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RIAA Sues the Wrong Person
Cildar writes "In the 'oops' category, the RIAA was forced to withdraw its suit against a 66 year old computer neophyte (read Apple User for god's sake) when they discovered she thought 'Kazaa' was a magician playing at local kids' birthday parties. The story is as reported in the Boston Globe." Update: 09/24 15:19 GMT by T : Note, the magician crack is a joke ;)
If the RIAA had no grounds for suing anyone, then there would be no mix ups.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Serves them right, those RIAA bastards. They weren't counting on our secret weapon - the clueless user!
I think that's the excuse I will use, too.
-
"Vengeance is fine," sayeth the Lord.
If the RIAA can sue anyone for anything at any given time, then where would be no mix ups.
I bet the RIAA will be back with a vengeance once they "discover" that granny had a haxx0red version of Kazaa able to run on the Macintosh. After all, you can use a mac emulator.. are you free to go then?
Hm.. maybe that would be a good use for VMware or similar... "I dont even have Kazaa installed on my computer".. And your VMWare installation is ofcourse - gone...
// instant - "I for one welcome our new Decaff Coffee-Flavoured-Coffee Overlords"
check out cnn article on this http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/09/24/kazaa.s ues.ap/index.html
> (read Apple User for god's sake)
Although a great many Apple users are not neophytes, the fact that a neophyte can run an Apple is a testament to their ease of use.
So there.
Anyone know how much this magician charges for childrens parties...?
And does anyone know where I can download David Blaine, the popular P2P filesharing program?
I have no sig yet I must scream.
I mean, clowns are scary and shit!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
This whole thing is turning out to be like a war. The RIAA war machine goes and attacks indiscriminately. It gets bad guys and the good guys. Wonder if they'll also spin it as - It's ok if we get some good guys. Since they're good, God will take them to a better place.
You wouldn't need the various open source licenses. Open source would do just fine...no licenses at all.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
I read the article, there's no mention of this birthday party thing. Do either the submitters or the editors read the story?
That's super funny; only one problem. It doesn't seem to mention the magician thing anywhere in the linked article.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Still hoping that throwing out one out of thousands of lawsuits might absolve you of being sued in the future for violating someone's copyright?
If the US wasn't $$$ orientated towards its policies, the US government would have cracked down on the RIAA itself.
The RIAA is a lose cannon at the moment, it thinks it can do what it pleases, without any consequences for itself.
What takes the piss more, now that RIAA is cracking down on all these things, and with copy protected CDs - the RIAA still expects levies on CDRs etc to compensate for lost revenue. RIAA must be laughing - free money.
that Kazaa was a cousin of Bobo the clown, and makes paid-for appearances at kids' parties. Y'all can use that as an excuse if the MPAA sues you. But seriously... hahahahahah - I fell off my chair when I saw this one. Could the RIAA remove the proverbial thumb from their asses long enough to grab a clue?
The judge did dismiss the suit against the Mac user, but would not dismiss it with prejudice (which would have prevented further litigation against her).
The attorneys for the RIAA still plan to investigate her: "Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant"
A user with a Mac, who can't even use Kazaa, and who has never shared music. Now that's obstinance for you.
William
When you're not looking, this sig is in Latin.
A user was found with downloaded music today on their computer, they were tried this afternoon, and execution begins tonight.
This is your RIAA controlled world.
Would you like to know more?
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
when they discovered she thought 'Kazaa' was a magician playing at local kids' birthday parties. Exactly where does that appear in the article? Come on folks, it's not that hard to write a good story without bashing clueless users.
C:\>
This is gonna become more and more frequent as the lawsuits pile up. Without having to get real warrents and go thru a real legal process, these harrassment tactacts will continue costing normal people lots of time, money and agravation.
At this point it should be made very easy for this woman to sue the RIAA, but without the resources of a large corp. it is just going to seem like an impossiable task for her. Thus the lawsuits from the RIAA will just continue with the harassment and scare tactics.
"The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein," - Joe Theisman
"Oops sorry, the DHCP must have reassigned that address,we THOUGHT it was the one you wanted...Sorry."
This would let their customers still enjoy what they initially signed up for (filesharing, you've seen the adds, etc.)
..........FULL STOP.
Hey, Where is the ADVERTISEMENT listed on the top of your cut'n paste?
// instant - "I for one welcome our new Decaff Coffee-Flavoured-Coffee Overlords"
I'm glad we have mensa members here to say smart stuff like that.
So ummm, do you know any cool things about farts?
Doesn't this put a big fat hole in their main source of information? How many of these need to happen before practices are questioned, and lawsuits start getting dropped? Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel for these people...
I honestly feel bad for people who have already given in, but I can't say I really blame them with the "go for the jugular" tactics the RIAA is using.
I'm so glad to be Canadian now, more than ever. I can't imagine a company anywhere else in the world with so much power that they can force an ISP to divulge personal information about their users just because they said so. I mean. Now they've got the address and name of a user that didn't do anything wrong. Can Mrs. Ward sue someone?! Invasion of privacy?! No? I'm probably the furthest possible thing from a lawyer so I wouldn't know, but if that happened to me, I'd be a little more then ticked.
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
But the question is, can people now successfuly use this case to show that if they misidentified one person by using the wrong IP address, they could just easily have got others. This case is clearly wrong, but what if it had been a 19 year old college student with a PC misidentified? They shouldn't have to prove the RIAA got it wrong, the RIAA should prove it got it right.
This has happened before, not with a lawsuit though. There was an article over a year about the boyfriend of a reporter having his cable modem connection shut down because the MPAA reported to the cable provider that it was his IP that was sharing files. It was not.
Fight Spammers!
Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant," Colin J. Zick, the Foley Hoag lawyer, wrote
What an asswipe.
$ lynx -source http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2003/09/24 /recording_industry_withdraws_suit/ |grep -i clown |wc -l
0
The linked article doesn't mention the clown defense - where is this from?
So there's your defense, p2p users! Get a used G3 or G4 on eBay, run VPC with Win98, and use p2p all you want.
~Philly
Oh happy days are here again!!
*hop* *hop* *hoppity* *hop*
*hugs* *kisses* all around
*happy happy dance*
And people around here are wondering why I'm beaming all over my pimply face.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
"I only use a Mac.."
Up yours, RIAA!
there's no place like ~
First the 12 year old and now this. I wonder what the third strike will be? Perhaps someone inside the RIAA? That'll be a PR disater.
Seriously. Better tell all those neophytes at Virginia Tech that they need to get with the program and start using machines more suited to serious users.
"And we think were will be more."
Someone want to tell me what happened to good, old proofreading? I'm having a bit of a hard time believing that the legal director of the EFF would make such a nonsensical statement.
Can this be used in court by other victims of the RIAA? If they aren't even doing enough groundwork to know what kind of computer the people they are suing are using, this severly damages their other cases.
How precise are those time-stamps in the log-files?
Even with just a few seconds on and off between the different machines (those of the RIAA and the user's ISP), an IP-adress could be used by a different user (given dynamic IPs). Or not?
"When the RIAA announced they were going on this litigation crusade, we knew there was going to be someone like Sarah Ward," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet privacy group in San Francisco that has advised Ward and others sued by the music industry. "And we think were will be more."
Can we get a journalist who actually reads their articles before posting, rather than relying on Word's spellcheck? I mean, you're quoting someone. Doesn't that warrant any attention?
I think everyone who gets subpoenaed should say "Kazaa? You mean that Shaq movie? Man, that one stunk worse than Steel."
The RIAA will think anyone who saw the Shaq movies is too crazy to sue.
www.google.com
slashdot is like the movie rental shop where I went.
First I went there and rent a lot of "good" movies. After 3 or 4 weeks, I just stopped, because there was nothing new around. I went there 2 months later and the same moveis were around just with 2 or 3 additions.
