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The refusal follows an earlier attempt by the RIAA to have the decision overturned in a rehearing in a DC Circuit court. This, too, was denied.

The case sets a precedent at least in the US that limits how far media owners can stretch the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to accost those it suspects of illegally sharing their material over filesharing networks.

'The Supreme Court's refusal to take the case leaves the D.C. Circuit's well-reasoned opinion as

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law: The DMCA doesn't give the RIAA a blank fishing license to issue subpoenas and invade Internet users' privacy,' said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) staff attorney Wendy Seltzer.

Originally, the RIAA had used the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to subpoena US ISP Verizon and order it to hand over identifying information relating to a subscriber who was allegedly using the KaZaA peer-to-peer file-sharing system to swap copyright material. Verizon refused, claiming that the DMCA only allowed a subpeona for copyright material on its own network, but not on third-party computers. However the court sided with the RIAA and threw out Verizon's interpretation of the DMCA provisions for subpoenas.

However, the EFF then led a coalition of public interest groups and ISPs who filed friend-of-the court briefs in support of Verizon, arguing that RIAA's subpoenas failed to respect the privacy and First Amendment rights of Internet users. The court subsequently agreed that the RIAA's subpoenas against Verizon could not be granted under the DMCA.