Petteri Pyyny
11 Sep 2002 15:15
Yahoo and group of American ISPs filed an amicus brief to support Verizon in its court case against RIAA. In this case, RIAA has taken Verizon to court in order to ask court to force Verizon to hand out customer details of one of its customers.
RIAA says that one of Verizon's customers has distributed copyrighted MP3s through various P2P networks and now wants Verizon to reveal this customer's name and contact details.
Verizon has said that it supports RIAA's and other copyright owners' rights to take an individual -- a 'John Doe' case -- to court and make court to reveal the identity of the customer. But Verizon opposes the fact that RIAA wants to have full access to its customer details based on their allegations, not on court orders.
"What the RIAA is really seeking, at the end of the day, is to shift the burden of copyright enforcement from its own members--who apparently would prefer not to alienate potential customers by suing them outright--to an ISP that does nothing more than provide an Internet connection to the customer," the brief says.