Slashdot latelly has become:
1 - oh god, another MS vulnerabilty.
2 - SCO Stories
3 - RIAA did this, RIAA did that.
Isn't this supposed to be NEWs for the nerds ? not OLDs for the nerds...
because this wonderfull piece of information can be resumed to:
Someone accused someguy of doing something and latter they found out they were wrong. Is that topnotch story to you ?
ok... you can continue to read the "in Soviet Union RIAA owns you" (always modded funny) and "this seems like the SCO case" comments..
"Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint..."
Translation:
"I'm so #%(*&@$*@#^% perfect, I can shit a Faberge Egg in your choice of colors."
This is the reasoning behind checks and balances, due process and other protections provided under the Constitution.
Pre-US European governments used to be notorious for going after people without a leg to stand on. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was the witch-hunt-like frenzy. That was enough to get them hung or at least imprisoned.
That's when my good pals Hancock, Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, along with a few other buds, got together and came up with this whole fair trial system. And that was pretty cool up until a few years ago when people really started using the internet.
Thats when, well everybody in congress, who's names are too many to mention, (and not worth mentioning considering what they did) overturned two centuries worth of a tried and true system.
And where does it get you? Sueing grandmas.
I guess those old guys really had some stuff figured out. Their system isn't really silly or outdated like some people might think.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
A Comcast spokeswoman, Sarah Eder, would not comment, citing customer privacy concerns.
Mattel/MSI was using Foley Hoag to go after me. I didn't deal with Zick, but with Rosen. Rosen was not too bad of a scumbag, only a small amount of a slime-bag. It is not as bag as the pure scum at Schwartz-Nystrom.
Fight Spammers!
Use a Mac and run Kazaa in VirtualPC. When you get served. Remove VirtualPC and say: "It can't be me...Kazaa doesn't run on my Mac!"
if i'm not mistaken, in similar fashion BSA sent C&D orders to ftp sites hosting openoffice, after confusing them with distros for ms office... IANAL, but it seems to me that this will only make it easier for someone to defend herself using the argument that lawsuits en masse using poorly written algorithms are prone to failure. is it not really easy to defend a photo radar speeding ticket received by snail mail for the same reason?
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important." -BRussell
Nice catch editors.
No shit sherlock!!! :)
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
An attitude that gave sterling service during the albigensian crusade...
Note that Orrin Hatch wanted to give these people rights to blow up people's computers. And how do you think the RIAA got her name from an IP in the first place? My guess is through a DMCA subpoena. This is Not Nice(TM).
I suggest we all open ISP accounts under the name of 'Sarah Seabury Ward'. Just to make a point though, I'm sure it won't thwart the fascist stampede.
This is the best arguement yet for an alternative computing solution, such as Linux, MacOS X or MorphOS. The RIAA's anti-Kazaa suits can't attack you, since you are unable to run Kazaa. It's like when my step-brother was arrested for drunk driving when he wasn't in a car. (the cops saw a drunk driver, persued, lost them, then found my step-bro passed out on a bench next to a car that looked similar)
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The only parallel I can draw is to "terminate with extreme prejudice". Damn you hollywood!
As for the submitter, perhaps they needed some karma and hurriedly sent some anti-RIAA story they haven't bothered to read completely.
C:\>
So yeah, we screwed the pooch - but we might be back anyway!
On the one hand, I think that the RIAA has a legitimate issue with P2P services sharing their music.
Does that mean that I support the lawsuits? No - I think it's a civil end run around legitimate search and seizure. If I was the RIAA would I be using the lawsuits? No.
Personally, I'd take all the millions in lawyer fees and do something useful, like promote the iTunes Music Store, or pressure Sony and Buymusic.com to not suck more ass than a freshman prison inmate. I'd set up legitimate music downloading services based on Janis Ian's model, where all songs warehoused could be purchased for $1, or an album for $10. I'd set up 128 bit MP3's for $1, have 192 bit for maybe $1.25 - $1.50. Of that, 50% of the profit would go to the artist, 50% to the publisher. Note the word "profit" - it is assumed that the publishers would be taking a fair (bwahahaha - oh, sorry, I almost said that with a straight face) cut based on how much it costs a song to be stored in a central server and bandwidth costs (and that price should not go above $0.50 per song).
It should also be set up like Peanutpress.com, where once you buy a song, you can go back and download it again whenever you want, or can have it streamed wherever you are. (Since songs are much larger than eBooks usually, though, I can see some sort of minor "storage fee", like $0.01 per song per month - it should be your responsibility to back up your own stuff.)
And a quick note for the "$1 per song is too much", I'm sorry if you take this personally, but fuck you. $1 is perfectly legit for a song, $10 for a music album. If you're too damn cheap to pay any price at all for music, at least have the decency not to claim that the cost is too much. Just come out and say "I can't afford $1 after buying my $300 iPod!"
Then, and only then, if people were "sharing songs", then you could sue them, and I would feel you had done your due diligence in serving your customers and could have a solid leg to stand on for the lawsuits.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
..it's those very same people, Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, who, when handed out in copious amounts, lead us right back to the good ol' days.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
The Great Kazaa is a master magician -- he made the reference in the story disappear. His IPA is usually 127.0.0.1, tricky eh?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
If 12 year olds and people who don't even have file sharing software installed are being targeted, then the "wosrt offenders" list must be pretty big. :)
Images of grannie putting on her bling bling and listening to gangsta rap are dancing in my head. Thanks for the laugh RIAA! Could we nominate them for the Darwin awards for shooting themselves in the foot...repeatedly?
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
You are a marked man now, Imma gonna tell steve on you! Calling all apple zealots to arms! The fatherland needs you!
- Toby
... that David Coperfield will be next?
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
OK guys, which do we think will happen first?
All I can say is that I'm done buying music of any kind. Just done, I'm so tired of hearing about the music gestapo I just can't bring myself to giving them another $20.
>The recording industry then issued a subpoena to
>Comcast, the user's Internet service provider,
>demanding the name, address, and e-mail address
>of the person behind the IP address.
How can you find an actual person "behind the IP address"?? You can of course find the account using the IP and also the person that opened up and signed for the account. That does not mean that was the person actually using it at the time though. It could have been someone else in the family, a friend visiting and so on. WOuldn't the response to any claims just be "it was not me"?
As opposed to all those times when they sued the right people.
sic transit gloria mundi
This is obviously a case of some jerk who used the lady's name and address to create a fraudulent ISP account.
How many times have we read about some hacker who just jumps from one stolen or spoofed account to another, never paying for the services used?
Next someone who really does use modern computers but who does not pirate music will be sued successfully for that huge amount of money, ruining his/her life for exactly this reason however simply because his computer Could Have run the software he/she will have no defense.
Yay RIAA!
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
It's right between the fnords.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...onto Confusion Road.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
from the just-looking-for-clowns dept.
o wn s/
I've got your clowns right here:
http://www.flashbangstudios.biz/igf2004/ihatecl
Except you hit them with metal pies and they have ragoll physics instead on them, you know, being on Kazaa. My interest? I'm the voice actor.
I'm sane IRL, honest!
Dunno how long our little old server will last getting slashdotted if this gets modded up much (as "Funny" of course, it is clowns after all. ; -)
Indefensible position...attack the person. Like day follows night.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Maybe this little old lady had an open wireless network.
She pays her h4x0r neighbor kid to install her new Airport Extreme network, the kid opens it up and with the money she gives him he buys a cheap wireless card.
Bingo Bango! All the free music he wants.
ender-iii
..Whatever the source of the apparent error, it illustrates how difficult it can be to definitively match a person to an online screen name.
...
A Comcast spokeswoman, Sarah Eder, would not comment, citing customer privacy concerns.
Citing customer privacy concerns....but they have no problems rolling their own customers to gangs like the RIAA....
