What's crazy is: a) How each org/company seems to be handling these notices themselves. b) How they seem to be filtering down to operations people to sort out. Seems like an opportunity for some lawyers to form a membership association. Agree to some reasonable policy, send them your RIAA (et al, because this kind of thing is growing like kudzu) takedowns, they'll respond or tell you what you should do to satisfy (if anything.) This would let that org develop some leverage with RIAA et al, "if we don't hang together we will surely hang separately", RIAA is taking advantage of this, their lawyers know full well how a+b above can be exploited. I sat in an "intellectual property constituency" meeting at ICANN which was basically me, and 100+ lawyers. Their main topic was takedowns, and how horrible it was that ISPs et al don't just reformat all their disks on receipt of a lawyer letter on nice letterhead, the bastards (i.e., us) start demanding court orders etc, outrageous! expensive! burdensome! I told some quick anecdotes about phony takedown demands (e.g., painful divorce or business partner fights) and my inability/reluctance to accurately judge these things beyond the most obvious. I can't say they weren't receptive, it was a little bit of a "WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE, TAKEDOWNS ARE VALUABLE CONSIDERATIONS!" which they understood, and the potential liability aspects for an ISP. Anyhow my take is that takedowns are a growth industry. -- -Barry Shein The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*