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Supreme Court wants US input on whether ISPs should be liable for users' piracy
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoSurely this ship sailed a long time ago. This is just throwing money around to find someone to blame for piracy despite the fact that piracy is both inevitable and highly incentivized by the claimants.
- HPsquared 2y agoI have a feeling piracy is way down from the heyday of the 2000s-2010s.
- rob74 2y agoWith the current US Supreme Court, I wouldn't be that sure. And, depending on how they decide, it won't be just content disappearing because of excessive DMCA notices, your internet connection itself might be gone because someone didn't like what you downloaded (or watched) yesterday...
- fsflover 2y ago> despite the fact that piracy is both inevitable and highly incentivized by the claimants And also it doesn't harm sales: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35701785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35701785, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15309950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15309950
- netsharc 2y agoHey Hollywood, time to bring out the strippers for Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh (also he likes beer, lots of beer), and I guess some preacher to explain to ACB how ISP is helping the distribution of porn, so need to be punished. Ah, Post-11/6 America, what a lovely place to birth this boring joke. And it had to be birthed, anything else would be illegal.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoI have a hard time imagining that Thomas wouldn't be an enthusiastic supporter of porn distribution.
- ttyprintk 2y agoLooking at this another way, this case is a call-for-solicitor-general. Trump will pick John Sauer for SG because Sauer wrote a chapter of Project 2025. A generation ago, the Contract with America arrived with Republican electoral gains. These manifestos are important because otherwise individual Republicans don’t have both the skills of governance and populist appeal. It’s interesting that Project 2025 argues that its social points necessitate a more powerful executive. Like a Minister of Health rather than a supervisor of the department distributing advice on maybe improving medical regulations please.
- faggotbreath 2y ago[dead]
- 0xEF 2y agoI feel like someone in the Ars newsroom mixed up their headlines. I thought I was about to read an article about protecting user privacy. What I read instead is an article about to billion-dollar giants having a pissing contest over the oh-here-we-go-again piracy argument. Did Lars Ulrich secretly write this?
- 0xEF 2y agoOh Ef, might be time to check the prescription on my glasses again. I misread "piracy" as "privacy" in the headline. Apologies to Ars (but not Lars). Still, are we able to have an honest conversation about one without closely examining the other?
- jvdvegt 2y agoI misread it the same way. If ISPs are responsible for piracy though, they could be for privacy as well!
- delichon 2y agoShould the phone company be liable for their customers performing a copywrited song on the phone? Why should an ISP be required to surveil their customers but not the phone company? When my dish washing machine can take voice commands does it get deputized by the copywrite police too?
- Joker_vD 2y agoSince phone (and internet) is not mail, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that "no law of Congress can place in the hands of officials connected with the Postal Service any authority to invade the secrecy of letters and such sealed packages in the mail; and all regulations adopted as to mail matter of this kind must be in subordination to the great principle embodied in the fourth amendment of the Constitution" is completely irrelevant /s
- justinclift 2y agoIsn't the place which the ISPs were receiving notices from, one of the ones that was actually just Copyright Trolling? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_troll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_troll i.e. they were more about generating bogus notices based upon no real evidence, and didn't even try ensuring they had court worthy evidence before sending notices If that's the case, then how is that ignored when other, similar firms had their operators sanctioned and thrown in jail for doing the same thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law
- ttyprintk 2y agoWith the second link (Prenda), I haven’t heard if those trolls actually had contact with the copyright holders.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoOf course they had contact with the copyright holders. Prenda was the copyright holders; that's the only reason they got in trouble.
- ttyprintk 2y agoSorry, I should have clarified. In the context of interacting with ISPs, the most important detail about Prenda is that the law firm lied to ISPs that they represented copyright assignments. So, I think the GP comment brings up Prenda because these cases force an ISP to police its users and also to carefully validate legal forms from copyright holders. That’s a lot of work to run a series of tubes.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoThey did represent copyright assignments. They owned the copyright. What do you think the ISPs needed to know?
