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Non-Tech : Auric Goldfinger's Short List -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: afrayem onigwecher who wrote (11977)	8/11/2003 8:38:58 AM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Respond to of 19428

Groc on Dude! "Two Colleges May Keep Data From Record industry By MAUREEN TKACIK Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL The recording industry has hit another in a string of procedural obstacles as it prepares to launch a massive legal attack against music piracy on the Internet. A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that two Boston-area universities don't have to comply with subpoenas from the recording industry seeking information about students who may illicitly share music online. The Recording Industry Association of America made headlines earlier this summer when, in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, it filed more than 1,000 subpoenas demanding that Internet service providers around the country disclose the identities of people suspected of sharing large amounts of copyrighted music online. The RIAA has indicated that, in a few weeks, it plans to file hundreds of lawsuits against individuals it believes share vast amounts of music online. But a handful of universities and a major Internet-service provider have challenged the validity of those subpoenas, and a U.S. senator has raised questions about the subpoena process. On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro ruled that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass., and Boston College, in Newton, Mass., don't have to comply with subpoenas they received seeking information about students the RIAA suspects of file-sharing. The two institutions argued that the subpoenas, which had been issued through the federal court in Washington, D.C., couldn't be served in Massachusetts. The RIAA, which also has filed a motion in D.C. court to compel the universities to comply with the subpoenas, said in a statement that the ruling is a "minor procedural issue." A spokesman added that the decision wouldn't affect the timing of the hundreds of lawsuits it plans against individual file sharers, in part because numerous other Internet service providers and universities are cooperating with the subpoena process. Still, the decision suggests the industry group could be forced to refile many of its subpoenas in different courts throughout the country. And the problems with the subpoena process could to some degree limit the reach of the legal attack the industry has promised. At least two other universities have also refused to cooperate with RIAA subpoenas on jurisdictional grounds, and SBC Communications Inc., whose subsidiary Pacific Bell Internet Services has fielded more than 200 RIAA subpoenas, last month filed a lawsuit against the RIAA arguing that subpoenas must be filed in the jurisdiction where the person resides who has the information being sought. SBC, based in San Antonio, isn't complying with its subpoenas while the lawsuit, which it filed in federal court in San Francisco, is in progress. Meanwhile, Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican and chairman of the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations, has voiced concerns about the subpoena process and last month launched an inquiry into the matter. The RIAA had argued that, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, its subpoenas were valid no matter where in the country a user or his Internet-service provider was based, partially in the interest of "expeditiousness" and partially because of the "nonphysical nature of the Internet." The industry group chose Washington because its right to subpoena ISPs for user information had been affirmed by a judge in that court earlier this year in a case involving Verizon Communications Inc. New York-based Verizon, which provides telephone and Internet service, had argued that disclosing names of customers suspected of file-swapping violated their privacy rights. MIT and Boston College both filed motions to quash the RIAA subpoenas they received, arguing that the D.C. court doesn't have jurisdiction over users outside a 100-mile radius of Washington. The institutions weren't the only ones to make that argument: Last week, lawyers for Columbia University in New York filed a similar motion in federal court in New York. Meanwhile, lawyers for Boston University, in Boston, contend that no legal action on their part was necessary. They sent a letter to the RIAA informing the group that its subpoena was issued by the wrong court. "No matter how sympathetic we might be to the problems of the recording industry ... that doesn't give the RIAA the right to take shortcuts," said Robert Smith, Boston University's associate general counsel, adding that he suspected public-relations concerns outweighed concerns of "expeditiousness" in the filing of the subpoenas, since the D.C. court has been overburdened with the subpoenas. "If they needed to have those names so fast, why didn't they file their subpoenas in the right court?" said Mr. Smith. "I understand they've done it in this way to make a statement and get publicity and perhaps chill the piracy problem, but we received our subpoena weeks ago and they still don't have their names."