{"id":29266,"date":"2025-04-23T12:18:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T16:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=29266"},"modified":"2025-04-23T12:18:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T16:18:32","slug":"mpa-and-riaa-want-to-be-heard-in-crucial-dmca-subpoena-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2025\/04\/23\/mpa-and-riaa-want-to-be-heard-in-crucial-dmca-subpoena-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"MPA and RIAA Want to be Heard in Crucial DMCA Subpoena Appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The MPA and RIAA want to have their say in a crucial third-party Ninth Circuit appeal about the use of DMCA subpoenas against alleged online pirates. Fearing a ruling that could limit their enforcement options, the groups requested speaking time at an upcoming hearing. This intervention, as well as previous commentary from the EFF, which is backed by a new party, underscores the high-stakes nature of the case.<\/p>\n

Tackling online piracy is a complicated endeavor that often begins with efforts to identify the operators of infringing sites and services. This is also where the first hurdles show up.<\/p>\n

Many pirates keep their identities concealed. This applies to the operators of sites and services as well as their users.<\/p>\n

This relative anonymity is a nuisance to anti-piracy groups, including the RIAA and MPA. While most online services refuse to voluntarily hand over user details, legal tools can help rightsholders move forward.<\/p>\n

In recent years, DMCA subpoenas have established themselves as a key anti-piracy enforcement tool. These requests don\u2019t require any oversight from a judge and are typically signed off by a court clerk. This makes them ideal to swiftly identify online pirates.<\/p>\n

DMCA Subpoenas at Risk<\/h2>\n

Both the RIAA and MPA have used these subpoenas to identify owners of pirate sites and individual infringers. The groups would like DMCA subpoenas, as detailed in\u00a0DMCA \u00a7512(h)<\/a>, to remain in their toolbox but there are concerns that a recent court order could hinder their effectiveness.<\/p>\n

The case in point doesn\u2019t involve the RIAA or MPA. It\u2019s a dispute between several independent film companies and Internet provider Cox. The latter successfully objected to a DMCA subpoena which sought to obtain the personal details of numerous alleged BitTorrent pirates.<\/p>\n

The main contention in this case is whether DMCA subpoenas apply to residential Internet providers. Cox argued against, describing itself as a mere conduit provider benefiting from the DMCA\u2019s \u00a7512(a) safe harbor, which does not require ISPs to take anything down, because the ISP doesn\u2019t store content.<\/p>\n

For background, a brief summary of the four types of ISPs under 17 U.S.C. \u00a7 512.<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u2013 \u00a7512(a): transitory digital network communications; services that merely pass on bits and bytes<\/sup>
\n\u2013 \u00a7512(b): system caching; services that temporarily store (cache) data<\/sup>
\n\u2013 \u00a7512(c): storage of information on systems; services that host data<\/sup>
\n\u2013 \u00a7512(d): information location tools; services that connect users to online locations (e.g. social media, search engines)<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Last year, the court agreed with Cox\u2019s reasoning and quashed the subpoena. The order\u00a0concluded<\/a>\u00a0that DMCA subpoenas typically don\u2019t apply to DMCA \u00a7512(a) services, but do apply to other providers that store or link to infringing content directly.<\/p>\n

The film companies, including Capstone Studios and Millennium Funding, didn\u2019t give up. After the motion for reconsideration failed, they filed an appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Among other things, the appeal argued that Cox also falls under DMCA \u00a7512(d), as it can remove or disable \u2018references or links\u2019 to infringing content.<\/p>\n

In addition, the rightsholders also argue that DMCA subpoenas apply to \u00a7 512(a) service providers. Therefore, they say, a DMCA subpoena should be valid for Cox.<\/p>\n

MPA and RIAA Want to be Heard<\/h2>\n

The language of the DMCA can be complex at times and open to interpretation. The film companies hope that they can force a breakthrough via the court of appeals, but an adverse ruling that further restricts the scope of DMCA subpoenas is possible too.<\/p>\n

The risk of an adverse ruling clearly has the MPA and RIAA worried. They often use these subpoenas to request information from third-party services such as Cloudflare, social media companies, and domain registrars.<\/p>\n

The trade groups previously\u00a0shared their thoughts<\/a>\u00a0in an amicus brief. They didn\u2019t take sides in the dispute, but pointed out that the lower court\u2019s ruling was too broad. Specifically, they questioned the part suggesting that IP addresses may never function as links, within the context of the section 512(d) safe harbor.<\/p>\n