- 2y ago
- ttyprintk 2y agoCox is asking for clarification: are they responsible for policing content: 1. When it has economic value and some content creator has emailed Cox about torrents on an IP (Sony says Cox profits through subscriber fees) 2. When it arrives in a forum and hurts someone’s feelings (Cox enjoys safe harbor at the moment) How about a full-length movie with a separate riff track and maybe superimposed robots in the audience?
- TheTimeKnife 2y agoSony winning this will be a disaster. Media companies will use unproven allegations to deplatform people.
- 71bw 2y agoWhat you want to say is that it will be made easier than it already is.
- Dalewyn 2y ago[flagged]
- CyberDildonics 2y agoThis article is about people potentially losing their internet access because a media corporation decides to accuse them of something. It isn't about an internet site choosing not to broadcast them, which could be done at any time. You're talking about someone who lost access to twitter and facebook after using them to stage a violent coup to overturn the united state election for president. That's a pretty high bar to lose your ability to access two websites. I can't believe anyone would try to compare these two things as having anything to do with each other.
- paol 2y agoFrom the arguments I've read against this, I think not enough emphasis is being placed on the strongest one: In the modern world online access is as necessary as water, power and phone service. No one would suggest forcing the power company to cut service to a customer over trivial civil law matters (which is what copyright is) that are completely unrelated to the company or the service it provides. No one should suggest cutting internet access either. I guess ISPs in the US don't want to use that argument due to the regulatory implications (the common carrier classification thing)? But someone should be making that argument to the court.
- ajsnigrutin 2y agoYep, internet is a utility, like a toll road (most highways in many countries). If you shoplift, should you lose your highway sticker? Somehow the intrnet is this 'magical place' where real world analogies don't work for many people,... surveillance related stuff being the worst offender.
- kenniskrag 2y agoDriving licence is a bad argument because there is public transportation service. If you're reckless or have other issues the licence is revoked.
- ajsnigrutin 2y agoNot driving licence, the toll-road sticker. Vignette in many countries. It's usually tied to the vehicle, and it indicates that the yearly highway toll has been paid, and you're allowed to use the paid-highways. If you personally did something, then you personally are responsible for that something that you did. Not your families car.
- nkrisc 2y agoThe only thing similar I’ve heard of in the US is vehicle registration fees and stickers (that usually go on the license plate), but these vary state by state and are not tied to any toll road or the like. Every toll road I’ve ever been on in the US you have to pay each time you use it. These days most states use the same transponder system where your vehicle is detected by that device when you enter the toll road or by license plate readers. I’ve never heard of a general “yearly highway toll” anywhere in the US.
- renegat0x0 2y agoI think road construction companies should be liable for terrorism, since terrorist sometimes use roads.
- croes 2y agoAnd car manufacturers and gas stations
- Ekaros 2y agoCan't the same question be asked on any other illegal activity done over connection. Say wire-fraud? With many computer crimes it gets even more questionable. Should internet connection of some cloud hosting company be terminated if their connection is used for attacking other systems?
- justinclift 2y agoWonder if some even more authoritarian places than America currently is will start revoking people's internet access for social media posts the government is unhappy about?
- metalmangler 2y agoFirst, copying anything availible to a "civilian" on the interenet is not piracy as it can be done without any breaking or tunnling,etc, and it is absoltlely clear that copying is bieng be done in complete inocence, click ,save, and it just works. Second, until all digital "property" can be bought, sold ,returned, insured against loss..... or theft,loaned out, rented out, it is not real property, and is not subject to the laws governing property, The idea of siezing real property to somehow protect one, of an infinite number of digital copys, is beyond comprehension. And now faced with the fact of not bieng able to identify, where or,when,or what, was taken, they suggest that based on there general unsubstantiated susspision, cutting someone out of the global comunication system? The real question, is how is this bieng given a hearing?Not good, not good at all.Face up folks, they want to smash the internet, and bring back cable. Boomer noise.
