On Thu, 8 May 2003 Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
We get about 250 of these a year. The MPAA and RIAA notices read almost identically. 17 USC 512 is pretty clear about the ISP 'safe harbor' and what you have to do to keep it - basically, you as an ISP do *NOT* have to worry about content that happens to be on or go through your servers as a result of your user's actions *IF* you take action when you *do* receive an infringment notice (one of the *good* things about the DMCA, incidentally - fielding 250 complaints a year is a lot easier than filtering an OC12 for content and worrying if you miss something).
I prefer to take a two pronged approach to these requests. 1. If it's on a web site any they provide a link to one of my servers, then I'll jump to the site, modify the file and notify the owner. That one is easy. 2. Some of these letters only provide IP address and Song title or Movie title. I'm not a lwayer, but they don't have a leg to stand on if they don't follow the law they are quoting: `(3) ELEMENTS OF NOTIFICATION- `(A) To be effective under this subsection, a notification of claimed infringement must be a written communication provided to the designated agent of a service provider that includes substantially the following: ...blah...blah `(iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted. *** End By my understanding, an IP address is not listed on any of that. I don't have to waste time sifting through dialup logs, or even using an automated process I have in place for subpoenas to answer this request. At least if they subpoena the information they have to prove to a judge they have a good claim. I wish I had the reference at hand, but when they subpoena information, we bill the requestor $450 for the time to lookup the user information. (Your Lawyer should be able to tell you the maximum now you can request for subpoena information.) Read the whole section 512 yourself though: http://www.cyberspacelaw.org/dogan/dmcaisp.html Gerald