MPA and RIAA instead argued that section 512(d) services, which could cover reverse proxy providers such as Cloudflare, can link to pirate websites through IP-addresses.<\/p>\n

If the district court\u2019s order stands, the validity of MPA and RIAA DMCA subpoenas may be in question. For this reason, the group urged the court to limit its findings to the evidence at hand, without the contested and presumably unneeded IP-address interpretation.<\/p>\n

To further reiterate this position, MPA and RIAA asked for speaking time at a hearing scheduled for June. They request 10 minutes of the court\u2019s time, while keeping the available time for the other parties at 15 minutes each.<\/p>\n

\u201cMPA and RIAA invest substantial resources to combat online piracy, including through the use of section 512(h) subpoenas. Because infringers hide under aliases and behind proxies, section 512(h) subpoenas are a key tool to combat online infringement and protect the legitimate creative industries,\u201d the groups inform the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmici intend to use their time to advocate for reversal or a narrow ruling, preventing unintended consequences for subpoenas and issues not before this Court that could have unintended consequences on the carefully-crafted compromise reflected in the DMCA.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MPA and RIAA brief<\/em><\/center> <\/p>\n

\"amice\"<\/picture><\/center> <\/p>\n

The court has yet to rule on this request. While the movie companies don\u2019t object, Cox doesn\u2019t want to extend the hearing by ten minutes, but wants the MPA and RIAA to use the film companies\u2019 time instead.<\/p>\n

\u2018Trolls\u2019<\/h2>\n

Where the MPA and RIAA call for a more narrow and restricted ruling, an additional third-party has submitted an amicus brief that extends far beyond the legal intricacies of the DMCA\u2019s section 512.<\/p>\n

That submission comes from Charles Muszynski, who has been embroiled with movie companies and their attorneys for several years. Their dispute started when the movie companies\u00a0targeted LiquidVPN<\/a>, which had been purchased by one of Muszynski\u2019s companies.<\/p>\n

That particular legal battle is over, but follow-up litigation in international courts continues to this day. According to Muszynski, the movie companies are of a \u201ccopyright troll\u201d group that operates a \u201ccriminal racketeering and money laundering sham\u201d that he likens to the criminal\u00a0Prenda Law<\/a>\u00a0operation.<\/p>\n

These allegations are not immediately relevant for the DMCA subpoena argument. But, for the matter at hand, Muszynski\u2019s amicus brief concurs and adopts the arguments that were\u00a0previously made<\/a>\u00a0by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in this case.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Trolling Sham\u2019<\/center> <\/p>\n

\"amicus\"<\/picture><\/center> <\/p>\n

EFF also used the \u201ctroll\u201d terminology, albeit in a different context and without directly referring to the movie companies. EFF urged the court not to allow copyright holders to issue \u00a7512(h) subpoenas to ISPs who simply transmit data, as this could trigger more coercive settlement requests against internet subscribers.<\/p>\n

The amicus curiae briefs from both EFF and Muszynski are still listed as pending, so it\u2019s still unknown whether they will be considered by the Court of Appeals. That said, with many eyes on this case, it\u2019s clear that there\u2019s a lot at stake in the upcoming hearing, and in the ruling that will eventually follow.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

A copy of the MPA and RIAA\u2019s request to participate in the oral hearing is available\u00a0here (pdf)<\/a>. Muszynski\u2019s amicus curiae brief is available\u00a0here (pdf)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Source: \u00a0\"TorrentFreak\"<\/a> TorrentFreak.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The MPA and RIAA want to have their say in a crucial third-party Ninth Circuit appeal about the use of DMCA subpoenas against alleged online pirates. Fearing a ruling that could limit their enforcement options, […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[11212,3745,2288,3845,11213,3193,9989,10142,8440,1484,8476,7046,1811,2377,4132],"class_list":{"0":"post-29266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-amici","10":"tag-anti-piracy","11":"tag-bittorrent","12":"tag-cox-communications","13":"tag-criminal-racketeering","14":"tag-dmca","15":"tag-dmca-subpoena","16":"tag-electronic-frontier-foundation","17":"tag-liquidvpn","18":"tag-money-laundering","19":"tag-mpa","20":"tag-ninth-circuit-court-of-appeals","21":"tag-piracy","22":"tag-prenda-law","23":"tag-riaa","24":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29267,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29266\/revisions\/29267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}