Time Warner Cable tries to put brakes on massive piracy case

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/time-warner-cable-tries-to-put-brakes-on-massive-piracy-case.ars

by mkelly • 16 years ago

22 18 16 years ago

pierrefar3• 16 years ago

The closing commentary is the key: it's not like TWC cares about subscribers, but it wants to protect itself from being arbitrarily overworked for no obvious reasons.

This should be a fun case to watch.

boredguy8• 16 years ago

Is there a good way to track a story like this, given the lack of broad appeal and sporadic updates?

rms• 16 years ago

A Google alert? Try "Time Warner" "Uwe Boll"

javanix• 16 years ago

No, they don't really care but I'm sure they won't be too disappointed to have the publicity for "standing up to the RIAA" in new customers' minds.

bartl• 16 years ago

>Each lookup costs TWC $45.

Then they should be allowed to charge that amount (or, say, rounded to $50 per case) to the people who request it, no matter who it is. If it's the Justice Department, then it should come from their budget, law enforcement is not the responsibility of individual companies, unless it's them that are being accused.

wendroid• 16 years ago

It costs us $500 per IP, thank you.

pook• 16 years ago

I think spam is the appropriate metaphor for modern legalistic bullying. It's obvious that the cost of initiating a legal battle is rather small, vastly disproportional to the cost of defending oneself against the hostilities. The asymmetry practically encourages such absurdities as seen here. And, it produces the same broadcast vs. conversation pattern.

The problem is that finding a way to increase the cost of initiating legal kungfu would be from the start itself subject to a crippling ambush.

I don't think bartl's suggestion would quite work, precisely because the ROI is so heavily tilted: lawyers will simply find some way of mitigating it.

btilly• 16 years ago

I really hope they succeed. But I question why it costs an average of $45 to figure out what subscriber a given IP address was assigned to at a given time. In principle that is a question whose answer should be automatable. And once automated, it should cost much, much less than that.

henrikschroder• 16 years ago

I assume it's a bullshit number conjured up from nowhere, whose purpose is to show that each lookup actually costs time and money and resources, and if you multiply the number of requested lookups by this number, you get a really large number, that it is then unreasonable that Comcast should pay.

ErrantX• 16 years ago

possibly - but it could be more or less realistic.

If it takes a couple of hours to review the paperwork, access the logs, verify the results and write a report then $45 looks pretty cheap.

harry• 16 years ago

In a similar vein, outside organizations can poll our University with what's called an "Open Records Request." (Kansas Open Records Act - http://www.dol.ks.gov/es/html/kora_drh.html) Any data that's not protected under some law (HIPAA, FERPA) or record policy can be released.

We receive many requests for data with only one full time staff in the position to provide the information. To mitigate such requests coming in we have a similar paywall to TWCs - 50$/hr involved. We also require that the request be submitted in writing. Typically there's a handful of hoops to jump through with one of the university's general council, signing various forms and getting information to the right people. The paywall combined with the have-to-talk-to-a-lawyer before any requests are resolved dropped the number from a few dozen to one or two a month.

joubert2• 16 years ago

Looking up does not add to TWC's bottom line. So there's no incentive to put effort into automating. It would be wasting shareholder money. It probably makes more sense to do it manually and bill the $45 to the legal case.

jonknee• 16 years ago

The same reason lawyers can charge $75 a fax.

chaosmachine• 16 years ago

"TWC has a six-month retention period for its IP lookup logs, and by the time TWC could turn to law enforcement requests, many of these requests could not be answered."

That's an interesting piece of information. If TW can delay things long enough, all the evidence will be gone.

pierrefar3• 16 years ago

I'd worry about this tactic for more serious enforcement issues.

wmf• 16 years ago

I think more serious crimes go to the head of the queue; that's precisely why TWC doesn't have time to investigate pirates.

joubert2• 16 years ago

I was surprised to read in the story they get ip requests from law enforcement for suicide threats.

Time Warner Cable tries to put brakes on massive piracy case

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