Ruling A Blow To Online Music Pirates

(AP)  Internet providers must agree to requests by the music industry to track down computer users who illegally download music, a federal judge ruled Tuesday in a case that could dramatically increase online pirates' risk of being caught.

The decision by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates upheld the recording industry's power under a 1998 law to compel Internet providers to identify customers that illegally trade music or movies online.

Bates acknowledged that the case was an important test of subpoena powers Congress granted to copyright holders under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The judge said that controversial law, which was enacted to uphold copyrights online, permits music companies to force Internet providers to turn over the name of a suspected pirate upon subpoena from any U.S. District Court clerk's office, without a judge's order.

Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, said, "The illegal distribution of music on the Internet is a serious issue for musicians, songwriters and other copyright owners, and the record companies have made great strides in addressing this problem by educating consumers and providing them with legitimate alternatives."

During a contentious hearing in October, the judge lamented ambiguities in the copyright act, saying that Congress "could have made this statute clearer." At the time, the music industry indicated that a ruling in its favor could result in reams of warnings to scare Internet pirates into taking their collections offline.

The case arose from efforts by the recording association to track down a customer of Verizon Communications Inc. who was freely sharing copies of more than 600 songs by well-known artists.

Sherman said that his organization, once it knows the identity of the Verizon customer, would "let them know that what they are doing is illegal."

Verizon had resisted the music industry's subpoena to identify its customer, saying it could turn Internet providers into a turnstile for piracy suits and put innocent customers at risk.

Through programs like Kazaa, Morpheus and Gnutella, a person can find virtually any song or movie — sometimes even before it's released in stores — and download it for free. On a typical afternoon, about 3 million people were connected on the Kazaa network and sharing more than 500 million files.