We have mentioned the battle within Sony between content and electronic device divisions as representative of the larger struggle going on between rights and usage.

Now the perspicacious Farhad Manjoo looks at a similar continental divide within AOL Time Warner:

But stuck in the middle of this fight is a firm that is both a huge copyright holder as well as a huge Internet company — in fact, it is the leading company in each industry. This is AOL Time Warner, a neither-fish-nor-fowl hybrid of copyright and consumer interests, a combination that has left the company pretty much speechless on a case that could determine the privacy rights of its more than 30 million subscribers, not to mention the rest of us. While other ISPs are running scared, AOL, the biggest ISP of all, is keeping mum. [Salon]

....AOL's silence is conspicuous given its unique position as a troubled sister-company to the world's largest media firm. Its silence may also have important practical effects. "They're the biggest ISP, and if they said, 'Wait a minute, we think there's a problem here,' that would be taken very seriously by the courts," says Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "I think there's no question that would be a tremendous voice."

But will that voice speak out — or will it be muffled by the media interests that now appear to control AOL Time Warner's future? It's not really an exaggeration to suggest that the privacy of your actions on the Internet could depend on what this single company does next.

....Nobody has a larger number of subscribers than AOL, or would be likely to take a bigger hit if suddenly forced to crack down against every instance of file-trading that an AOL subscriber engages in. But, at the same time, no company has more media properties at risk from file-trading than AOL Time Warner.

....Verizon says it will appeal the decision. The stakes are enormous. If you accept that Congress really meant to say what Bates and the RIAA say it meant — that anyone who suspects a copyright violation can obtain the alleged infringer's identity rather easily and without judicial review — then the DMCA would seem to be much more unreasonable, and much scarier, than even critics of copyright owners have previously said. According to ISPs, consumer groups, and legal experts, the practical effects of this ruling would be terrifying — and AOL's silence on the issue despite these consequences "is deafening," says one person in the industry.