The online file swapping battle has brought in another card to play on both sides: porn. Both the music and mainstream movie industries and those fighting the music industry's peer-to-peer user subpoena campaign are using porn to help make their opposite cases, according to a published report.
The music and film industries say that P2P file swap sites and programs like Kazaa are riddled with porn "that insinuates itself into users' computers," according to the Los Angeles Times. Civil libertarians and Internet service providers argue that the Recording Industry Association of America's subpoena campaign, to get P2P user names from their ISPs, are anti-privacy tactics "open(ing) the door for pornographers and others in the seamy online underbelly to invade Internet users' privacy," the newspaper said.
In fact, the paper added, one adult entertainment company might have put a little extra fuel in the latter argument. IO Group, described by the Times as a San Francisco-based gay adult video company selling material under the name Titan Media, reportedly subpoenaed Pac Bell Internet two subpoenas looking for 59 customers' names, addresses, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses, accusing them of infringing its copyrights by trading their video materials online.
Pac Bell Internet objected to those requests, the Times said, and Titan/IO withdrew the subpoenas - but Pac Bell Internet also sued Titan in federal court in late July, asking for a declaration that those subpoenas were improper. Titan's general counsel, Gill Sperlein, told the Times they were only doing what the music industry was doing, defending themselves against cyberpiracy.
Pac Bell Internet, of course, has also sued the RIAA, asking for similar orders stopping a reported 140 RIAA subpoenas, which another federal court ruled earlier this year didn't need a judge's signature. Pac Bell Internet also charges the RIAA is obtaining and writing the subpoenas from the wrong jurisdictions.
