Black Chambers, together with the Blackstone Law Group, spoke about the ongoing battle between ISPs and copyright holders at the first annual BloomCon Digital Forensics Conference held at Bloomsburg University on 5 February 2016.
Focusing on the landmark decision coming out of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia between Cox Communications and BMG Rights Management, Black Chambers discussed the information security and legal implications of the decision and jury verdict that removed DMCA immunity from Cox Communications and held them accountable for the copyright infringing activities of their customer case to the tune of 25,000,000 USD.
Stepping through the legal reasoning of the decision to remove DMCA immunity from Cox, Black Chambers provided a detailed account and analysis of the internal Cox e-mails that articulated sham “under the table” DMCA compliance policies designed to “collect a few extra weeks of payment” that were directly attributable to Cox’s loss. A clear takeaway was that had these legal DMCA compliance discussions occurred with an attorney – i.e., within the zone of protection of the attorney-client privilege – the damaging e-mails that led to Cox’s loss would not have been made public, and Cox would have very likely prevailed.
Going further, Black Chambers and Blackstone Law Group discussed the information security and compliance issues facing communications carriers resulting from this decision, the effects of enhanced DMCA accountability and user monitoring, and the anti-forensic countermeasures expected to be employed to stymie such efforts.
For a copy of our slide deck and presentation, or to speak further about this issue, please contact us.