Tucson, Arizona Saturday, 20 December 2003
By John Schwartz
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The recording industry cannot use legal shortcuts to force Internet companies to disclose the names of people who trade music online, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled Friday.
The sharply worded ruling, which underscored the role of judges in protecting privacy and civil rights, is a major setback to the record companies in their efforts to stamp out the sharing of copyright songs through the Internet.
It overturns a decision in U.S. District Court that allowed the music industry to force the disclosure of individuals simply by submitting subpoenas to a court clerk without winning a judge's approval.
"It's a huge victory for all Internet users," said Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon Communications, which brought the suit against the Recording Industry Association of America to protect the identities of its Internet customers.
Lawsuits to continue
Cary Sherman, president of the recording association, said the case "is inconsistent with both the views of Congress and the findings of the district court." Sherman said his organization would continue to sue those who violate copyrights. It "doesn't change the law, or our right to sue," he said. "It just changes the way we get the information."
Sherman said his member companies had not decided whether to appeal or whether to press Congress to amend trademark law.
The recording industry has been struggling to counter an army of downloaders - tens of millions strong - who have swapped songs over the Internet, beginning with the advent of Napster in the late 1990s and more recently on "peer-to-peer" networks.
Controversial legal provision
The recording industry used a controversial provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 to demand that companies that provide Internet connections reveal the names of those customers.
Until Friday's ruling, the industry could seek information on file traders without filing a lawsuit or even appearing before a judge, a streamlined procedure that opponents of the industry said did not protect Internet users' rights.
The opinion in the Verizon case was written by Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and represented the view of the three judges who heard the case.
Ginsburg wrote that Verizon, as an Internet service provider, was "acting merely as a conduit" for the music files and did not store the data on its own computer network.
The industry's argument, he added, that subpoena power could be applied against an Internet service provider when songs are only momentarily passing through its data pipes "borders upon the silly."