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For Immediate Release: Friday, August 30, 2002

Electronic Frontier Foundation, Verizon Guard Client Privacy

Consumers v. Recording Industry on Peer-to-Peer Anonymity

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

Washington, DC - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
and eleven other consumer and privacy groups today sided
with Verizon in its struggle to protect customer privacy.

The groups urged a federal court to prevent the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) from forcing Internet
Service Provider Verizon to identify a customer the RIAA has
accused of offering infringing music on a peer-to-peer
system.

"The court should require careful judicial consideration of
facts supporting any accusations and hear the other side of
the story before violating the privacy of an Internet user,"
said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "The RIAA asked the
court to throw a long history of protection of anonymous
speech out the window as soon as someone suspects copyright
infringement on a peer-to-peer system."

EFF, along with over a dozen other groups, including the
National Consumers League, Electronic Privacy Information
Center, Media Action Project, Computer Professionals for
Social Responsibility, and the nation's oldest general farm
organization The Grange, filed a "friend of the court"
brief urging that the same strong protections that apply
for anonymous speech in other contexts also apply for
claims of copyright infringement.

"The right to anonymous speech is as old as this nation,"
noted Megan Gray, who wrote the brief on behalf of the
groups. "The authors of the Federalist Papers relied on
anonymity and a growing body of law recognizes that
anonymous Internet speakers deserve the same anonymity
protections as those who use pen and ink."

"Our privacy and free speech rights should not be collateral
damage in the RIAA's war against the digital music
revolution," added Cohn.

The groups who have signed on to the consumer privacy amicus
brief are, in alphabetical order:

• Alliance for Public Technology
• Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
• Consumer Alert
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Electronic Privacy Information Center
• Media Access Project
• National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry
• (Grange)
• National Consumers League
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
• Privacyactivism
• Public Knowledge
• Utility Consumers' Action Network

RIAA v. Verizon was filed in Washington, DC, federal
district court.

Links:

EFF and other groups' amicus brief in RIAA v. Verizon:

http://www.eff.org/Cases/RIAA_v_Verizon/20020830_eff_amicus.html

For this release:

http://www.eff.org/Cases/RIAA_v_Verizon/20020830_eff_riaa_pr.html

RIAA v. Verizon court documents:

http://www.eff.org/Cases/RIAA_v_Verizon/

About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most-linked-to
websites in the world at
http://www.eff.org/

Contact:

Cindy Cohn

Megan Gray

Please send any questions or comments to
webmaster@eff.org.