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RIAA Files 532 Lawsuits
Like2Byte writes "The RIAA is at it again. This time, Yahoo! News is reporting that 532 file sharers' IP addresses are being submitted to the courts instead of their names because ISPs decline to name people and the courts previous blocks. Music lawyers filed the newest cases against 'John Doe' defendants -- identified only by their numeric Internet protocol addresses -- and expected to work through the courts to learn their names and where they live."
This is what they should have been doing from the beginning, instead of trying to weasel their way around the law and demanding proprietary customer information from ISPs so they can bully them with settlement offers. This gets the process into the courts where it belongs.
Sure the RIAA is still evil, but they're improving their tactics, and should be commended for that. Going after P2P sharing services is wrong, demanding proprietary information from ISPs is wrong, filing John Doe copyright infringement suits is NOT WRONG - it's EXACTLY what you should do if you find people sharing binary apps derived from your GPL'd project and you don't have a way to contact them yourself.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
"Judge, one of my neighbours grabbed an IP from my wireless router and was using KaZaa, not me, I swear..."
how are they going to address that???
there's no place like ~
Everyone is bringing up the question of how long the logs would be kept for. Remember back when the US govt. was (possibly still is) granting itself the power to check out what books you were reading at the library? Remember how the librarians decided to destroy the records because it was legal? How long until ISPs get the idea and follow suit? No records, no court. Remember, ISPs want to keep customers, one way is to have a strong privacy policy.
These are in the list twice
2 12.198.251.665 3.197.275 3.94
12.100.15.167
204.201.220.33
208.150.224.18
216.136.13.252
216.38.33.66
216.
38.201.184.162
63.199.63.218
64.132.1
64.242.223.111
65.105.125.126
66.250.69.1
210.73.74.200 is in 3 times
I count 518 uniques
Actually, that is a far worse plan than dealing with the RIAA.
An ISP can be held responsible in situations where it does not keep records like radius logs. Since the ISP would be unable to prove they didn't do it (they being the ISP), presented with evidence that shows the illegal activity came from their network, it would almost be an automatic loss for them in court. Don't expect any compassion from the court, once the judge points out that your irrisponsibility is borderline deceptive and unethical business practice, you'll probably get either a maximum fine or harsher term.
This is much like loaning your car to a drunk stranger. You automatically become legally liable for anything he does behind the wheel due to your own irrisponsibility.
People forget that the Internet is a communications service. It's not like the phone company doesn't keep a log of all the phone numbers you dial, times dialed, duration of call, the date/time in GMT, etc.
I see a lot of confusion over the way files are identified and whether this will stand up in court or not.
If you think they are using a method as trivial as "they responded to a search for name label_muzak.mp3" you are mistaken. This would definitely not be credible evidence in court (anything could be in the file) and it's not how the RIAA is going about tracking illegal uploads.
The method they are using has been described in some of the articles concerning the subpoenas issued to users of the networks and it works as follows:
1. The RIAA employs modified nodes in the various networks (KaZaa and Morpheous seem to be the big two) to search for known song names or groups.
2. When they find a match, they attempt to download the entire file from the user. This point is important: if they can't prove you actually uploaded a copyrighted file in its entirety, they don't have a case.
3. When the upload is complete they perform an MD5 sum on the content and verify that it matches a database of known copyrighted files. If they didn't do this step, they would have to have someone listen to it to be sure its actually what they think it is.
Given the nature of peer networks, there are a number of common rips (i.e. identical) of songs widely shared among many users. Thus the MD5 sums will match for the same file among many users.
This is all the information they need to bring a suit against your. They have an IP address and time/date associated with the upload, they have a verified MD5 sum for the upload that matches known copyrighted files.
This information was covered in a previous article here: Innocent File-Sharers Could Appear Guilty? and the techniques they use are explicitly designed to withstand the scrutiny of a legal proceeding.
All of the cases of mistaken identity to date (the mac user sent a nasty gram, the grandmother, etc) appear to be mistakes by the ISP correlating a given IP + date into the right account holder, and not a flaw in their methods associated with identifying infringing content traded over the networks.