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I've been thinking about these RIAA suits, and have realized that not only are morally reprehensible misplacements of blame, but they are legally unjustifiable when looked the suits are looked at as a whole.
The suits claim damages of $150,000 per song. If one music company stole a song from another company, and published it separately, this may be a reasonable claim. The RIAA could claim maybe $150,000 TOTAL lost sales, plus whatever was made by the infringing company.
The problem is, they are holding EVERY FILESHARER liable for the entire amount of lost sales. This isn't just double-dipping on their damages, this is n-dipping. I can imagine that the company might lose $150,000 in total sales of a single song, but if only 1000 people shared the song (an extremely conservative number, probably only relevant for unpopular songs), their claims in total are $150 million in lost sales per song, which is just ludicrous.
This absolutely reeks of the record companies trying to capitalize on filesharing and count each share as a purchase. If the judges awarded the RIAA what they are asking for across the board, they stand to make orders of magnitude more money than they could ever dream of by their own devices. This puts huge questions on their claims of mitigating their damages - they allowed filesharing to go on for many years before starting lawsuits... to build up their claims of lost sales??
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
-disclaimer- I'm obviously not really Heath7 *wink*
Trust Your Technolust
"If any of those [IP address] numbers are wrong or transposed, you're going to get the wrong person,"
In that case, I hope they mess up the next IP address and get 127.0.0.1. That would make for an interesting day.
RIAA sues wrong user. Today, RIAA served notice and withdrew suit against Bob McLomax of Verisign, INC. RIAA issued this statement:
"We did a web search for a file swapper named Robert McLomax on the web. Our search for www.mclomaxfiles.com led us to Verisign's new search engine."
Verisign would not return phone calls, instant messages or smoke signals.
-- $G
To be exact, contracts would still be in force. So someone who signed to keep the code secret could still be sued.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
You know, all this time I've been wondering why someone hasn't come out with an anonymizing Kazaa proxy.
Just charge a few bucks and proxy Kazaa connections for people. Don't log anything and there's nothing for the RIAA to subpoena. Can't say the proxy is illegal in itself, because courts have already ruled that Kazaa is legal. If Kazaa is legal, then anonymous Kazaa should be just as legal.
Or how about a "no-log" ISP? Can't subpoena what doesn't exist!
Since when has it been different ;)
We _have_ diversified though. It used to be only MS that we'd bitch about constantly.
http://www.multinetx.com/MnX/ runs natively on mac os x and connects to kazaa, also there's poisoned and a few others.....
http://www.thebesttrek.net/forum/index.php - visit my FORUM
>usually more than nine digits.
;-)
Nothing funny in that.
1.1.1.1 = 4 digits
64.64.64.64 = 8 digits
255.255.255.255 = 12 digits
I'm not good with statistics, but I'd say that "usually more than nine digits" comes from the fact there's more adresses from 100.100.100.100 and up than 99.99.99.99 and below.
So your funny comment isn't funny.
"Mod him down to hell. Mod them all down to hell!" -- Now THAT is funny.
From the article: many have settled out of fear of not having the money to take up the legal battle against the RIAA.
Isn't that what a class action lawsuit is for? All the music consumers could file a class-action counter-suit against the RIAA for strong-arm tactics in attempting to reveal people who "shared" "copyrighted" "files", whatever that means.
stuff |
when they discovered she thought 'Kazaa' was a magician playing at local kids' birthday parties. The story is as reported in the Boston Globe."
/. has lived up to the highest standards of journalistic integrity...
;)
I can see that
Note, the magician crack is a joke
Not a particularly funny, or appropriate joke.
Surely the story can stood on it's own merits without the need for hyperbole. I thought it was the bad guys who had to resort to shouting that the sky was falling...
I wonder if the editor actually RTFA before adding the clarifying remark...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Seems there needs to be a significant penalty for making false accusations -- otherwise, what's to keep the RIAA from suing everyone and then withdrawing suits on a case by case basis after disrupting a lot of people's lives?
Update: 09/24 15:19 GMT by T: Note, the magician crack is a joke ;)
I'm sorry but "magician crack" is not something to joke about. My life went down the tubes because of that stuff...
Update: 09/24 15:19 GMT by T: Note, the magician crack is a joke ;) :/
Well it wasn't a very funny one
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
Note, the magician crack is a joke.
Hmmm - I thought jokes were supposed to be funny.
Of course it's re-runs. Repeat after me...
Those who don't learn from their mistakes are condemed to repeat them.
Only some of the players and times have changed.
Hitting (lawyer, teacher, parent) one kid (defendant) because the kid took something from another kid (plaintiff) is the norm and it still makes noise (news). Sometimes the wrong party is accused (kids and adults). This time the hits are harder and the toys are more expensive. You can see the entire drama time and time again in any pre-school (newspaper/TV/media).
The truth shall set you free!
http://www.versiontracker.com/mp/new_search.m?prod uctDB=mac&mode=Quick&OS_Filter=MacOSX&search=kazaa &x=0&y=0
# 2) How is this insightful? It's Apple's ad campaign! It's not even original. If anything, it's redundant in addition to offtopic. Whether it's true is irrelevant.
;)
So are you insinuating that, like HP's indemnification to its customers from SCO, that this article is conjured up as Apple's indemnification to its customers against the RIAA??
Of course not, i just thought i'd mess with you
Serves them right, those RIAA bastards. They weren't counting on our secret weapon - the clueless user!
I for one, welcome our new clueless overlords!
do() || do_not();
We will still nail her when we prove she or her neighbor has a PC behind that WI-FI NAT router.
The truth shall set you free!
"It's either going to work in the short term, or they're going to have to pull the plug on it."
</snip>
Okay, so can someone explain to me the significant differences between the recent SCO pump'n'dump scheme vs. the RIAA's "BS across America" campaign? I mean, yes, according to all the available evidence SCO's "IP" is a bunch of centuries-old code that was running in a stable release form around the dawn of civilization, and their allegations that people stole their stuff are questionable on a good day (read:outright lies, damned lies!), and while pump'n'dumps are probably illegal I think the RIAA's "target and destroy customer base with extreme prejudice" plan is more stupid than unlawful, but here's a little mental exercise...
There exists a company "Foo" in recent news such that:
They say you've got their stuff and must pay up, to the tune of $unreasonable_dollar_figure.
They appear to have done little or no real fact-finding, and frankly it's your responsibility to prove you haven't done something wrong.
There's no detectable pattern, rhyme or reason to any of their attacks, unless one considers "let's cast a really wide net and hope that a bunch of suckers will pay up fast" as a strategy.
/.ers hate them, violently. With a passion, and stuff.
Now, tell me this. Who am I talking about, RIAA or SCO? I suppose you could stretch this to include BSA (not the Anti-Homosexual Male Scouts of America, the other BSA) and some other actively-disliked organizations, but yeah. Kind of makes me wonder, anyway.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
I've been using Apples since 1979 (Apple ][, Mac Plus, PowerMac 6100, and now a PowerMac G4 Sawtooth running Jaguar). I've always enjoyed it more than DOS (one button mouse and all!). I received my CS degree (4-year) in 1980 and have been programming professionally since then. I've programmed under IBM 370 (ASM), PDP 11/45, Windows 3.1, Solaris, VMS, Linux, and the Mac.
I doubt timothy could find his ass without a second mouse button.
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
MOD PARENT UP!!!
Why would anyone want to close the source if there is no copyright anyway? The GPL would be unnecessary once the copyright based business model is gone. The law is there now, so you might as well use it even if you want it abolished.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Is the prosecution of the innocent. This isn't nearly as bad as when cops barge into the wrong house, shoot first and then realize they've injured or killed a completely innocent person.
for us to gloat over another RIAA PR blunder. But how much did this poor woman have to spend in legal fees just to get the RIAA to agree not to badger her for a little while?
