Consumerist
dmca takedown notices
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dmca takedown notices
riaa
RIAA Pulls Case Before It Can Be Dismissed, Then Refiles Days Later To Get Different Judge
If you were still somehow unconvinced that the RIAA's legal strategy is "be sleazy, intimidate, then profit," their latest legal maneuvering might finally convince you. Next week, a judge was to decide whether their case against a New York family should be thrown out—the family's lawyer, RIAA critic Ray Beckerman, argued "that if the RIAA can't prove anybody downloaded the music from an open share folder, then the case would have to be dismissed."
Earlier this month the RIAA voluntarily dismissed the case—then refiled it last week but didn't mention it was the same lawsuit, which means it was assigned to a different judge. Now the RIAA is demanding immediate discovery (which includes depositions and hard drives), which the previous judge had blocked pending a rule on the dismissal motion. We tip our hats to you, RIAA lawyers. You bring every evil-lawyer cliche from TV to life.
More »
copyright
Leaked ACTA Treaty Will Outlaw P2P
ACTA—the misleadingly named "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement"—is the worldwide copyright treaty that's being negotiated behind closed doors, and that will create a sort of global DMCA if continues in its current state. Now Wikileaks has posted a draft of the treaty, and Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow gives his take:
More »Among other things, ACTA will outlaw P2P (even when used to share works that are legally available, like my books), and crack down on things like region-free DVD players. All of this is taking place out of the public eye, presumably with the intention of presenting it as a fait accompli just as the ink is drying on the treaty.
traffic management
Comcast To Test New And Improved Methods For Throttling Internet Traffic
Comcast says that it will experiment with a new method of managing traffic to thousands of customers in Chambersburg, Pa., and Warrenton, Va. The new method will not target file-sharing, but would focus on individual heavy Internet users - no matter what they are doing, says the Philadelphia Inquirer. More »
Comcast has defended its BitTorrent blocking by saying it only does it when network congestion is high, but a new study finds that they're doing it basically all the time. [The Inquirer]
file sharing
Arizona Judge Rejects RIAA's "Shared Directory = Piracy" Argument
Although it won't affect other cases, the RIAA was handed a small smackdown this week when a U.S. district judge rejected their request for a summary judgement, and ruled that putting song files in a shared directory was not enough proof that infringement had occurred. More »
file sharing
Comcast is now claiming that the FCC "has no legal power to stop the cable giant from engaging in what it calls 'network management practices' (critics call it peer-to-peer traffic blocking)," reports Ars Technica. In an amazing display of spin, Comcast writes that letting the marketplace "maximize consumer welfare" has been "enormously successful" as proven by the "Comcast customer experience"—seriously, we're not making up these phrases. On a less humorous note, the filing in which Comcast makes these claims also seems to imply that it will sue the FCC if it tries to enforce any changes on how Comcast blocks P2P traffic.
More »
Comcast Tells FCC It Doesn't Have Authority To Interfere With "Traffic Shaping"
Comcast is now claiming that the FCC "has no legal power to stop the cable giant from engaging in what it calls 'network management practices' (critics call it peer-to-peer traffic blocking)," reports Ars Technica. In an amazing display of spin, Comcast writes that letting the marketplace "maximize consumer welfare" has been "enormously successful" as proven by the "Comcast customer experience"—seriously, we're not making up these phrases. On a less humorous note, the filing in which Comcast makes these claims also seems to imply that it will sue the FCC if it tries to enforce any changes on how Comcast blocks P2P traffic.
