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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 ;)
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.
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
Naaa, law are needed, it's the evil mega huge companies power we should get rid of.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Abolishing copyright would make various open source licenses unenforcable..
Trolling is a art,
> (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.
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.
While I agree that copyright and other forms of IP law need some serious revision/balancing, I think the the total abolishment of copyright may be going about 10 steps too far, at least at this point. Such a step would require some major economic modification, and I know that the U.S. at least isn't ready for such a change (I don't live anywhere else, so I can't say anything even mildly authoritative about elsewhere). Abolish anti-murder laws, reduce lifetime-incarceration of innocents! (Yeah, I know, worthless analogy, but hey, I just got to work).
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?
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.
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:\>
So you'd be happy to have the worst-case-nightmare all the GPL-lovers fear: having MS scoop up Linux and not contribute back? The could currently do this with the BSD license but haven't (yet :))..
Trolling is a art,
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.
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.
That we know of...
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
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?
Oh copyright laws is one thing, being able to dodge the law and jump headfirst into a subpoena without the old checks & balances is something else entirely.
Imagine if it were taken one step further, and like the "Microsoft Tax" where a machine sold without an OS still gives MS $$ for the license on the presumption a pirated Windows will be installed on it, imagine if the RIAA were free to just bill people for the songs they'd "alleged" they'd traded
get a wrong IP, pick this 66 year old user, and they suddenly have a bill for the 2,000 songs they've shared out.
So they don't pay as it's nothing to do with them, and *bang* their credit rating is down the tubes.
THAT isn't far off
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..
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.
Good answer. Someone is abusing something, so let's just scrap the whole idea altogether. Let's see how this idea applies to other things: Someone is using a computer to steal money from a bank. Abolish computers, and this won't happen ever again.
Someone is using a car to getaway from a bank robbery. Abolish cars, and this won't happen ever again.
Someone died trying to get high by sniffing carpet cleaner. Abolish carpet cleaner, and this won't happen ever again.
Twit. Just because you never had a creative idea in your life, does not mean copyright does not serve a purpose.
It hurts when I pee.
A Comcast spokeswoman, Sarah Eder, would not comment, citing customer privacy concerns.
In 3 years, Microsoft's business model will switch exclusively to the SCO business model.
Since they won't be able to sell their product because it takes them too long to develop them and the quality is barely acceptable in most cases, they'll just start sueing any company that did any work based on MS technologies (Novell/Ximian), any company that cloned the looks of windows (Lindows/Lycoris/Xandros), but also any user who ever used any pirated copy of any MS software (about 80% of the planet).
As you can see, we shouldn't be too worried about the future of Microsoft as a business entity.
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.
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).
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.
Nope, but it just goes to show that the RIAA is using very sloppy methods in their whore-mongering crusade to harvest as much money from the masses as they are "legally" able to. I find very little difference between the RIAA and SCO in this respect.
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
However, for some of us, the whole purpose of open source licenses is as a weapon against copyright. RMS talks about the rationalization that it was okay to use copyright, which he did not agree with, as a means to fight against copyright. Hence, copyleft.
It's interesting reading, even if you don't agree.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
You are a marked man now, Imma gonna tell steve on you! Calling all apple zealots to arms! The fatherland needs you!
- Toby
Oh, but they would be contributing back; without copyright, you can reverse engineer Wndows to you heart's delight, peop;e who work for MS could release code, etc.
... that David Coperfield will be next?
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
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.
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.
IP addresses aren't exclusively represented by 4 sets of three decimal digits, you know.
Most times I see an IP address containing a number less than 100, there is no leading zero to pad that portion back to three digits. Therefore, an IP with three sets of numbers under 100 would have a mere 9 digits. Mr. Cox was quite accurate.
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.
Reverse engineering is not the same as opening source! The good idea behind the GPL is that it forces those who adapt the source to release their modifications. Can you imagine a world in which the only way to access source was through reverse compiling? Eccch.
peop;e who work for MS could release code
Abolishing copyright does not also abolish contract law, so NDAs would still be valid. And if the code covered trade secrets, it would be unusable.
To all those who say that GPL does not depend on copyright law, I say: why is GPL far more popular than the more permissive BSD license? I have never heard an effective response to this question.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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
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 |
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?
And what purpose does it serve? The ability to charge for content. And what effect does that have? ALL content markets (news, books, movies, and especially music) are flooded by "art" that people simply don't care about. I'm a musician. Of course I would like to make money from my art. But I'd rather still see radio devoid of Britney Spears and her ilk, and only have the people making music that care enough to do it for themselves.
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!