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Nice write-up, I like how you managed to make up the bit about the children's magician, slip a nice anti-Mac troll in the middle there, and still make the front page. That takes skill. Now if only you could have shoe-horned the phrase "M$" in there somewhere.
As for this being yet another PR disaster; the RIAA knows almost everything they do these days is going to be a PR disaster. They simply do not care:
Clearly, record companies and the RIAA had some concerns about backlash before going into this. Certainly the story about the 12-year-old in public housing who was sued hit the headlines fast and hard. Are you at all concerned about public relations backlash?
We knew that this was not going to be a good PR experience from the get-go. But the (record) companies were of the view that this was something we had to do without regard to the PR implications. If PR were the dominant consideration, we would not have taken these actions, and the problem would be continuing unabated, and people would not be thinking twice about the legality of what they're doing. If bad PR is the price, it's a relatively small one compared to the size of the problem.
to take her on contingincy and sue the shit out of both he ISP and the frigging RIAA! Let them have taste of their own medicine and give the ISPs reason not to play along with their little game
You're using her as bait, Master!
Mis-spelled and uncapitalized, and you expect us to do what you say? Please learn English, as it's the language of preference on this particular portal. Thanks!
...is dead!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has counseled about 30 of the 261 people sued, Cohn said, adding that some have settled for fear of spending too much money fighting powerful corporations.
Isn't that the crutch of the matter? It really doesn't matter if what they are doing is right or wrong, as long as they have the money to take it to court and the people they are sueing do not, this will always be the case. What would really be nice would be for some noble rich person to start a trust fund for RIAA 'victems' to help pay for their legal battle if they so wish to fight this in the courts.
Otherwise this will just continue. Let's face it, as fair or unfair as the RIAA may be, most people aren't going to stop buying cds because of this; IMO, most people will just say 'oh that's too bad' like they did with the 12-year old girl and then go out and do what they normally do, if that includes buying a cd than so be it.
The only way to stop such practices is to
a) Educate the masses
or
b) Fight this in court
Both take money unfortunately...
He always manages to keep his job despite his editing skills. Michael is in the same magic show.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Are ISPs required to keep accurate records? If not, they could do submit the wrong IP all the damned time. Alternatively they could simple cease to keep such records.
He's mentioned right here. I don't know why you didn't find it.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
I think the RIAA should be forced to prove that someone *does not have a license* to digital music. I no longer have my "Frampton Comes Alive" album that I bought in the 7th grade, but I paid for it at one time. After all, I bought a license to the music, not an "album" or "cd"..that was only the delivery medium, right? So, if I scratch my new CD, I should be able to mail it to the record company and get a new one at the cost of manufacturing that replacement CD? Obviously, none of this is true in the real world and isn't likely to happen anyway. In fact, I don't want the RIAA (or anyone else) keeping track of my music purchases anyway. So why don't we get off of the concept of "licensing" a single work and just have someone (RIAA or whomever) charge us $20 a year that includes a license to all music produced. $20 a year from everyone is a nice revenue stream and would keep artists compensated fairly..the artists would make their extra millions on tours/t-shirts/endorsements anyway.
The United States Congress - Home of designer laws...For more info, drop a million or so into our PAC...We promise absloute satisfaction" (but no returns are allowed)
It seems to me that if someone could demonstrate how to use a common P2P client like Bearshare or and make it look like someone else was using it, it would throw out RIAA's entire case. If I could share my files through my computer, but make it look like it was you doing it, your defense would be "I was hijacked", but I don't know by who. If you could claim that you were hijacked, suddenly everyone else could claim that too. Presto! No case against anyone! They could no longer prove that an IP address is really associated with a particular Verizon (Comcast, Road Runner, etc.) customer. Reasonable doubt could prevail.
Cryptonomicon.Net is running a story RIAA Sues Wrong Person and asks the question... "What if I have an insecured Wi-Fi network in my house?" How will the RIAA prove that it wasn't a roving war-driver who connected to my network explictly for the purpose of downloading music? Will they have to? What if they get a forensics guy out to the house with a copy of AirSnort and find that they guy next door has a WiFi network, but his client attaches to my network half the time? Would they then sue everyone on the block?
Does earthstation 5 and the new kazaa lite protect your identity very well ?
I'm pretty sure they were talking about werewolves.
Take THAT, Occams razor!!!!
The sum of $150,000 per song is based on the statutory damages allowed for willful infringement in copyright law.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If they are tracking people by their IPs. What about DSL and leased IPs? What if your lease goes to someone else and they go after that person? Am I looking at that wrong or do they find a way around that? Like a date and time or something... I dunno it all seems so dumb to me.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
The tricky thing about IP addresses with either broadband or dialup is that throughout your membership with an ISP, you may use dozens of IP addresses. Unless they are careful to match IP addresses with the person using it at the time, they're going to get mistakes like this, even assuming no fluckups in the subpoena.
Does anybody know if there are legal requirements for an ISP to maintain records of IP address usage, and for how long? Seems to me this could be a selling point for an ISP: "Sign up with us! We destroy all IP address logs every 30 days!"
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
DearRIAA,
Your best chance of winning this case is to bend over for the judge and jury so pick a judge that's into that kinda thing. See you in court.
P.S. Could you play that Trick Daddy song when you walk in the courtroom... It would really help me take you seriously.
As the article makes plainly visible, your primary defense in a lawsuit with the RIAA/MPAA should be "prove that was me". The RIAA may have an IP address and know that address is reserved by an ISP, but connecting the time stamps, accesses, and logs may well be impossible. The human error component is very large - numbers maybe transposed, time stamps may be incorrect, etc. just make the process filled with potential for error. Considering the amount of money the RIAA is requesting ($150,000 per song), any amount of potential error is intolerable.
Please read this informative article before you risk your future life and happiness - think hard if it's worth stealing a $20 CD instead of buying it!
...Let the next mistaken target be a Senator's son/daughter.
magician crack?
Where do I get that? Never heard of it... =P
All my Mac-loving friends say running KazaA is the #1 reason to buy VirtualPC! I like the VMWare idea too, you could even keep your warez within the VM Disk, so at the touch of a button you no longer run KazaA or have any MP3s, ka-ching!
#include <sig.h>
Orrin Hatch is the dumbest ass I've ever known to hold office. He's the one that is leading taxation on the internet, he is a leading proponent of Patriot Act II, and he wants to give the RIAA/MPAA complete power to do anything they want!
UTAHNS TAKE NOTICE! Vote this communist satan incarnate asshole out of office! Please, for the sake of everything decent, get rid of this guy!
I know that Utah is a very republican state, and some may be reluctant to let a democrat win, but think of the damage that Hatch will cause if left in office! A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN ANY DEMOCRAT WOULD DO! Especially in Utah.
I appeal to my fellow Utahns: Please help me get this anti-American fucktard terrorist Orrin Hatch out of office!
Thank you.
Since RIAA reserved the right to file suit against her again, what happens if they do (or if others use the "I own a Mac, I couldn't possibly be using Kazaa" defense)? If she truly owns a Mac, then she couldn't possibly have installed Kazaa. If I don't own a Mac but claim I do, is the burden of proof on me to prove I own a Mac, or on RIAA to prove I don't?
If the burden of proof is on the RIAA, then what can they do without a true warrant to search my home? That would go well beyond the powers granted to them by the DMCA and would require law enforcement intervention. There's no way to say "we know you don't own a Mac" without coming into my home to prove it.
If the burden of proof is on me, couldn't I just borrow a Mac or a receipt of a friend's Mac (assuming I was lying) to prove I do, in fact, own a Mac? Since RIAA can't come storming into your house (yet...), this seems like it would be more than satisfactory to meet a civil suit requirement for dismissal doesn't it...?
