A US federal court in Texas has ordered telecom provider Altice USA to reveal the identities of 100 subscribers who allegedly pirated music on the telco’s networks.
The order, issued by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on February 12, comes amid an ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit in which more than 50 record companies, publishers, and parent companies accused Altice of “knowingly contribut[ing] to, and reap[ing] substantial profits from, massive copyright infringement committed by thousands of its subscribers.”
The court order doesn’t mean that these alleged pirates’ identities will be made public. Judge Roy S. Khan instructed the information to be kept “highly confidential,” with only the record companies’ attorneys allowed to view it.
The judge gave Altice seven days to produce identifying information about the alleged music pirates, including the subscribers’ names, phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses. Altice must also notify the subscribers, who will have 30 days to contest the order before the court. The judge’s order can be read here.
The order comes in response to a motion filed by both Altice and the music companies suing Altice. According to digital piracy news site Torrentfreak, which first reported on the order, it’s part of a quid pro quo between the plaintiffs and defendants, in which Altice will gain access to some documents revealing how the record industry has been going about detecting and deterring music piracy.
Although details are scant, as many of the court documents in the case have been sealed, Torrentfreak asserts it’s unlikely the subscribers will face direct legal action by the copyright holders. Rather, it speculates that the music companies will seek testimony from them that would bolster their case that Altice failed to take the necessary steps to prevent piracy on its network.
Torrentfreak reports that among those documents are some from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which appears to have been pulled into the ongoing lawsuit. Although the RIAA is not a plaintiff, it has at times coordinated efforts between record companies to seek redressal when their copyrights have been violated, as in the case of the lawsuit brought against AI music-generating platforms Suno and Udio.
Last November, Altice went before a district court in Washington, DC, asking the court to compel the RIAA to hand over documents related to its anti-piracy efforts, including those related to OpSec Online LLC, a company the RIAA reportedly engaged to identify online piracy taking place through BitTorrent file-sharing apps.
Among the things Altice wanted to know from the RIAA was how many infringement notices were sent by OpSec to internet providers other than Altice, how the RIAA ordered OpSec to gather evidence of piracy, and “whether the RIAA has a strategy for bringing suits against the entire ISP industry.”
Altice claimed that these documents are “indisputably relevant” to the lawsuit and went to court to compel the RIAA to release them after the recording industry group “flatly refused” to hand many of them over. Altice’s request was then transferred to the East Texas court hearing the lawsuit.
Earlier this month, Judge Payne signed off on an agreement between Altice and the record companies, in which Altice will gain access to certain documents concerning the RIAA’s anti-piracy efforts. Altice will also gain access to some documents related to anti-piracy work done by content identification company Audible Magic.
Altice, which operates the Optimum telecom brand, is the fourth-largest internet, TV, and phone provider in the US, with 4.9 million residential and business customers in 21 states.
In December 2023, music companies launched a $1.6-billion lawsuit against the company, arguing that Altice failed to take legally required action against pirates using Altice’s network “despite receiving tens of thousands of notices from plaintiffs that detailed the illegal activity of its subscribers.”
Plaintiffs in the case include record labels and publishers owned by all three major global music companies: Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group.
The music rightsholders’ complaint, which can be read in full here, alleged that Altice “enabled its subscribers to continue infringing plaintiffs’ copyrights with impunity through the continued provision of its high-speed internet service to known repeat infringers.”
It was the second such lawsuit brought against Altice by music rights holders. A year earlier, a number of music companies, including BMG, Universal, Capitol Records, and Concord Music Group, filed a $1-billion lawsuit against the ISP, making similar allegations. Altice settled that lawsuit last year.
After suffering from negative publicity from bringing lawsuits against individual music pirates, the music industry in the US has shifted its focus to pursuing legal action against internet providers on whose networks piracy is taking place.
One of the largest such actions was a $2-billion lawsuit brought last year against Verizon, which had more than 11.9 million broadband internet subscribers as of Q4 2024. The plaintiffs in that lawsuit include the three music majors and ABKCO Music.
In their complaint, the copyright holders said they had sent out 340,000 notices of infringement on Verizon’s network since early 2020.
However, Verizon “has intentionally chosen not to listen to complaints from copyright owners,” the complaint alleged. “Instead of taking action in response to those infringement notices as the law requires, Verizon ignored plaintiffs’ notices and buried its head in the sand.”Music Business Worldwide
