Verizon to appeal in music download ID case

In a follow up to the news post yesterday, The Register have posted a story here, confirming that Verizon are to appeal in the music download ID case.

Verizon has condemned the ruling claiming that it will have a "chilling effect on private communications".

In a statement Sarah B Deutsch, VP and associate general counsel for Verizon said: "The court's decision has troubling ramifications for consumers, service providers and the growth of the Internet.

"It opens the door for anyone who makes a mere allegation of copyright infringement to gain complete access to private subscriber information without the due process protections afforded by the courts."

More here.

I was watching BBC News 24 last night and there was a woman from Verizon on talking about the case.

It seems that this is quite contrivertial in that its a company seeking to get an ISP to release details of a suspected fellon without invoking what I think is called the "John Doe Clause" or something similar. I am no legal expert but if they had done this the whole thing would not be so much of an issue.

The point this woman was making is that if his goes ahead, anyone claiming to be a copyright holder can contain an ISP and request details of a paying customer from that ISP. And the ISP will have to comply. The user just has to be "suspected".

This means that I could set myself up as a copyright holder and then be able to contact ISPs and ask for user details. Now that IS bad.

Apparently, also, the only evidence that will exist about these 600 songs or whatever that were downloaded exists purely on this user's HDD.

If they have a brain at all, they will boot from a Linux CD, run this command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

if the primary master HDD was where they downloaded that song. Now reintall all operating systems, etc, shove loads of games and stuff and software you have a legitimate right to have on your machine, and I think then you will create some serious problems for any forensic computer technicians in getting anything incriminating back.