- cft 2y agoWhy don't the copyright holders go directly after the violators of the copyright? Why do they need the extra judicial policing by Cox? Answer: because they want to shift the enforcement costs to Cox. If a copyright violation cost them $150,000 as they allege, it would make economic sense for them to go after individual violators. But it doesn't.
- theshrike79 2y agoShould gun and bullet manufacturers be liable for school shootings too?
- nobody9999 2y agoDepending on how this goes (presumably anti-consumer/end user, given that "the business of America is business!"), it may be time to invest in a VPN.
- hn_acker 2y agoLet me ignore for a moment the legal problems with copyright infringement allegation notices. ISPs should not be liable for copyright infringement by users, and cutting off internet access for copyright infringement should not be a legitimate legal remedy. The internet is increasingly essential for applying to work, working, applying to colleges, completing secondary and tertiary education, and interacting with governments at all levels. The internet is also a crucial tool for expression protected by the First Amendment. Cutting off internet access would be an illegitimate penalty for defamation, and would be an illegitimate penalty for copyright infringement. Violations of civil law cannot override the First Amendment. In particular, copyright can't override the First Amendment: the authority of Congress to pass copyright laws is in the pre-amendment portion of the constitution, and the copyright laws themselves are federal statutes (which yield to the Supremacy Clause). Now what about when someone sends notices alleging copyright infringement by an ISP's users (where by ISP I mean providers of access to the internet, rather than owners of websites)? First, such notices have no affirmative statutory basis and were given legal weight by a mistaken court decision [1]: > The first safe harbor, codified at Section 512(a), applies to providers of “Transitory Digital Network Communications.”[24] Examples of these intermediaries are the companies that provide internet access generally, or what we refer to as “ISPs,” including broadband ISPs like Verizon and Cox. ... > The third safe harbor, codified at Section 512(c), applies to service providers that enable information to be “stored at the direction of users.”[27] When people speak of the “DMCA,” they are often referring to this safe harbor and the many internet services it covers, such as social media sites or YouTube, where users have published, or “stored,” some “information” they have expressed.[28] Most notably, this safe harbor, which is the most complex of the four in terms of its criteria, includes the requirement that providers abide by a “notice-and-takedown” system.[29] Under this system, the putative copyright holder or its agent sends a “notice,” which is sometimes colloquially referred to as a “takedown demand,” to the service provider alleging that some material a user has posted violates their copyright.[30] Having now been put on notice of potential infringement, the service provider must then act to quickly remove the allegedly infringing material to avoid sharing in liability for it. ... > In addition, Cox effectively created a new requirement for the 512(a) safe harbor for providers to receive and respond to takedown notices that the statutory text had never before required. Takedown notices are entirely products of the 512(c) safe harbor.[76] While the takedown notices described in 512(c) are also used in the context of the 512(b) and (d) safe harbors, the 512(a) safe harbor makes absolutely no mention of them. Second, the Section 512(c) safe harbor still violates the First Amendment by design [1]: > the DMCA requires the intermediaries to apply this censorship without there ever being a judicial finding that the speech or speaker activity was even wrongful.[7] Mere accusation is enough to force the intermediaries to take action, lest they lose access to the protection of the applicable safe harbor and find themselves staring down a potentially expensive infringement lawsuit. Thus, the safe-harbor system creates a situation where non-wrongful and constitutionally protected speech ends up being removed by the intermediary service it was expressed on because the law has established a mechanism to penalize these services if they do not. ... > If there is to be an obligation for a provider to act, that obligation should be triggered only after there has been a judicial finding of infringement, and not just when there has been the mere suggestion of it. [1] https://www.rstreet.org/research/jawboning-in-plain-sight-the-unconstitutional-censorship-tolerated-by-the-dmca/ https://www.rstreet.org/research/jawboning-in-plain-sight-th...