RIAA DMCA Subpoenas at UNC & NC State shot down

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Jason Schultz <jason () eff org>
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 09:53:17 -0700
To: "Eff-Priv@Eff. Org" <eff-priv () eff org>, EFF IP <eff-ip () eff org>
Subject: [E-PRV] Fwd: [LawfulUse] RIAA DMCA Subpoenas at UNC & NC State shot
down

Decision follows the D.C. Cir. RIAA v. Verizon, so nothing new there.  But
it specifically holds that Universities qualify as 512(a) providers for P2P
traffic, which is nice.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Bob Oakley <oakley () law georgetown edu>
> Date: April 22, 2005 7:57:46 AM PDT
> To: lawfuluse () publicknowledge org
> Subject: [LawfulUse] RIAA Subpoenas at UNC & NC State
> Reply-To: lawfuluse () publicknowledge org
>
> INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
> 2 North Carolina students and their universities prevail in fight over
> recording-industry subpoenas
>  
>
>
>  Two college students in North Carolina and their universities scored a legal
> victory against the recording industry last week, when a federal judge quashed
> subpoenas that would have required the institutions to reveal the students'
> identities. The Recording Industry Association of America had requested the
> subpoenas as a likely precursor to filing lawsuits accusing the students of
> swapping music online in violation of copyright law.
>
>  About two years ago, the industry group sought to learn the name of a student
> at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill whose online name was hulk.
> The group also sought the identity of a North Carolina State University
> student whose online name was CadillacMan () Blubster com.
>
>  The students said the subpoenas were invalid because they did not conform to
> the provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that authorizes such
> subpoenas and because they were unconstitutional. The subpoenas are
> controversial because a court clerk, instead of a judge, issues them. The
> process is faster but, its critics say, puts a powerful judicial function in
> the hands of a low-level official.
>
>  Judge Russell A. Eliason, of the U.S. District Court in Greensboro, N.C.,
> agreed with the students that the subpoenas violated the digital copyright
> act. The judge issued his decision on April 14 but did not make it public
> until a week later.
>
>  The judge's rationale, in large part, mirrored a December 2003 ruling by the
> U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (The Chronicle,
> January 9, 2004). That court said the expedited subpoenas that the
> recording-industry group had been using to learn the identities of suspected
> music pirates were invalid when the copyrighted material had been stored on
> computers beyond the Internet-service provider's reach. Although in that case
> Verizon Communications Inc. had challenged the subpoenas, the court ruling
> also applied to colleges when acting as Internet-service providers.
>
>  The appeals court said the subpoenas could be issued only to service
> providers that stored copyrighted material on their servers, not to providers,
> like Verizon, that were merely conduits of information sent by others.
>
>  The subpoenas issued to Chapel Hill and North Carolina State were the same
> type of documents that the appeals court had ruled were illegal. The
> universities' networks were used to transmit songs traded by students, but not
> to store the music.
>
>  The universities initially appeared willing to comply with the subpoenas, but
> they questioned the documents' validity after the federal appeals court ruled.
> Eventually they filed their own separate motions to quash the subpoenas. The
> district court consolidated the two cases.
>
>  The federal government intervened in the litigation on behalf of the
> recording industry because it sought to support the digital copyright law.
>
>  Judge Eliason said he was not persuaded by the recording-industry group's
> argument that Congress -- in drafting the digital copyright act --- meant to
> allow the expedited subpoenas to also apply to Internet-service providers that
> are only thruways for peer-to-peer file sharing.
>
>  To allow such subpoenas to be served, the judge stated, "would amount to a
> rewriting" of the digital copyright law. "There are simply too many dangling
> threads in this cloth for a court to tailor it into a garment fit for the use"
> that the recording-industry group proposed, the judge added.
>
>  Judge Eliason also endorsed a separate argument by the North Carolina State
> student that the subpoena sent to her institution was invalid because it was
> issued by a court that does not have jurisdiction over the university.
>
>  Lisa Katz, a spokeswoman at Chapel Hill, said the university was pleased by
> the judge's decision. Officials at North Carolina State did not respond to a
> message seeking comment on Thursday.
>
>  Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina attorney general's
> office, which represents the universities, said the office had not seen the
> judge's decision.
>
>  The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the Chapel Hill student,
> hailed Judge Eliason's ruling. "Hopefully, the recording industry will not use
> these special subpoenas any longer," said Aden J. Fine, a lawyer at the
> group's New York City office.
>
>  Jenni Engebretsen, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of
> America, said the group was considering whether to appeal Judge Eliason's
> order. Since the appeals-court decision, she added, the industry group has not
> been using the expedited subpoenas, but instead has been filing lawsuits
> against unidentified John and Jane Does, accusing them of violating copyright
> law by swapping music online.
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 
Jason M. Schultz (415) 436-9333 x 112
Staff Attorney jason () eff org
Electronic Frontier Foundation www.eff.org


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