The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a decision of the D.C. Court of Appeals stating that current law does not allow entertainment companies to subpoena Internet service providers to determine
the identities of suspected file-swappers--at least not without judicial oversight.
But, if pay-per-download marketers were concerned that the decision might dent their profits, they should take
comfort in the fact that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) vowed not to cede any ground to illegal downloaders.
"Today's decision will not deter our ongoing anti-piracy
efforts," Stanley Pierre-Louis, RIAA's senior vice president of legal affairs at the Recording Industry Association of America, said in a statement issued Tuesday.
The RIAA had attempted to issue
subpoenas under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, written before the advent of Napster and Kazaa, in an attempt to nail file-swapping consumers. But the appeals court said in December that
the 1998 law didn't provide for such subpoenas.
After that decision, RIAA changed tactics and began filing "John Doe" lawsuits against alleged swappers directly, identifying them by Internet
protocol address. The key difference between that round of cases and the case in the D.C. Court of Appeals is that a judge must okay subpoenas of "John Doe" identities. Pierre-Louis promised on
Tuesday to continue with the "John Doe" strategy.
Doug Wood, a partner at Reed Smith Hall Dickler who specializes in Internet and advertising law, said the RIAA still has legal redress. "This is
not the last word," said Wood. "They've got a lot riding on this and I don't expect them to give up easily."