I hope this is a viable idea, and everyone uses it to stick it to the RIAA.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
"Please note, however, that we will continue our review of the issues you raised and we reserve the right to refile the complaint against Mrs. Ward if and when circumstances warrant," Colin J. Zick, the Foley Hoag lawyer, wrote to Beeler.
Huh? This is equivalent to saying "Sorry I pushed you down the stairs, but I reserve the right to do it again!"
This is complete and utter lack of respect to Beeler, but tells you alot of what it thinks of its own customers!
In other news the RIAA had to retract yet another lawsuit when they found out that the kazaa sn actually belonged to one of their board members
Funny you should mention that. You bet your ass that the RIAA has every sharing program there is IN THE WORLD, in order to do "research". I wonder what band the service techies use for their test searches. Metallica, anyone?
The Mini Repository - more links
As far as I can tell, RIAA is only suing people using Kazaa (not even Kazaa Lite). There ARE P2P programs for Mac... Does that make other P2P programs safe for the time being?
If she's got no kids living with her I'll bet she's got some form of broadband and an unsecure wireless router. Someone has been accessing it to share files, knowing they couldn't be tracked. If I had broadband and I lived in an apartment building and I was dumb enough not to secure my wireless router, that'd be my defense.
Happy goldfish bowl to you.
If there were no copyright, the whole business model of limiting each copy is gone. One reason source is closed is because revealing it would negate any copy protection. I have no problem with the GPL because it uses copyright to introduce the mindset that information should be shared. Once copyright is abolished, it's no longer needed and has done its job.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
... the recording industry requested information about the wrong IP address, which is usually more than nine digits.
Mattel/MSI YZg--p Foley Hoag 'CaBaY"--L--^ Zick 'AOEd"C'Aaei--...XeNB--...XY"Uc"Il"V's'3/4s"ICII-
I guess the RIAA will now sue Comcast for giving them the wrong personal information.
On another note, I guess if the RIAA and their equally scum bag lawyers sends me one of their (not worthy of wiping my ass with) papers, I'll just have to tell them I use a Vic 20 computer and only connect to the net through my 300 baud Hayes modem.
Somebody please stop this madness...hello DOJ? Howabout a rackeering charge? Something...argh!
a kid with a laptop was sighted nearby and appeared to be eating pringles.
his IP address was 192.168.1.101 so it couldn't have been him right?
Maybe the RIAA will go after THAT IP next....
Why change out your hard drive? Just make sure each sector is zeroed out in its entirety so that the empty space in allocation units is wiped, then reinstall.
;-)
Would look too much like a cover-up with old drive/new install. Easier to claim the HD fried so you replaced the dinky drive with a bigger new drive. The old drive is in the landfill. For charges of the cost of my house per song, ditching the old drive and all wireless gear is very cheap insurance.
Time for full disclosure.. I'm still on dial-up and don't own any wireless gear. DSL is still not avaliable and the cable tax for not having a TV subscription makes the cable too expensive. Slashdot without extensive graphics works fine on dial-up. Not running Kazza or other sharing program except e-mail which can send attachments. I run a LAN but it's all hardwire. I put it in before wireless. It's Cat5. The coax was replaced.
The truth shall set you free!
Me thinks I sense projection here.
of music, get used to it http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=71 1&ncid=711&e=9&u=/usatoday/20030923/tc_usatoday/11 865096
Update: 09/24 15:19 GMT by T: Note, the magician crack is a joke ;)
If i were to tell a joke this bad my karma would go so low that I wouldn't be allowed to read slashdot let alone post in it, oh wait, it's ALREADY that low... at least you can tell my shitty jokes are at least jokes... MODERATE THE MODERATORS!
/paul
fact: microsoft > linux
So now this woman has to pay her lawyers to defend herself, right? She was wrongly accused, in fact did absolutely nothing wrong, yet she is still forced to pay fees? And countersuing for legal costs is such a pain that it's not even worth it. If she did win against the deep-pocketed RIAA lawyers, it would still be a headache and tons of time.
That sucks.
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
Could one simply log onto a linux box from afar (or even windowze box a la gotomypc) and use said remote node (which happens to be in Canada, Jamaca, wherever) and download music legally and thus usurp the threat?
Dunno...I own a Mac, where all i have to do is install remote desktop and the magic happens..:)
Did you see the tag line? Or is it that you love spammers and you are a spammer yourself?
Fight Spammers!
Since this is a civil, not a criminal, case, at this stage of the proceedings nobody was anywhere near a courthouse, so I don't think the notion of "burden of proof" quite applies (yet).
Presumably, what just happened is that her lawyer wrote a nice letter to the RIAA which said, in essence, "My client is a Mac user and we would be thoroughly delighted to embarrass the bejesus out of you in both a court of law and the international press. Name a date and courthouse, punk, and bring it on." Then the RIAA decided that maybe the didn't want to find out conclusively one way or the other whether she was a mac user.
That said, (and IANAL) the standard of proof for civil cases is not the familiar "beyond a reasonable doubt" of civil cases, but much lower. That is why the alleged victims of alleged crimes who didn't prevail in criminal cases sometimes attempt to sue, because, the rules being different, it is easier to get a judgment against someone in civil suit. But it works the other way around, too.
I think this means that she would only have to convince a judge it was implausible she could have been using kazaa, not impossible.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
That way I can use "the Mac Defence" when the time comes... Muarhha ha haaa haaaa :-)
No, I'm New Here
If she really is a computer neophyte, do you truly believe she has a Wi-Fi setup? I'm not very Mac aware; do they come with Wi-Fi out of the box or something, waiting to be sniffed? I doubt it.
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
if ISPs would actually rotate their DHCP pool frequently (for broadband users w/o static IPs), on a daily basis, or actually give you a DIFFERENT IP address when you request a refresh, wouldnt that effectively stop RIAA from being able to tell who is who?
at least it would make it harder. i guess they might still be able to force the ISP to some accountability (dhcp logs?), but maybe the ISP could flush those on a periodic basis...
That said, (and IANAL) the standard of proof for civil cases is not the familiar "beyond a reasonable doubt" of civil cases, but much lower. That is why the alleged victims of alleged crimes who didn't prevail in criminal cases sometimes attempt to sue, because, the rules being different, it is easier to get a judgment against someone in civil suit. But it works the other way around, too.
That's why I ask who is responsible for the proof here: the defendant or the plaintiff? In a civil case, I imagine the defendant must prove they didn't do it, but in these cases I think showing a Mac receipt should do the trick nicely. All the RIAA has on you is an IP address -- they can't prove anything beyond "we know IP X.Y.Z was offering these songs." Much as they'd probably like to barge into your home and sieze all your computers, they currently don't have that power.
For a civil trial the burden of proof is well below "beyond a reasonable doubt", but how much lower is it? The RIAA have only an IP address as their proof. That's pretty weak to start with, and I would hope that, even for a civil case, it wouldn't take much to tear apart their case.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Go get 'em, Grandma!
Coderz 4 Life
This lady was forced to have an attorney draft a response to the RIAA's allegations. Attorneys generally do not provide such services for free. Who pays for the mistake?
One would have thought the stream of nationally-announced embarrasments would have encouraged the RIAA to do more thorough investigations of these situations before launching into lawsuits.
Digital Citizen
There are several programs for the Mac that will connect to Kazaa, therefore that's not a defense.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
In other words: OK, maybe we were wrong, but we reserve the right to punish you for our fsckup!
...///...
Moreover, Ward uses a Macintosh computer at home.
Kazaa runs only on Windows-based personal computers.
Says who? Poisoned works just fine for me.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
... let this woman sue the living shit outta RIAA. Amen.
The lawsuite will be quitely withdrawn and none of us will ever hear about it
karma : former act as leading to inevitable results
We don't know what this hypothetical post-copyright world would be. I think that it will put companies completely out of the information business. There would be no law forcing anyone to reveal their source, but people would just do it anyway.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Where are my Mod points when I actually have a reaosn to use them?