# 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
Elitist bastard. I don't like Ms. Spears (and her "ilk"), but a lot of people do. To you they are tasteless morons, but they like what they like. Who the hell are you to tell them they can't?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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
>Someone died trying to get high by sniffing carpet
>cleaner. Abolish carpet cleaner, and this won't
>happen ever again.
Unfortunately, this is the idea many have within the US. They think that because someone was stupid enough to use a product outside its intended use, it is the manufacturer's problem - NOT the idiot with the carpet cleaner fedish.
Think I'm wrong? Pick an industry, any industry. They all have exoberant regulations on them because the US is a nation that fears personal harm but runs in horror from personal responsibility. Freedom gives the right for a person to be an idiot. But why should another's personal freedoms be limited because of another's abuse of that freedom. All are free or none are free.
I think my favorite example of this is a novel breast cancer detection tool. It was an rubber bladder filled with liquid. In the US, the product didn't get FDA approval - so it couldn't be sold. However, every doctor I have ever talked to says that the best detection is self-examination. How? Soap and water in the shower. So along comes a product (that in clinical trials actually detected lumps BETTER than soap and water) that could improve early detection. Let's regulate the crap out of it. Oh, by the way. This was a small company. I wonder if this had been a big medical corporation. Would the product still be mothballed?
People should be held accountable for their actions. This new idea that government has to protect us from ourselves is Orwelling. It is dangerous and thins the gene pool. (Maybe it's time for human kind to keel over and let the dolphins rule the world.)
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.
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!
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 ?
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...
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
Well, obviously I side with the RIAA because I am a corporate-controlled whore, sucking at the teet of big business interests and lining my pockets with the hard-earned money of the average American worker!
It hurts when I pee.
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.
That's a flawed analogy. You wouldn't abolish computers, you would abolish money. Without money there would be nothing to steal.
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!
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
This is an example of her art work.
She's 66 year old sculptor. It's doubtful she's into Gangsta rap.
I doubt she's got virtual PC running on her Mac, you do need a better-than-average machine to run an emulator.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
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.
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!
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
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
The could currently do this with the BSD license but haven't (yet :))..
Yes they have.
The TCP/IP stack for Windows 9x, and I believe Windows NT also, came from BSD. They certainly don't like to admit it, but there are certain fingerprinting techniques that show that it is true.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
I'm not good with statistics
Well, let's try to calculate it anyway. Assume that the IP can be written av x1.x2.x3.x4, and that all values of xn:s are equally probable (which is wrong). In that case, we have P(xn has three digits) = 156/256, P(xn has two digits) = 90/256 and P(xn has one digit) = 10/256. For the IP address to be at least ten digits, either of these groupings must be the correct one (the numbers meaning the number of digits):
3.3.3.3, 3.3.3.2, 3.3.3.1, 3.3.2.3, 3.3.2.2, 3.3.1.3, 3.2.3.3, 3.2.3.2, 3.2.2.3, 3.1.3.3, 2.3.3.3, 2.3.3.2, 2.3.2.3, 2.2.3.3, or 1.3.3.3.
The probability of the combination 3.3.3.3 is P(3 digits)^4; the probability of 3.3.3.2 is P(3 digits)^3*P(2 digits); etc. Now, if we sum all those probabilities of all combinations together, we get 0.767, which means a whooping 77% chance of an IP being longer than nine digits!
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
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 -*-
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???
Score: -1, Misinformed.
The GPL is not an anti-copyright. You do not have to share anything in order to use GPL software. If you got rid of copyright laws, the GPL would lack any force as it depends on copyright law in order to obligate "downstream" distributors of binary package to make the source code available. Three strikes. You're out.
In fact, while some of us might oppose copyright laws, the fact that they exist and give force to licenses like the GPL is a great boon to Free Software. Without them, anyone could simply compile the code from a Free Software package and sell it as a binary only package. It is not likely, in a free market unburdened by copyright, that this would be a very profitable strategy, because any one of us would then be free to give away copies of those binaries. But even so, at the end of the day, obtaining actual source code would be more problematic than it is now. It is quite possible that programmers would be more inclined to keep their source code secret because it would be the source code that would be of incredible value, not the binaries themselves.
I have come full circle on this issue myself. It seems to me that the best copyright/patent rules are those favored by the Founders. Short terms with plenty of requirements on the part of the copyright seeker to obtain and maintain. This allows inventors, writers, musicians, artists, programmers and others a short time to monopolize their work, but makes it more likely that they will only be able to do so during the key initial period after the idea is first implemented or the work published.
I do not have a signature
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
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.
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?
