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Grande Communications doesn’t boot pirates, loses Safe Harbor protection


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In this case, the evidence is clear that from at least 2011 until 2016 Grande had no internal policy or procedures whatsoever to enforce their forward-facing statement that they would terminate customers for repeat infringements

From court ruling: https://torrentfreak.com/images/grandeadopt.pdf

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/music-labels-sue-charter-complain-that-high-internet-speeds-fuel-piracy/

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In the Grande case, a federal judge this month ruled that Grande does not qualify for a legal safe harbor because of the ISP's "complete abdication of [its] responsibilities to implement and enforce a policy terminating repeat copyright infringers."

Not sure what impact this will have on the company or customers, and last year it looked like Grande might prevail, but the ruling last month is not good.  

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Yeesh, they really screwed the pooch.  Not a single customer terminated for infringement between 2010 and 2016 despite more than one million DMCA notices and tracking 9000 repeat infringers.

I'm sure DMCA notices are a monstrous pain in the ass, but they don't even have to take anything down, just note the customer in question.  I think the barest effort would have kept them out of the grease.

Theoretically, they are now liable for every act of reproduction copyright infringement hosted/served by them.

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25 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Theoretically, they are now liable for every act of reproduction copyright infringement hosted/served by them

Yeah, I just assumed they had been booting people like everybody else.  I’m surprised they didn’t run it by legal.

I’m hoping this doesn’t get them shutdown (or our prices raised).  I’ve given up on Google Fiber ever arriving, and I have no desire to go back to Time Warner/Spectrum, or AT&T.

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3 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

The music labels' complaint also seems to describe the basic acts of providing Internet service and advertising high speeds as nefarious:

Many of Charter's customers are motivated to subscribe to Charter's service because it allows them to download music and other copyrighted content—including unauthorized content—as efficiently as possible. Accordingly, in its consumer marketing material, including material directed to Colorado customers, Charter has touted how its service enables subscribers to download and upload large amounts of content at "blazing-fast Internet speeds." Charter has told existing and prospective customers that its high-speed service enables subscribers to "download just about anything instantly," and subscribers have the ability to "download 8 songs in 3 seconds." Charter has further told subscribers that its Internet service "has the speed you need for everything you do online." In exchange for this service, Charter has charged its customers monthly fees ranging in price based on the speed of service.

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I might say there's hope on appeal, but that decision seems extremely fact-bound and the facts were found by the magistrate judge and approved by the district judge, which has no legal effect, really, but means the decision probably isn't outrageously slanted and ripe for reversal.

Also a bit of bizarreness.  The judge is David Ezra, originally from Hawaii, but took senior status and moved to Austin, as is the privilege of senior judges.  Looks like Yeakel had it originally. Interdasting.

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11 minutes ago, clapclapclap said:

The music labels' complaint also seems to describe the basic acts of providing Internet service and advertising high speeds as nefarious:

Many of Charter's customers are motivated to subscribe to Charter's service because it allows them to download music and other copyrighted content—including unauthorized content—as efficiently as possible. Accordingly, in its consumer marketing material, including material directed to Colorado customers, Charter has touted how its service enables subscribers to download and upload large amounts of content at "blazing-fast Internet speeds." Charter has told existing and prospective customers that its high-speed service enables subscribers to "download just about anything instantly," and subscribers have the ability to "download 8 songs in 3 seconds." Charter has further told subscribers that its Internet service "has the speed you need for everything you do online." In exchange for this service, Charter has charged its customers monthly fees ranging in price based on the speed of service.

As is somewhat typical of ArsTecnica and similar blogs for slashdot basement dwellers who have no regard for IP,  that is an out-of-context statement.  To show that an ISP is liable for copyright infringement by its subscribers, there has to be a direct financial interest in infringing activity.  They aren't arguing that that is unlawful, they are demonstrating Charter's interest in keeping infringing subscribers.

One thing that was interesting is the opinion discussed the "spammy"'/scammy DMCA notices of Rightscorp, which is a copyright troll basically.  But in addition to the RIghtscorop notices, said there were hundreds of thousands from other copyright holders.

It's a non-trivial endeavor to manage this stuff, but that's not an excuse to completely punt as Grande seems to have done.

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5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

slashdot basement dwellers who have no regard for IP

You just offended early twenties F250.

However you are correct. The statement makes sense within context but it's the kind of thing that gets the slashdot crowd worked up. Or it used to, the old slashdot crowd grew up and lost a lot of their angst.

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25 minutes ago, F250 said:

You just offended early twenties F250

2010-2016 atomheartbevo is pissed he wasn’t pirating much, other than streaming college football.  

Early twenties atomheartbevo  is like “they have cheap gigabit internet in the future? Do you have like 100 hard drives to hold everything you download?”

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26 minutes ago, F250 said:

You just offended early twenties F250.

However you are correct. The statement makes sense within context but it's the kind of thing that gets the slashdot crowd worked up. Or it used to, the old slashdot crowd grew up and lost a lot of their angst.

 I have a slashdot login.  I'm not a very skilled coder, but I used to enjoy the site and open source information, despite some horribad takes on IP.

Although, to be fair to the slashdotters, the patent system did a bad job with patents in the 80s and 90s.  Then again, one of the main reasons for that is the staunch refusal of sottware people to document their work.  It must have been infuriating to be a patent examiner in the software area back then.  They knew stuff had been done before, but couldn't prove it.

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I had grande from the time they offered it in my  hood till I sold my house in 2016.

I will neither confirm nor deny I may have been one of the 9000.

I swear there was some marketing somewhere or I was talking to one of their execs about IP infringement as I had the same issues as a hosting company and they said something like "yeah we don't report you like time warner does."

I hope they survive this, they are a great company to deal with as a customer. So much better than TW or at&t.

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I got some annoying e-mails from comcast, been using virtual shield ever since. Pretty funny though. Maybe they don't have/care for a legal dept. I don't think they are required to actually do much of anything, just shoot some letters or e-mails to spook people. It worked for me.

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44 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Shouldn't that basically put them out of business?

Not necessarily.  We'll see what the remedy phase looks like.  It does seem to open the door for all kinds of copyright claimants to come through for the relevant period, though, and that could get hairy.  In a lot of small-scale cases, the suit wouldn't be worth the recovery.

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On 4/8/2019 at 2:56 PM, blacklab said:

I hope they survive this, they are a great company to deal with as a customer. So much better than TW or at&t.

agreed 100% with this.  they just laid ATT fiber in my 'hood, and yet there's no way i'll switch from Grande for ATT despite the infrastructure.  Grande is a million times better just for their CS alone, and has been extremely reliable to date.

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