The user in question was fingered due to her IP. The thing about Comcast, is that they use dynamic IPs.
Essentially, the IP that was the "transgressor's" at the time the RIAA logged it, eventually was rotated so that the innocent party was fingered.
It's nice that the article's writer at least got the IP point right, but it's a little surprising that NOBODY, neither Comcast, the RIAA, or law enforcement for that matter, has pointed out the fact that DynIP makes persecution almost impossible without continuous logging of IP numbers and addressed clients.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
What if you use DSL and get a new IP everyday? My pal has that and sure he hates it for gaming, but would it be resonable doubt against RIAA lawsuits? Does anyone here think or know if internet providers track who had which IP everytime they come online? That would be quite a massive database... Hey I just thought of something else: no more Sony electronics for me anymore. Shoot, I liked their stuff. Bad enough I can't buy cd's from Sony Music, BMG, Virgin, Interscope, Atlantic, Warner Brothers, and Arista anymore. :-(
There are several programs for the Mac that will connect to Kazaa, therefore that's not a defense.
I guess this begs the question: what is
No matter what you come up with, the RIAA could counter. "You own a Mac, but who says you don't also own a PC.", "You brought your PC to court to show that you don't have any songs, but we believe you just deleted them." etc etc. If it goes to court, the RIAA has to provide more proof than just an IP address and a list of shared songs! Otherwise, they could potentially fabricate a complaint against anyone in the US that at some point had an account with an ISP, and there's be no way to counter the claim!
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Dear Mr. Zick,
You're an asshole and I steal all your client's fucking stuff. Then I delete it because it's all total crap.
Fuck you.
Regardless of the morality, everyone needs to band together against the RIAA and that means the ISPs too, they should be helping their customers - the people who give them money. Firstly, ISPs should all offer dynamic IPs and if the law requires logging then they should have alot of "accidents" and "loose" the log every 3 days. Also we need a union of music listeners who will go on CD-buying strikes if needed - they could even concentrate on specific CDs or labels just to make an example for the other labels. Most people are too lazy to go on marches, but going on anti-marches (ie not going to the store to buy CDs) is easy and if you can get non-file sharing friends to strike as well (you can bribe them buy burning a free copy of the CD they want to buy). Also call up the RIAA from pay-phones regularly and demand that they check if you have been given a subpoena (give them fake details) and tie their office up with bogus calls.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Probably one thing you left out -- a little "hint" about the countersuit that would be filed if RIAA didn't back off.
Could you imagine a class action against RIAA for slander, libel, etc. just involving the subpoenae they've already let out? It's enough to make a Mississippi anti-tobacco lawyer drool ;-)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Anybody that gets sued should just throw up a wireless access point and claim that someone must have been accessing their wireless without permission.
The burden of proof is on the RIAA, but they get toquestion the defendant under oath before trial. They can also require the defendant to produce any documents that may reveal whether or not he has a PC or Mac. (This works both ways; the defendant gets to question RIAA people under oath as well.)
This has nothing to do with the DCMA, it's standard pretrial procedure.
Or the article for that matter?
Heck, here is a perfect way for all the ISP's to make this RIAA lawsuit crap go away : when they come asking 'Who has IP address 192.168.2.105 so we can sue them ?!?' just give them bogus replies, pick a customer at random (even better, give them a customer at random that moves less than 100M a month, pretty much insuring it ISN'T a P2P trader.) It will only take about 5 of these in a row before the common public totally freaks out over this witch hunt and says ENOUGH!
Can I copywrite or patent that idea?
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Lyrics to "Dinosaurs Will Die"
Kick back watch it crumble
See the drowning, watch the fall
I feel just terrible about it
That's sarcasm, let it burn
I'm gonna make a toast when it falls apart
I'm gonna raise my glass above my heart
Then someone shouts "That's what they get!"
For all the years of hit and run
For all the piss broke bands on VH1
Where did all, their money go?
Don't we all know
Parasitic music industry
As it destroys itself
We'll show them how it's supposed to be
Music written from devotion
Not ambition, not for fame
Zero people are exploited
There are no tricks, up our sleeve
Gonna fight against the mass appeal
We're gonna kill the 7 record deal
Make records that have more than one good song
The dinosaurs will slowly die
And I do believe no one will cry
I'm just fucking glad I'm gonna be
There to watch the fall
Prehistoric music industry
Three feet in la brea tar
Extinction never felt so good
If you think anyone would feel badly
You are sadly, mistaken
The time has come for evolution
Fuck collusion, kill the five
Whatever happened to the handshake?
Whatever happened to deals no - one would break?
What happened to integrity?
It's still there it always was
For playing music just because
A million reason why
All dinosaurs will die
All dinosaurs will die
All dinosaurs will die
hauling a 66 year old in front of a judge claiming she's a Little League player
That's not as far-fetched as it sounds. Theoretically you can't play Little League after 12, but some people "give 110%"...
Someone please tell me where the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION is? Are they too busy defending athiests and minorities to realize that ALL of the American's Civil Liberties are disappearing. What happened to privacy? Right to assemble? Freedom of Speech?
Trick Daddy, huh? She seems more like the 50 cent type to me.
This is just another scare tactic in the RIAA's multi-pronged strategy. Sue grandma and consumers will realize everyone connected to the internet is a target. Even non-file sharers better wake up and realize the RIAA has had enough and will take no prisoners. This publicity is great for the RIAA; go online with or without kazaa on your computer at your own risk!
One question regarding this tactic... Since this campaign began it has curbed file sharing by around 33% on kazaa alone. Shouldn't of CD sales increased by at least 33% according to RIAA calculations?
Interesting story at CNN (rejected by Little Timmy): Kazaa just sued RAII for copyright infringment... CNN,
I was woundering if there is a law that requres ISP's to keep the logs of who is using what IP address. If there is none then they can protect there users by just not keeping the logs and telling the RIAA that they do not have the information that they want. Is that possible?
So easy even morons can do it. In fact, they frequently do. We know we have a new Airport setup by a clueless user on campus whenever a rogue DHCP server comes up. See we centrally control DHCP. There is one server that will deal with the whole campus, no matter what subnet you are on. If you want to run your ow, we permit that, but you need to tell us so the proper changes can be made.
Well, if you setup your own DHCP server and DON'T tell us, red falgs go up when it starts handing out addressess it shouldn't. Invariably, it is some clueless user who set up an Airport which apparently does this by default. It of course also lacks thing like a WEP kep and so on.
So ya, I am completely buying that a totally clueless user could have wireless. I've met several.
Meanwhile, Heath7 breathes a sigh of relief, quietly uninstalls KaZaA, and vows to never pirate music again.
Apple user? - what the hell is that!!
A flaming homosexual suffering from mental retardation, I believe.
Oops. Now I expressed myself redundantly again.
Copyright should be abolished because it is unnatural. It would also happen to prevent this particular from suit from ever happening.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
It's worse, it's unconstitutional. As I've said many times on this issue, one part of ammendment 8 states "nor excessive fines imposed". These statutory damages are clearly an excessive fine, given the nature of the offence.
If I purchase 50 CDs, rip them into mp3s, and then toss them onto my computer.
Let's say perhaps my computer was ridden with spyware and KaZaa managed to install itself. If I was a computer neophyte and all of a sudden being sued for sharing these songs, is that not a little ridiculous?
How could they hold me liable for that? It's like sueing Microsoft because they unknowingly left thousands of vulnerabilities in their software and now many computers are being crippled because of it.
Malicious Prosecution.
They will apologize only when the court orders them to apologize. Anyone in these same circumstances should countersue, or in this case file a new complaint. Causes of action would be chiefly malicious prosecution, but also illegal business practices, wiretap violations, infringement of privacy, etc.
