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New Bill Could Aid Music File Sharers

Posted by malebolgia on 18 September 2003 - 23:27 · 21 comments & 876 views

A bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate that could significantly curtail the Recording Industry Association of America's recent -- and quite successful -- offensive against individuals who share music files over the Internet. If passed, the legislation would end the RIAA's flood of subpoenas to Internet service providers demanding the identities of their customers who use such online file-sharing services as Morpheus and Kazaa .

Introduced by Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), the "Consumers, Schools, and Libraries Digital Rights Management (DRM) Awareness Act of 2003" would prevent copyright holders from compelling an ISP to disclose the names or other identifying information of its subscribers prior to the filing of a suit -- a tactic that critics and civil libertarians decry as unconstitutional and an invasion of privacy .
This issue has been hashed out in court and, in fact, is being reviewed again as Verizon argues before a panel of federal judges that the lower-court decision that required it to turn over its customers' names was incorrect.

News source: NewsFactor

VeriSign's Site Finder, launched on Monday, has drawn heated criticism for hijacking mistyped Web addresses. Instead of getting an error message, Web surfers who mistype ".com" and ".net" Web addresses are redirected to the Site Finder service, which then offers a list of likely alternatives, some of which are paid-placement links. Critics complain the new service gives VeriSign too much control over online traffic and allows it to profit from an essential monopoly over ".com" and ".net" names. VeriSign is charged by the U.S. government with running the ".com" and ".net" domains, and directs much of the traffic on the Internet.

However, the ISC is about to undercut the Site Finder service with a patch to its BIND software.

BIND runs on about 80 percent of the Internet's domain name servers -- the machines that translate human-readable Web addresses like www.wired.com into machine-readable Internet addresses used by the Internet's vast network of computers."

The patch will be released by the end of Tuesday, said Paul Vixie, ISC's president.

"The phone has been ringing off the hook with deeply unhappy customers," he said. "We don't have a political ax to grind. Whether VeriSign should or should not have done this is not for us to decide. But we have to respond to our customers who are demanding it."

Vixie said that ISC's customers -- typically ISPs and large enterprises -- needed a fix because VeriSign's Site Finder broke their spam filters.

Vixie said a lot of spam spoofs the "from" domain, and that many ISP-level spam filters check whether incoming e-mail is from a valid domain or not. Instead of generating errors, the spam filter checks are instead being rerouted to the Site Finder service, and therefore appear to originate from a legitimate domain.

Vixie said the ISC's customers aren't too concerned with advertising. "They don't want to help spammers. It's the lack of a viable spam-detection mechanism they're worried about. They are concerned about spam, not advertising," Vixie said.

VeriSign did not respond requests for comment.

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#1 Posted by Wiser87 on 18 Sep 2003 - 23:44: Yay!

#2 Posted by astrokat on 18 Sep 2003 - 23:45: YES!!!!!!!!

#3 Posted by Mav Phoenix on 18 Sep 2003 - 23:47

(1 reply) #4 Posted by Zelpus on 19 Sep 2003 - 00:20: Sam Brownback is my new hero

#5 Posted by rogerroger on 19 Sep 2003 - 00:22: In the words of my great grandfather, "Up yours RIAA!!!."

#6 Posted by BigP on 19 Sep 2003 - 00:37: I C Light

lol bet the Riaa is pissed

#7 Posted by DsnBehind on 19 Sep 2003 - 00:46: Let's hope it gets passed...

#8 Posted by Betaz on 19 Sep 2003 - 00:48: I know anyone in my state that is for it gets my vote

#9 Posted by Gary_Player on 19 Sep 2003 - 00:57: Sweet...Everybody call their representatives!!!

(1 reply) #10 Posted by idbuythatforadollar on 19 Sep 2003 - 01:06

#11 Posted by macrosslover on 19 Sep 2003 - 04:10: the fact that a Republican is backing the bill really does say alot. i think that whole 12yo girl mess pissed off the wrong people aka Senators. i bet we see the RIAA start advertising the amensty program more.

#12 Posted by Skyfrog on 19 Sep 2003 - 05:29: Senator Sam Brownback = Hero

(2 replies) #13 Posted by psycheb on 19 Sep 2003 - 06:28: email this guy if you can and tell him what a champ he is

#14 Posted by gliscameria on 19 Sep 2003 - 16:02: Fantastic. Hooraaa VZ.

(1 reply) #15 Posted by devinlamothe on 19 Sep 2003 - 16:19: Haha, stupid RIAA. And whats this about this bill being unconstitutional? How is it unconstitutional to have privacy?

#16 Posted by helloalexb on 20 Sep 2003 - 20:44: well the only reason why the RIAA really has power is b/c they have money to give to the canidates in other words this will never happen we need a bill or act that says no corp can give money in anyway possible to the gov't. Pro fare elections con bad economy ....meaning that were doomed

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