response 153 of 154:

Jun 26 23:00 UTC 2003

Oops, sorry, I duplicated the gist of David/gull's resp:150 when I 
rolled in the new quarterly incarnation of this item.
 
I believe that there is a widespread misunderstanding of the 
Verizon case, including its citation in The Register's item above.
It was not disputed that the RIAA could get the subscriber ID 
information of the Verizon customers who the RIAA believed to be 
infringing its copyrights; the dispute was over the mechanism to 
be used.  Verizon wanted the RIAA to file a "John Doe" lawsuit
against the user at the given IP address; this satisfied Verizon's
desire to slow down the process to something it can afford, and
offered judicial review of the case for privacy advocates.
 
What the RIAA wanted (and got) was access to the "expedited subpoena"
process spelled out in the DMCA.  This doesn't make it any easier 
for the RIAA to file suit against P2P sharers; it does make it possible
for the RIAA to send threatening letters to the users without
suing them.
 
The Verizon ruling may also allow the RIAA to shop for particularly 
unattractive defendants, and avoid the embarassment of suing cute 
12-year-old girls, but that's not directly the issue.