RCN Sues BMG Music Over Piracy Accusations

For a few years now Digital Rights Corp (aka Rightscorp) has been trying to turn copyright infringement notices into a revenue stream, sending accused pirates letters telling them they can avoid court battles if they just pay a $20-$30 fee. The group has run into numerous legal problems with it's en masse attempts at driving settlements, with numerous ISPs accusing the organization of being little more than a shake down operation and fighting the organization in court.

Now cable overbuilder RCN has sued BMG, urging the courts to find that the ISP is not responsible for the file sharing behavior of its customers.

According to the full lawsuit (pdf, via Torrent Freak), the notices sent by BMG's "copyright troll" partner Rightscorp are seriously flawed, in that they're sent en masse, lack specific details, and the firm only examines if a small portion of an alleged copyrighted work is shared -- not the entire file -- before making an accusation.

In short, RCN is looking for a court ruling that it is not liable for the file-sharing behavior of its customers, and is protected by the DMCA safe harbor provision.

“The central question for this Court’s determination is whether an Internet service provider should be held liable for copyright infringement simply because it provides Internet connectivity to its customers,” RCN says in the suit.

“Both BMG and Rightscorp are wrongly demanding payment from RCN for that alleged infringement, and have clearly expressed their intention to enforce these purported rights,” the ISP adds.

Unfortunately for RCN, despite the obviously predatory nature of Rightscorp's operations, they've made some early legal strides in attempts at stripping away ISP safe harbor protections. Last December a Virginia federal jury held Cox Communications liable for piracy on its network, finding that Cox did not do enough to kick pirates off the ISP's network permanently. That's ironic, given that while Cox is not part of the "six strikes" entertainment industry anti-piracy program, it has historically been more vocal about threatening to terminate pirates than other ISPs.

It seems likely with the threat of piracy liability looming that larger ISPs like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast begin to take a more active interest in Rightscorp legally.