More »
corporate influence
House Passes Bill That Would Require Colleges To Practice Network Filtering
Last week the House voted 354-58 to approve a college funding bill that requires colleges to "make plans to offer some form of legal alternative to P2P file-swapping" and to implement some form of network filtering. Luckily for sane people everywhere, the White House has already made veto-noises at the bill for other reasons—but still, the MPAA came that much closer to forcing its admittedly false worldview on universities. More »
Comcast has quietly changed their terms of service following the BitTorrent backlash to protect their ass a bit more. [Ars Technica]
comcast
FCC To Investigate Comcast's Bittorrent Blocking
The FCC announced that it will investigate complaints against Comcast for disrupting BitTorrent traffic. Then again, it wasn't a formal announcement, it was in response to a question posed by Consumer Electronics Association's CEO Gary Shapiro in an interview before a live audience during the big electronics expo. "Sure, we're going to investigate and make sure that no consumer is going to be blocked," is what FCC Chair Kevin "Pretty Boy" Martin said exactly. "Sure" is not a word one uses to make a strong statement. He may have just been playing to the crowd. C'mon, it's CES, he knew if he said otherwise he could find a bunch of geeks sitting on his car in the parking lot looking to "reformat his harddive," if you know what I'm saying. More »
file sharing
EFF Confirms Comcast Mucks With BitTorrent
The elite cyber-squad freedom fighters of the The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released findings today that Comcast does indeed meddle with peer-to-peer file sharing. They're also giving away some software you can install to test your own ISP. The FCC still has yet to respond to complaints and reports of Comcast's interference.
EFF Releases Reports and Software to Spot Interference with Internet Traffic [EFF]
movies
New Die Hard DVD's Digital Extras: Too Little Too Late?
Well, the details of 20th Century Fox's new digital experiment are now public: the DVD of "Live Free Or Die Harder," which goes on sale tomorrow, will allow purchasers to transfer a digital copy of the movie twice, once to their PC's hard drive and once onto a PlaysForSure portable device. If you've got an iPod device or even a Zune, you won't be able to do anything with it. More »
worst company in america
RIAA Defendant: Best Buy Replaced My Hard Drive During Warranty Repair
The RIAA defendant who lost her jury trial, Jammie Thomas, is telling her side of the story on p2pnet. Of particular interest: She claims that Best Buy made the decision to replace her hard drive, under the terms of her extended warranty, 6 months before she was served with the RIAA's subpoena. More »
worst company in america
NIN's Trent Reznor Shared Files On OiNK, Compares iTunes To Sam Goody
Trent Reznor was a member of now-shuttered illegal file sharing website OiNK, and he's not afraid to admit it to New York Magazine:What do you think about OiNK being shut down?More »
Trent: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me.
Are you a Comcast user? Try visiting torrentfreak.com. Let us know if you're allowed to see the page or if you get an error. A reader told us Comcast is blocking it but we want to check it out first. Update: looks like this is an isolated incident. Carry on.
copyright
Inside The Mind Of A 9 Year-Old File-Sharer
TorrentFreak has posted an interview with a 9 year-old girl who uses LimeWire. More »
liars
Damning Proof Comcast Contracted To Sandvine
Comcast told its employees to not comment when customers ask about recent reports in an AP article that it contracted BitTorrent sabotaging to a company called Sandvine, or to even discuss that a relationship exists between the two companies. Too bad that Barron's financial magazine reported back in April that the two are in bed together:
"Sandvine already counts top U.S. cable provider Comcast Corp (CMCSA) among its customers, Barron's said." - Easing network debate may aid Allot/Sandvine-paper, Reuters, Sun Apr 8, 2007
Here's the orginal Barron's article (subscription required): Here's How the Drama Over 'Net Neutrality End
Sandvine also posted the article in the press archives section on their very own website.
Oops. Hard to play the no comment game when the facts are already in print.
PREVIOUSLY:
LEAKS: Insider Tells Us There's Proof Comcast Contracts BitTorrent Sabotaging To Sandvine
Comcast's "We Don't Throttle BitTorrent" Internal Talking Points Memo
insiders
LEAKS: Insider Tells Us There's Proof Comcast Contracts BitTorrent Sabotaging To Sandvine
In the reports about Comcast's disruption of traffic between customers using the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, it's alleged that Comcast outsources the traffic meddling to a third-party company called Sandvine. Publicly, and in an internal talking points memo leaked exclusively to The Consumerist, Comcast refused to comment on having any relationship with Sandvine.
A Comcast insider tells us, however, that in the Comcast trouble-shooting system there is a list of third-party vendors. Sandvine was on the list.