It is quite possible that programmers would be more inclined to keep their source code secret because it would be the source code that would be of incredible value, not the binaries themselves
is this not already the case? anyway, all i'm saying is there's a big diffrence between laws that say you can't copy something and distribute it for free versus laws that say you can can copy as much as you want but you have to include the source if you're redistributing it. it may well currently depend on copyright law for enforcement, but even if we abolished copyrights, it would be an entirely different matter to make laws that control the privatization of information instead of laws that control the publication of information. it is also a lot easier to prosecute someone if they're trying to make a business off of GPL software without including the source.
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.
No. It's not already the case. Currently if I share my source code it is subject to copyright law, which makes the GPL enforceable. If copyright goes away, then my ability to enforce the GPL goes away too. So the question gets to be, how to get subsequent developers to share their changes to the source code. Sure, users could share the binaries all day long, but what if they were trojaned? That sort of thing is easy to detect with the source code available by examining the diff output from a trusted source compared against the new code.
I do not have a signature
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.
Yes abolish COPYright so large corps and screw the little people even more. If it werent for copyrights how would artist of any kind make a living? You write a song and then someone else just copies it and puts it on there album and makes money from someone elses hard work. I spend a week doing a photoshoot for a promotion and then some company just scans my work and uses it to make themselves a billion dollars and I make $0. I dont think so. I think the RIAA should F itself. and the aritst they are screwing should get the money they deserver. And most band do not make much money from touring. They make money from selling albums as a result of touring.
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.
you didn't read the quote that i was commenting on when I said "is this not already the case?"
It is quite possible that programmers would be more inclined to keep their source code secret because it would be the source code that would be of incredible value, not the binaries themselves
anyone who is selling software keeps the source code for that sofware at least AS secret as the binaries. while the binaries may be easy to get, good luck getting the source code for Windows, or Word.
i realize that the GPL depends on copyright law to be enforced- what i'm saying is that even if we abolished copyright laws, that wouldn't prevent us from making laws which allowed us to designate that certain works and their derivitives are REQUIRED to be publicized, as that is really a different matter. that's what i mean by the antithesis of copyrights.
copyrights, with the exception of the GPL and similar licenses, grant one individual or group of individuals exclusive permission to publish and distribute a work. the GPL, on the otherhand, does not prevent anyone from using the work, but sets conditions for the publication of any derivitive works. it's really a completely different matter.
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
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.
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
So what you're proposing is not only the abolition of copyright but then make a separate law so that we can continue to enforce the GPL? Sounds good to me.
I do not have a signature
...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."
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
precisely! no laws that permit people to restrict the dissemination of information, but laws that permit people to restrict the bottling-up of it. :)
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.
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
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.
McDonald's was selling their coffee at temperatures around 190 degrees Fahrenheit. This is much hotter than coffee you would brew at home and is to hot for human consumption. They purposely turned the temp up so high because their marketing department found that it increased the aroma and in turn increase sales in the restaurants
They ignored over 700 complaints and the injury to the 79-year old woman required skin grafts on much of her inner thighs, buttocks, and genitals. Is that what the public should expect from spilled coffee?
The award was the equivalent to two days of US coffee sales and the Judge reduced the amount to only 3 times the cost of her injuries.
I do not feel that this was a frivolous lawsuit and this 79-year old was not looking to get rich. Spilling the coffee was her fault. The fact that it caused 3rd degree burn was McDonald's fault.
So, you're taking the RIAA's advice from this article, then?
"Really the best defense here is to simply stop distributing music files or quit sharing them online and then you won't have to worry about being a target for litigation."
In other words, it's ok to distribute music files, as long as you don't do it online?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
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.
Software is the final customization to hardware. Software patents should only apply to the EXACT machine described in the disclosure and to a very specific machine code listing and memory mapping. Software copyrights should not cover high-level language snippets that are standard constructs. Of course it is not accepted that a sentence or a paragraph or a page in a novel that exactly matches another's copyrighted material constitutes copyright infringment. Likewise, it should be disallowed to argue that even 10 lines in a 12 line construct exactly matching constitues plagiarism -- comments included.
If this were applied to the SCO claims, the SCO suit would fall apart in no time.
Um, so like, who is David Blaine? I really got no
clue. I assume he is famous but why?
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/
Click here to find out.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
When i read "RIAA Sues the Wrong Person", I thought they sued a mob boss or something.
Okay, maybe i'm an elitist bastard, but I'm NOT telling them they can't like that. If anyone cares about Britney Spears style music to even remotely the degree that I care about music, there will be plenty to go around even without any copyright.
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... ;-)
with the days of of dynamic IP addresses, how can they solely base identification and suing you on your IP.
peedy
No, you're not telling them they can't like it, it's just that if you had your way the airwaves would be "devoid" of anything like it.
I'm not going to belabor such a minor point, though. I agree with your assesment of the style, I just don't think the style of music I like is superior, it's just what I happen to like.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
(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?
. . .Except computers.