Verizon vs the RIAA: implications for privacy and democracy

In January 2003, a US district court in the District of Columbia ruled that Verizon must comply with a subpoena by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) requesting the name of a subscriber who allegedly made available more than 600 copyrighted music files over the Internet. This ruling rocked the Internet community, especially those critics who saw the decision as one advancing the interests of copyright owners at the expense of broader democratic values in cyberspace such as freedom of speech and privacy for individual users. In an appeals ruling on December 19, 2003, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned the lower court´s decision. A particular challenge for computer ethicists is to determine how arguments on both sides of this case can be sorted out and evaluated from a moral perspective. The purpose of the present essay is to elucidate the issues surrounding this case by analyzing arguments advanced by both Verizon and the RIAA, and to examine some of the implications that the outcome of this ruling may have for future activities in cyberspace. Section 1 of the paper sets the background for understanding the arguments and ruling involved in both lawsuits, while Section 2 examines the infrastructure of the peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution model and how it supports the values inherent in democracy and democratic ideals. Section 3 examines some interrelationship between privacy and democracy, and shows why the former is essential for the latter. We conclude this essay in Section 4 by supporting Verizon´s refusal to hand over the names, on the grounds that doing so would have violated the privacy of the individual subscribers which, in turn, would undermine any goals of achieving democracy in cyberspace.