How will they do that?

Now that a judge has upheld the right of Record Companies to force ISPs to trample over their customer's rights to privacy in the US, the RIAA is of course delighted.

Interestingly, the RIAA's news page contains a couple of massive clangers - the judgement explicitly refers to the subscriber "downloading" 600 files in one day, and makes it clear that these actions are only alleged to have happened, not that they've been proven.

However, the RIAA's site states that the subscriber has made 600 files available. Let's hope the RIAA page isn't prejudging the case - after all, the Judge was merely considering whether the Digital Millennium Copyright Act obligied Verizon, the ISP, to hand over details of the subscriber; he wasn't attempting to debate the rights and wrongs of the actual events the RIAA was "investigating."

Now they have the right to poke through your details on a whim, what are the RIAA planning to do? Cary Sherman says "we look forward to contacting the account holder whose identity we were seeking so we can let them know that what they are doing is illegal."

Really? All this so they can pop a card through the door saying "Please don't do that." Hmmmm. After all this effort? Isn't that like Blix discovering weapons grade plutonium and anthrax-in-coke-cans stacked in Hussein's bunker, and Bush saying "right, well now we've got the evidence, we'll right a really stiff letter to Baghdad."