After all, they have no reason to have her personal information on file. If they choose not to do the right thing then they should themselves be compelled in the courts to do the right thing.
It's not fun to be sued needlessly (exactly this case) for little reason except a large publicity campaign (exactly this case) and to rack up needless legal bills (exactly this case). At least, they should pay her fucking legal bills.
they'll sue GW's daughters... I wonder what kind of PR will come from that :)
Anyone noticing that the majority of the press on this issue lately is stories like this one, and the 12-year-old kid who was sued? The RIAA made a big splash with its initial announcement of large numbers of lawsuits, but now they're going to suffer the death of a thousand cuts for tales of innocent/naive users crushed beneath their jackboots. Whatever gain they hoped for in deterrence is going to pale in comparison to the losses they're going to reap looking like storm troopers.
... dang)
(Godwin's law not invoked because I intentionally didn't use the word 'Nazi.' Oops
Nobody would force anything. Those who want to release source will. Those who don't, won't. But those who don't might be ignored.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
One should rename oneself to "The Wrong Person", run Kazaa, and watch with great amusing as the RIAA tries to sue The Wrong Person. Tape the whole sourt proceedings and put that on Kazaa.
six harddrives available...where I can ditch the one with pr0...and put linux on!
Undoubtedly, she has virtual pc, windows, and kazaa installed on her ipod. Not only can she denying having it on her computer, but she doesn't have to copy the songs after she downloads them. Shhhhh
mlnet, poisoned, and iSwipe are all very functional Mac OS X Kazaa clients.
"Oh, I hated that movie. Shaq can't act!"
"You kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"Oh, that annoying little green guy from the Flintstones."
"'Cause you what?"
"No, not since the accident. But, thanks for asking."
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
What is more disturbing is that the RIAA stated that IPs are unique identifies. Apparently they never heard of dial-up. In fact even Comcast states that your IP address is not unique (so does Qwest and MSN DSL server). So their argument that somebody screwed up on Comcast part is wrong. It's that their whole way of doing this is completly flawed to begin with.
If they are going on that fact why not have everybody spoof the RIAA IPs and have them suing themselves. Note: I am not recommending doing this just making a point.
The RIAA is a lose cannon at the moment
There is a god! I have finally seen "loose" misspelled as "lose"!!
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
I am a senior software architect at IBM with over 20 years of experience in software development. My main computer is a Mac. It is not a question of being trendy or nerdy. My Mac makes me more productive in a secure and standard environment. Those who think that the Mac is only for dummies are wrong, they are both for experienced UNIX users like myself and beginners who do not want to pay for the mistakes of Microsoft. You don't get it? Too bad, try one.
If an online music store wants to charge $1 for a 128kb/s mp3, I'm not going to whine. I'm just going to keep paying my $10/month to EMusic for up to 2000 tracks/month VBR 192kb/s-average mp3s. Excuse me while I go back to listening to the Pixies.
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
IANAL, of course, but I was under the impression that 'reasonable doubt' is the criterion for criminal cases only, and that civil cases have a much higher threshold for proof.
Case in point: OJ Simpson, who was found 'Not Guilty' but successfully sued on the same evidence.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I'm sure when they come for you, you'll not only enjoy your stay in the brig in SC, you'll thank them for it too.
Any branch of government, unchecked in power and oversight will overreach it's bounds and oppress the people. Currently the executive branch is claiming that all the above mentioned activites are permissible simply under executive order. They have made the case in court, that the challenges of these executive orders is not hearable in the court system at all because the executive branch claims the courts have no jurisdiction. (How's that for circular logic for you!?)
When the King/Tyrant/President/Faciest-leader decides that HE alone can deprive you of your liberty with out charge, independant review of the evidence, without a trial of your peers, where you have the right to see the evidence against you and challange those who will testify against you, than you sir, are on your way to living in a totalitarian state.
I hope you enjoy it, I don't. I'm very sad to see our great country veer so far away from the principles we were founded on.
Cheers,
Greg
Anybody can sue anybody for anything at any time. That's America. Unfortunaltely, people in this country excersise that right more often then the should. On the other hand, it's just too bad that the RIAA is full of a bunch of greedy bastards.
-P
>>>Note, the magician crack is a joke ;)
:D
oh great, so now the entire slashdot has become a joke
my blog
"If any of those [IP address] numbers are wrong or transposed, you're going to get the wrong person," Cohn said.
I swear it was the one armed man!
*whew* thank god they went and found an expert lawyer to clear that one up!! corporate american media is so smart. free market media is a great idea!!!
...that if you're smart enough to use that as a defense, it probably invalidates it. Act stupid, then find some techie people you know to testify to your case. Not "I was dumb enough not to secure my wireless router" but "I had no idea my wireless router needed securing"
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A Comcast spokeswoman, Sarah Eder, would not comment, citing customer privacy concerns.
Sounds like a lot of crap. If they really were concerned with customer privacy, they would have made a statement about how they refused to reveal her to the RIAA in the first place.
Before someone quotes the Verizon case, it doesn't mean that these rubber stamp subpoenas can't be challenged. Each and every one could be challenged, if the ISP wanted to. Maybe they figure they will lose more due to litigation with the RIAA than they would due to customer concerns.
Once again I am reminded of why I enjoy living in a country where the ammount of my innocence and freedom are dictated by the size of my bank account.
Boy, I sure am glad all the potential information in the article was overshadowed by the the jack-ass comments of the poster.
I realize Slashdot has to give a little liberty, but can't the poster's personal (incorrect) opinions about the article be left out? I don't care. I doubt anyone does. All it does is make people like me write about his comments and not the article... and I'm about the 500th today to do so.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Sued by the RIAA?
1. Yes, I'm a 13 yr old.
2. Yes, I'm a poor college student.
3. Yes, I'm an old lady.
4. Yes, I actually am a flaming pirate
5. I own a Mac, you insensitve clod!
6. CowboyNeal is my Kazaa, baby!
Could a puny mortal use the awesome power of DMCA as well? Consider:
Also optional, of course, are the obligatory "???" and "Profit!" steps.
(Wait...optional obligatory steps? Oh, you know what I mean...)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
try it: point a web browser to the kazaa port, they got a listing in http-style :)
Do decimals count as digits? I don't think so but perhaps they were including them. A better description would be, a set of four numbers between 1-255, seperated by decimals.
First, millions of people are keeping them from making millions of extra. Then they get embarrassed by suing the wrong person. Now the Kazaa people are suing them....again. will there be no end to their persecution?
1. Wardrive Hilary Rosen's house
2. Connect to her open 802.11x network
3. Share every song in existence
4. Subpoena!
Ignored. Nowhere did we overturn the limits on federal gov't sticking its nose everywhere, they just decided that "interstate commerce" means anything, ever, always.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
...when they discovered she thought 'Kazaa' was a magician playing at local kids' birthday parties.
That's a good one, I'll have to remember to use it some time.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
That reminds me of an incident that happened at work. Somebody told us that The Amazing Kreskin, the world's foremost mentalist, was involved in some sort of weird conspiracy. None of us had heard of The Amazing Kreskin, the world's foremost mentalist, previously, so my friend Joe went to amazingkreskin.com from one of the computers in our break room to find out what he was all about. The next day, he again attempted to visit amazingkreskin.com, only to find out that it had been blocked by our administrator.
Hmmm...
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Um, I think you parented the wrong article.
I hear that he's getting a lot of abuse thrown his way. Some guy even tried to cut the hose bringing Blaine water.
tis teh funny
According to this article Sharman Networks is sueing the RIAA for copyright violation for using Kazaa Lite instead of Kazaa to access its network. I submitted it, but, sadly, it was rejected. Thought people interested in the whole RIAA mess might get a kick out of it, though.
