Entries from October 2007 ↓

Here’s a good Slashdot story: “A judge in Rochester, New York, has denied an RIAA application for default judgment on the ground that the RIAA’s evidence was insufficient, in that it contained no details of actual downloads or distributions, and no sufficient evidence that defendant was in fact Kazaa user ‘heavyjeffmc@KaZaA.’ The decision concluded that ‘there are significant issues of fact regarding the identification of the defendant from his alleged “online media distribution system” username.’ (In case you’re unfamiliar with the term ‘online media distribution system,’ that’s because it is a term the RIAA coined 4 years ago to describe p2p file sharing accounts in its lawsuits; the term is not known to have been used by anyone else anywhere else.)” So while an IP isn’t good enough to nail down a ‘downloader’ (or in this case someone who used Kazaa, for what we don’t know), here a judge decides that a user name (which anyone can make up) doesn’t truly represent a certain person.

They just keep it up, now its come to light that AT&T has rolled out new Terms of Service for its DSL service that restricts users, while leaving the proof as a rather abstract concept.  Here’s the skinny, “…In section 5 of its legal ToS, AT&T stipulates the following:

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.

Translation: “conduct” that AT&T “believes” “tends to damage” its name, or the name of its partners, can get you booted off the service. Note the use of “tends to damage”: the language of the contract does not require any proof of any actual damage.“  Nice, so much for free speech - if you’re an AT&T customer, which I’m not.  Heck, if I were you wouldn’t be reading this!