...."We are going to challenge every single one of these that they file until we are told that our position is wrong as a matter of law," James D. Ellis, general counsel for SBC, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Ever since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 remade the communications industry, SBC has been considered by far the most legally aggressive of the nation's major communications companies. Mr. Ellis is scheduled to testify tomorrow about the copyright subpoenas before the Senate Commerce Committee. With about three million high-speed data customers, SBC is the nation's No. 1 provider of broadband Internet access using digital subscriber line technology.

"Clearly, there are serious legal issues here, but there are also these public policy privacy issues," Mr. Ellis said. "We have unlisted numbers in this industry, and we've got a long heritage in which we have always taken a harsh and hard rule on protecting the privacy of our customers' information." [NY Times] Verizon goes back to court today to continue to challenge the court ruling against it compelling it to reveal the identity of customers subpoenaed by the RIAA:

Verizon Communications Inc. is challenging the constitutionality of the subpoenas under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A trial judge, John D. Bates, earlier had approved use of the subpoenas, forcing Verizon to turn over names and addresses for at least four Internet subscribers.

The 1998 law, passed years before music downloading was popularized, permits music companies and others to force Internet providers to turn over the names of suspected pirates upon subpoena from any U.S. District Court clerk's office. A judge's signature is not required.

Critics of the procedure contend judges ought to be more directly involved, given the potential privacy issues involved when a corporation is asked to reveal personal information about customers over an allegation of wrongdoing.

....The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was being asked Tuesday to consider whether Bates correctly ruled against Verizon earlier this year. The panel includes Chief Justice Douglas Ginsburg and Senior Judge Stephen F. Williams, both Reagan appointees; and John Roberts, appointed by President Bush in May 2003.

Verizon had argued unsuccessfully that Internet providers should only respond to such subpoenas when pirated music is stored on computers that providers directly control, such as a Web site, rather than on a subscriber's personal computers. It also said judges should approve requests for subscriber information only after "John Doe" civil lawsuits have been filed.

In his ruling, Bates criticized Verizon's "strained reading" of the law. He wrote that Verizon's interpretation "makes little sense from a policy standpoint," and warned that it "would create a huge loophole in Congress' effort to prevent copyright infringement on the Internet." [AP]

And in the senate, at least offering moral support:

Sen. Sam Brownback , R-Kan., planned to introduce a bill Tuesday to protect Internet providers from such subpoenas. His proposal, which he called the "Digital Consumer Internet Privacy Protection Act," would block subpoenas except in pending civil lawsuits or in cases where pirated data files were stored on computers such as Web sites.

And on yet another legal front, an Ohio State law professor thinks that parents may not be legally responsible for what their kids do online, including, obviously, file sharing:

Ohio State's Peter Swire, a former Clinton administration official, says parents are not responsible for their kids' online actions unless they willfully sat down with them and worked the mouse together to access the songs.

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