--
www.nitemarecafe.com
So, who's reimbursing this victim of Sony Music, BMG, Virgin, Interscope, Atlantic, Warner Brothers, and Arista's (let's call them by name, not allow them to hide behind the "RIAA" shield) misguided attack the $1000 or so it took to hire a lawyer to file a response?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
For one thing, you've managed to really piss me off! I've installed a CD burner, and purchased hundreds of blank CDs, Jewel Boxes, and labels. I intends to makes copies of most of by ~1000 CDs and give them away to all my many friends, aquainences, and co-workers. I urge others to do the same. This this might possibly make a dent in Sony Music, BMG, Virgin, Interscope, Atlantic, Warner Brothers, and Arista's sales? (P.S. I'll be careful not to make copies of non-RIAA member CDs)
Criminal: Case against defendants must be proven by prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt.
Civil: Case against defendants must be proven by plaintiffs that it is more likely than not (somewhat like a 50% + 1) that defendants are liable. Percentage liabilities can be assigned by judges among multiple defendants if found liable.
IANAL, but I've watched enough court shows to understand this basic fact. This is also why they are not pursuing criminal charges. It would be next to impossible that a particular individual was the source of the file sharing. The civil burden is much easier.
This is also why someone I know in Canada got out of an unlawful computer entry criminal charge - the prosecution couldn't prove that it was any particular person behind the keyboard.
Remember the first MS worms? The media called them computer worms from the internet. Now they are calling Microsoft on the carpet to explain their shoddy software. (this morning on CBC radio. cool). Next will be anytime Microsoft is mentioned, it will be accompanied by a comment such as "whose insecure software caused $$$ in damage last year" or something similar. Microsoft knows this and are desperately spinning the PR to try to control the damage.
RIAA is suing Grandmothers. 12 year olds with single moms. RIAA is a bunch of lawyers who get paid no matter what, a front. It is Universal, BMG, Sony etc. who are suing 12 year olds, suing grandmothers. RIAA having a bad name is part of the strategy. BMG or Sony Music having the same bad name isn't. Write to the editor of your local paper. Make sure they know. Tell them who the RIAA is. Change the coverage.
Derek
The ISP's do NOT have to give up any information when confronted with a subpoena. The sad thing is, most don't realize this or don't care, and are willing to hand it over without a fight because it's just easier. All they have to do is wait for their day in court, and then they can argue against the right of the RIAA to have their customers information.
An IP can only be assigned to one user at the same time (but multiple user can be connected over him). In other words the IP is an unique identifier, but can only be used as such if the logs are kept (which they normally are)
First question:
What if you are walking down to the local coffee shop and you hop on their "legally free and open" hotspot. You then proceed to share and dload tons of copy righted music. When the IP is traced it will go to that coffee shop, not to you. How do they find you? I assume they can't, unless your there and they are lookign for you at that time and see Kazaa open on your screen for some reason.
Question 2
What if you have a AP at your house that you leave open for your neighbors and friends to use and one of them is sharing files? The IP gets traced to you right, so are you responsible for their actions if you had no knowledge that they would or were doing that?
Inquireing minds want to know
Ave Molech Setting
USA today had another article
Maybe the RIAA needs to change their business model
72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I wish Michael Moore's the Awful Truth was still around. I'm sure they would run a nice piece on the RIAA.
The ISP gets a subpoena from a court clerk ordering them to provide the information. The rest of us in the United States need a judge to issue a subpoena to us. Congress allows a COURT CLERK to issue ones for the RIAA! No judge is even involved. Like I said, designer legislation...likely written by the lobbyests themselves and rubber stamped by Congress (right after they stamped the back of the lobbyests' checks with an endorsement stamp, or course).
IANAL, but in civil suits the standard of proof is "preponderance of evidence". You actually need to present a positive defence of some kind.
Apparently Kazaa Lite doesn't protect your identity too well because Kazaa is suing the RIAA for using it to catch people sharing music. Since it's an unauthorized version bearing Kazaa's name, they are suing for copyright infringement. I got a good laugh when I read about the suit against the RIAA from Kazaa.
uhh guys, there are kazza clients for mac, sigh
:P
macs can do anything my POS xpmachine can do
multi-net
http://www.multinetx.com/MnX/
mlmac
http://www.abyssoft.com/software/mlmac/
among other programs i know exist, (my father uses some obscure one)
still someone useing wi-fi could have been leaching, My sister uses someone elses wi-fi node in her DC apartment, and even if they did run WEP, i would teach her how to break it in a couple hours so there is nothing they can do there.
(i have agreements with neighbors to leach my bandwidth, so i can claim ISP safe harbor clause if i agree to remove material under the DMCA)
could have been ip hijacking, could have been a open proxie a l33t haxor d00d setup
who knows
anyone interested in a W.A.S.T.E cluster at baylor university, msg me/post in my journel, icq, mail, msn or whatever me!
come comment on the madness at http://slashdot.org/~phreak03/journal/
counter-suit. :-p
"Obligatory Spicoli" is a contradiction in terms.
Click here to find out.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
This news excerpt is too funny...
RIAA, you shouldn't have done it...any of it.
No one is really supporting you, absolutely no one.
I'm forwarding this news to my buddies
I didn't use the keyboard legs. The company actually interfered with bringing in an ergonomist to inspect the workspace. The company violated the law and thought they could get away with it.
And you are too chickenshit to identify yourself.
there are quite a few 3rd party programs for Macs that access Kazaa as well as almost all other P2Ps all at the same time through a single program, without all the spyware.
Wonder if I'm the only one left running my home network using co-ax?
Yep, and my firewall is basically my first PC, a P100 (now with 24Mb, no HDD, running a firewall off an Eiger floppy distro) Boy am I back in the dark ages... ;-)
thank god the education system is de-emphasising spelling errors in writing. that way, when a person has somehting good to say, it takes away the argumnets of morons who spent all their time memorizing words rather learning something useful.
with the days of of dynamic IP addresses, how can they solely base identification and suing you on your IP.
peedy
(read Apple User for god's sake)
Considering a great deal of Slashdotters don't believe in a deity, they are unlikely to read it that way just for some deity.
And why reading it like that helps a deity is beyond me.
Have you read my journal today?
Shame on you all! You're convicting this poor fellow purely through secondhand sources. I think you should all make an effort to contact him and get his side of the story firsthand.
Lawyers are never home, so perhaps you'd want to write, fax, or e-mail him at his place of business, according to his profile on his firm's website:
Colin J. Zick
Foley Hoag, L.L.P.
155 Seaport Boulevard
Boston, MA 02210-2600
(617) 832-1275 direct line
(617) 832-1000 firm switchboard
(617) 832-7000 fax
czick@foleyhoag.com e-mail
Of course, lawyers do bring their work home occasionally. If you want to talk to him on a weekend about this matter, perhaps you could check on Switchboard.Com, where'd you see that Colin & Jean Zick have the same address and telephone number:
Colin & Jean Zick
1 Sentry Hill Place
Boston, MA 02114-3505
(617) 723-7329
Interesting that all this information is easily locatable on his firm's website and Switchboard, so he must want people to easily be able to get ahold of him. I wouldn't be concerned.
Of course, please don't abuse my provision of these addresses and telephone numbers.
After all, the man may have decided to bring a frivolous lawsuit against a 66-year-old grandmother who never got near Kazaa and hardly knows how to use a computer.
And, when he found out he was wrong, he didn't apologize, and he made sure to dismiss his suit before the court could in order that he might sue her again if he wanted to.
But he is, no doubt, a deeply ethical man, and I urge you all to contact him to inform him precisely how ethical he is.
He is, no doubt, as ethical a man as, say, Alan Ralsky. What happened to Alan Ralsky was absolutely shameful. Let us hope it doesn't happen to Mr. Zick, you wicked people.
. . .Except computers.