Judge To RIAA: Why Shouldn't I Throw Out All Your Subpoenas?

The saga of RIAA vs. 19 GWU John Does continues...
After that student, John Doe #3 filed his fairly well-argued motion last week, the RIAA's legal position has been weakened.

It doesn't look like they will be able to use either the CCPA or the DMCA as basis for these subpoenas. In layman's terms, the CCPA is a law that actually protects the personal information of customers of cable service providers except in the event of detection of cable piracy. Since GWU is not a cable provider, this law is argued to not apply and has been successfully used before in an RIAA lawsuit. The DMCA, or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, requires content owners to file a takedown notice against the entity hosting the infringing content before taking legal action. Since GWU did not host the content, it seems the DMCA also will not be able to be used to authorize these subpoenas.

In Arista v. Does 1-19, a case brought against 19 George Washington University students by the Big Four record labels, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has ordered the RIAA to show cause why the ex parte subpoenas issued to GWU shouldn't be quashed.

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