Several years ago, the RIAA — Recording Industry Association of America — launched a massive wave of lawsuits against people sharing copyrighted recordings without authorization. By the tens of thousands, “John Doe” lawsuits brought anonymous file-sharers into the spotlight, with routine settlements paid by the Does to the tune of thousands of dollars.
As part of this process, the RIAA routinely sends tens of thousands of “takedown notices” to internet providers. The letter usually indicates that property owned by some studio has been found shared, with an IP address and time-stamp that the infringing file was found on a client’s computer. The ISP is instructed to either remove the offending material or the network access of the person who shared the file, and if they do not do so the lawyer will sue the ISP itself for non-compliance with the DMCA.
I’ve long thought the “takedown provision” of the DMCA — Digital Millenium Copyright Act, passed in 1998 — was an onerous burden on ISPs. That is, to ensure an ISP was treated as a “safe harbor” and not subject to getting sued themselves, they were required to disable the network services or web sites of copyright infringers on their networks. There’s a real and profound cost to this kind of compliance, and passing the cost of compliance on to the customers of the ISP is, IMHO, not the right way to go about it.
The cost of pursuing copyright infringement should rightfully be passed to the party claiming infringement: the copyright owner.
One small ISP in Louisiana is trying to get copyright holders to pay for their policing services.
The moment I read this story, I went “Eureka! That’s it!”. For the cost of pursuing and disabling the services of alleged infringers, an ISP should be compensated by the copyright holder. The expectation should be that the recording industry can prosecute the infringer and recoup these costs from the person who’s infringing, right?
I think this may be the perfect solution, allowing ISPs to keep their network access costs competitive while allowing copyright holders to protect their assets. What do you think?
Present At The Beginning
Matt, back in 1999, when I was living in Nashville, I volunteered to work at this firm on Music Row (which shall remain nameless) as part of the MBA program. This firm was positioning a service to work on behalf of ISPs to serve as intermediary between copyright holders and the ISPs to mass process takedowns and remedies. This would avoid lawsuits and keep infringement from happening. It was supposed to keep the internet clean. Keep in mind meetings were happening while watching Napster take off.
It didn’t work for a simple reason that the people involved didn’t appreciate the massive human scale necessary to make it work. They were trying to sell the services with 4 people in the office. 4 people? Without an automated solution they were going to need 400 people to deal with all the pissed-off callers ringing in to rectify their situation.
It was supposed to operate like the Harry Fox Agency of digital copyrights, focused mostly on music. Never took off.
Anyway, the idea of packaging a solution and passing the price upstream to copyright holders was around 10 years ago.
How I dealt with RIAA
Intersesting topic, and I also wish the Louisiana ISP luck. How I chose to deal with the threat of RIAA was more ‘on the low down’! I purchased a TSNISO cable modem. These cable modems have been hacked and run a firmware and setup that is open to the user.
Most would use this kind of modem to steal service from the cable company (either get cable modem service without paying, or get a faster tier of service then they are paying for). I didn’t use it for this, I set it up and used it at the service level I was paying for, but randomly changed the modems MAC address weekly. This was driven more by paranoia then by true need, I wasn’t a large volume copyright violator, but didn’t want any problems with what may or may not get downloaded.
So in practice, if the RIAA ever did think my IP was involved in copyright infringement and reported it to Comcast. Comcast would have NO IDEA who that MAC address belonged to and by that time I would now be on an entirely different MAC address.
Maybe a little TOO MUCH ‘cloak and dagger’, but the whole exercise was fun and interested me.
Chris
Why not just…
Chris, cool post. Why not just buy a cable modem, attach a wireless router, and leave the wireless router unsecured? That way, if RIAA sends a take down, state that it wasn’t you and that anyone could have been on the wireless router?