Supreme Court nixes RIAA case

For a while, in its effort to make it as easy as possible to sue music swappers, the music industry had a practice, with subpoenas, of forcing Internet service providers to reveal their customers' identities without notifying the customers. Verizon was the first ISP to refuse to comply. Last December a federal appeals court said ISPs didn't have to comply with the bulk subpoenas (for which the RIAA argued, citing the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, DMCA), so the RIAA took its case to the Supreme Court.

Today the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's rejection of the RIAA's tactic, Internet News reports. The RIAA's response was that the decision "will not deter [its] ongoing anti-piracy efforts." It's a big story this week. According to the Dow Jones Newswires coverage, the decision "could impact other pending copyright litigation efforts by the music industry." Here's Reuters too. Interestingly, this week a UK court did just the opposite - it ordered British ISPs to reveal their file-sharing customers' identities at the request of the British Phonographic Association, the RIAA's UK counterpart, CNET reports.