Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Innocent File-Sharers Could Appear Guilty?

Posted by simoniker on from the honest-it-wasn't-me-guvnor dept.

daveo0331 writes " New Scientist has an article about what could be a promising defense strategy for people targeted by the RIAA. Basically, anyone on the Gnutella network can frame other users by making it look like someone is hosting RIAA music, even though they're not. Therefore, the RIAA's "evidence" against file sharers is theoretically unreliable and wouldn't stand as good a chance of holding up in court. No mention of whether this has anything to do with the RIAA's eagerness to settle the lawsuits out of court. The article is based on a research paper (PDF link, HTML version) posted anonymously to a web hosting service in Australia."

1 of 380 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This may have happened already by Erasmus+Darwin · · Score: 0, Redundant
    "True, and doesn't the fact that this has already occured throw a big question mark against all of the other cases?"

    Yes. However, at the same time, I'm reluctant for the ISP's (potential) incompetence to serve to absolve copyright infringers in a despute like this. I'm honestly not sure what should be done.

    On the RIAA's part, I suppose they could attempt to reduce the chance of mistakes by gathering as much information on each infringer as possible. For example, in the case of someone who isn't using KaZaA lite (and thus has a regular KaZaA username), they could collect several different IP/time pairs for that user over a span of days or weeks. Then they could verify that the ISP lists the same customer each time. They could also start using a time-range instead of a single time-stamp for the IP/time pair itself in order to minimize problems from poorly synchronized clocks. Still, that seems a less than ideal way of doing things.

    At the other end of the spectrum, you could authorize the subpoenaing of data on the defendent's computer itself. Unfortunately, that would be overly invasive ("Hey look at all the scat porn we found"), disruptive (give us your computer, even though you aren't convicted of anything yet), and subject to use as an extortion tool ("If you accept our settlement, you won't have to have us digging through your computer.").

    Overall, it's a shitty situation all around, and having it get "solved" in this ad hoc manner of RIAA-fueled case law isn't the best way of going about things.