Verizon Online's battle with the Recording Industry Association of America has a new supporting player: Internet safety watchdog Wired Safety. The group's executive director, Internet attorney Parry Aftab, has filed a federal court brief supporting Verizon's bid to stop RIAA from forcing it to reveal a customer's identity.
In a March 17 brief filed in federal district court here, Aftab argued that abusing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's subpoena power risks a lot more than just cyberstalkers and identity thieves getting personal information – it risks the compromise of smaller law enforcement agencies fighting those and other Internet criminals. Aftab also said it was "ironic" that a tool that was created to protect copyrights could actually be used to frustrate prosecutions aimed at preserving them.
Careful not to criticize RIAA's position of defending intellectual property rights, Aftab said Verizon Online is right to protect its own and all Internet users' privacy. "This isn't about supporting piracy.… The unfettered ability of anyone to gather personal information about anyone else online by misusing the DMCA subpoena hurts innocent Internet users far more than it helps copyright holders," Aftab said of her group's supporting Verizon.
Last July, RIAA demanded Verizon reveal the identity of a customer whom the RIAA claimed had downloaded copyrighted material to his computer. Verizon claims RIAA issued a subpoena against Verizon that didn't meet the DMCA's full requirements, which state that the material in question must be available on Verizon's system or network. The material on the customer's hard drive had been downloaded from elsewhere on the Internet via Verizon’s system, said in a formal summary of the case. Verizon rejected the subpoena on the grounds of invalidity, and RIAA sued to enforce it. RIAA won a federal court ruling in late January, but Verizon appealed the ruling and filed for a stay of the original federal judge's order.
Aftab wrote she's alarmed that unwitting Net users' real names, addresses, and telephone numbers could be landed by anyone willing to fill out a subpoena request.
"If all anyone has to do to find out where someone lives in real life is to drop by the clerk's office at any Federal District Court and fill out a form alleging that they own a copyright that is being infringed, all our work to protect people online is wasted," Aftab said. "It is unbelievable that it is harder for law enforcement officials to obtain this same information, even when a missing child is involved, than it is for anyone willing to lie on the DMCA subpoena form."
As Aftab sees it, any stalker, sexual predator, identity thief, or scammer armed with an Internet protocol address can puncture a Net surfer's anonymity all but at will. While Aftab doesn't dispute the rights of copyright holders to sue for information about actual infringers, "no one should be able to subpoena this kind of information except under the supervision of a judge or subject to the due process protections afforded by the courts in this country."
Wired Safety's divisions include one composed of law enforcement volunteers trained in cybercrime issues including harassment and prevention of child exploitation. Those volunteers, Aftab said, fear that abusing DMCA as she's described could compromise their real investigative work on cybercrime issues. "Law enforcement counts on anonymity online," Aftab wrote. "Larger national and international agencies often have special IPs and online accounts that can't be traced back to them. But smaller and regional law enforcement agencies often do not have this kind of identity protection when the IP address is pierced."
If the DMCA subpoena power is abused, she argued further, then law enforcement agents sitting anonymously in Internet chat rooms during child porn probes run the risk of inadvertently opening up ways for child porn makers and child molesters online to use that subpoena power "to 'check out' a new visitor or 'child victim' in their channels and chatrooms." There are also other threats.
"What about when law enforcement is investigating cyberterrorism?" Aftab's brief queried. "Death threats or bomb threats? Even criminal copyright activities? It is ironic that a tool being sought by copyright holders could be used to frustrate the prosecution of criminal cases enforcing their rights."
RIAA has mounted a hard-hitting campaign against music piracy over the past few years – including the takedown of Internet music swap pioneers Napster – but the association's approaches and tactics have been controversial enough that, on several occasions, its Internet site has been hacked. RIAA president Hilary Rosen was all but forced to resign recently because of continuing accusations of abuse of the DMCA.
