Petteri Pyyny
28 Jul 2004 15:13
In rather surprising decision, a Manhattan -based U.S. federal judge Denny Chin, decided against an earlier ruling by Washington D.C. appeals court. Judge Chin decided that Cablevision, an ISP that operates in New York, New Jersey and Conneticut, has to provide personal details of its subscriber to RIAA even before RIAA has sued the individual for copyright infringements.
The earlier decision in December forced RIAA to sue P2P users as "John Does". It meant that RIAA had to drag the P2P users, who it suspected to violate copyright laws, to court before it could even know their names. Before that decision, RIAA was able to use DMCA legislation to force ISPs to hand out personal details of their subscribers, whether RIAA eventually decided to sue them or not.
However, there were some good aspects in recent ruling as well; court recognized that RIAA (and other copyright holders as well, who opt to use DMCA against individual users) had to have solid case against the user before it could force ISP to hand out the identification details of the user.
Source: ZDNet