Slashdot Mirror
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."
Search for your IP here:
www.MrBumper.com
Apparently mrbumper.com is the new goatse.cx. They're still around after the revocation of their domain.... Teaches me to try links.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
Ask, and ye shall receive.
At the risk of being labelled a troll (which is a shame - the slashdot engine should take posts that are modded as interesting AND troll, as some of the best posts invariably are because they challenge some of the geek orthodoxy), I am happy when this sort of thing happens. Why? In my work I spend hours, months, and years producing "intellectual property" output.
Just because it can be dissementated for a trivial price does not mean that my work is not useful or hard to make or that I need to invent better "market paradigms".
I can't tell you the number of good things that don't go to market because of piracy* concerns. From software to books to music to even more novel forms of everything that simply can't happen because people break the social contract that is copyright and steal. It's a shame really.
Don't any of you slashdot anti-IP drones find any irony in the fact that the OSS paradigm is largely based on respect and props for the hard, easily duplicable work of others?
* "piracy" means "sea piracy" idiots will be ignored.
You are responsible for controlling access to your resources. You can held responsible for damages as a result of failing to secure your property (ie internet connection). Just as an angry mother can sue a skate park if a kid falls, cracks open his head, so can the copyright owner sue you for providing the means for other people to download copyrighted material.
So sure, share your that WAP all you want, but don't be surprised if you get arrested for what someone else does on it.
All of those "what is my ip" sites always seem to give me false info....
http://checkip.dyndns.org/ works better.
Do you have a contract with your ISP saying that you can sublet your pipe to other users?
Yeah, I thought not.
Therefore, you get the bill, and you have to deal with the problems.
I don't know how it will play out in court, but it would be interesting to watch.
The fact that you are blatantly ignoring and violating the TOS with your ISP will not work to your advantage in court. "Hey, I wasn't breaking the copyright agreement, I was breaking the TOS agreement... really... you can trust me on that. ... I'm not a criminal."