2d 388, vacated on reconsideration 6/20/08
"Plaintiffs contend that unless the Court allows ex parte immediate discovery, they will be irreparably harmed. While the Court does not dispute that infringement of a copyright results in harm, it requires a Coleridgian "suspension of disbelief" to accept that the harm is irreparable, especially when monetary damages can cure any alleged violation. On the other hand, the harm related to disclosure of confidential information in a student or faculty member's Internet files can be equally harmful.....Moreover, ex parte proceedings should be the exception, not the rule."
-Hon. Lorenzo F. Garcia, Magistrate Judge, District of New Mexico, May 24, 2007, Capitol v. Does 1-16, 2007 WL 1893603
"'Statutory damages must still bear some relation to actual damages." Hon. Michael J. Davis, Dist. Judge, U.S.District Court, Dist. Minnesota, January 22, 2010, Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset
"[T]his court finds that defendants' use of the same ISP and P2P networks to allegedly commit copyright infringement is, without more, insufficient for permissive joinder under Rule 20. This court will sever not only the moving defendants from this action, but all other Doe defendants except Doe 2."
-Hon. W. Earl Britt, District Judge, Eastern District of North Carolina, February 27, 2008, LaFace v. Does 1-38, 2008 WL 544992
"[L]arge awards of statutory damages can raise due process concerns. Extending the reasoning of Gore and its progeny, a number of courts have recognized that an award of statutory damages may violate due process if the amount of the award is "out of all reasonable proportion" to the actual harm caused by a defendant's conduct.[T]hese cases are doubtlessly correct to note that a punitive and grossly excessive statutory damages award violates the Due Process Clause....."Hon. Marilyn Hall Patel, Dist. Judge, N.D. California, June 1, 2005, In re Napster, 2005 US DIST Lexis 11498, 2005 WL 1287611
"[P]laintiffs can cite to no case foreclosing the applicability of the due process clause to the aggregation of minimum statutory damages proscribed under the Copyright Act. On the other hand, Lindor cites to case law and to law review articles suggesting that, in a proper case, a court may extend its current due process jurisprudence prohibiting grossly excessive punitive jury awards to prohibit the award of statutory damages mandated under the Copyright Act if they are grossly in excess of the actual damages suffered....."-Hon. David G. Trager, Senior District Judge, Eastern Dist. New York, November 9, 2006, UMG v. Lindor, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83486, 2006 WL 3335048
"'[S]tatutory damages should bear some relation to actual damages suffered'....(citations omitted) and 'cannot be divorced entirely from economic reality'". -Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin, Dist. Judge, Southern Dist. New York, August 19, 2008, Yurman v. Castaneda
"The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer to peer network cases.... The defendant is an individual, a consumer. She is not a business. She sought no profit from her acts..... [T]he damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs." -Hon. Michael J. Davis, District Judge, Dist. Minnesota, September 24, 2008, Capitol v. Thomas
"If there is an asymmetry in copyright, it is one that actually favors defendants. The successful assertion of a copyright confirms the plaintiff's possession of an exclusive, and sometimes very valuable, right, and thus gives it an incentive to spend heavily on litigation. In contrast, a successful defense against a copyright claim, when it throws the copyrighted work into the public domain, benefits all users of the public domain, not just the defendant; he obtains no exclusive right and so his incentive to spend on defense is reduced and he may be forced into an unfavorable settlement." US Court of Appeals, 7th Cir., July 9, 2008, Eagle Services Corp. v. H20 Industrial Services, Inc., 532 F.3d 620
"Customers who download music and movies for free would not necessarily spend money to acquire the same product.....RIAA’s request problematically assumes that every illegal download resulted in a lost sale."
-Hon. James P. Jones, Dist. Judge, Western Dist. Virginia, November 7, 2008, USA v. Dove