RIAA Files 477 New Filesharing Lawsuits

Fallen Kell writes "According to the CNN story, the RIAA has filed another round of lawsuits against filesharers. This round has many college students who are allegedly sharing music on their university networks. Again, the defendants are listed only by their university IP addresses. No lawsuit has gone to trial yet out of the 2,454 litigations started by the RIAA since it began its crackdown."

Comments

Re:When will the backlash come?

[The Analog Kid]

Some lady in New Jersey is suing the RIAA on racketeering laws, saying that the RIAA is extorting money from filesharers by filing these mass suits and then settling because there is no way these people can legally fight the RIAA.

This is about to lose meaning.

[Geancanach]

The more people they sue, the less meaning the lawsuits have. Realistically, how are they going to go after thousands of people? So their lawsuits will just become small news items that fail to scare anyone. What is the point?

Doesn't make sense

[NEOtaku17]

Why is it that digital photos are not legal evidence in a court case but if they have your IP address doing the downloading(or uploading) automatically means you did it? Because computers don't lie? BS! I can think of a hundred ways that they could have false positives(such as IP spoofing and and using stolen remote connection and the like). I don't see how they could get it right everytime and that those people wouldn't fight it.

I wonder when they'll get ME..

[dustinbarbour]

Whoopety doo.. 437 lawsuits is it? And how many people did I see co nnected to KaZaA the other night? What? A million you say? Let's see. Up to now, I stand a scant 0.0437% chance of being sued. I think I'll take my chances.

Re:None to trial?

[Dr Caleb]

A good rule of thumb is "if you are not sure if you have the right to redistribute something, don't."

I have thousands of MP3's, named the same as albums, artists and tracks. They are 3k-4k of random noise. eg: "Madonna - Sympathy for the Devil.mp3"

As was pointed out during the original hearing to release names of users here in Canada, the CIRA had no proof of what was actually in the files that people were sharing. No one downloaded the files, then listened to them. There was no trail of evidence, so it was dismissed.

Share junk - let them download it - maintian CD backups of the originals - maintian download and connection logs - and countersue for racketeering. Get rich quick.

Flea Market Pirates are the Real Crooks.

[Peschula]

I am in the independent music/ film industry in Wilmington, NC and couldn't care less about who downloads my music. However if I did have some success and money invested in advertising and one of these people burned it and sold it at the flea market I would sue. I don't think the RIAA gives two sh*ts about downloaders either - just the bootleggers. It goes the same for the alcohol industry and moonshiners. In a capitalist economic system you can't have a business without a license and avoid the ability for your product to be taxed. Also these flea market distributers don't have enough command to know how to do business research on their own - only steal.

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Strider-BG]

Except one of the main problems in this country is that anyone can be sued for anything by anyone else with no consequence. The government only provides free legal assistance for criminal defendants, not civil ones so you have no choice but to hire a lawyer when you're sued. We need the system like they have (I believe) in the UK where if you're sued by someone and you win, they have to pay your legal bills. At least then it would incent companies to get their $hit straight straight. As it is there's no deterrent. My parents were bankrupted when they were sued by one of their employees for breach of contract - the guy's brother was an attorney and did it for free. My parents ended up winning but had spent over $100K in legal fees. Their small business couldn't recover from that ordeal and they had to shut it down, dragging themselves into bankruptcy.

So what now? Sue the former employee for a frivolous lawsuit? More legal fees to get what? The guy doesn't have that kind of cash. It's like getting mugged for $100K. They're fsck'd. Mom's working part-time at a doctor's office and Dad is looking for a job.

I hate our current President but the one campaign promise I hoped he'd deliver on is that of tort reform. Don't think that'll happen now though :(

Re:When will the backlash come?

[Shakrai]

Are you seriously that daft? They aren't going for the ones that download a song here or there...they're going after the ones with lots of songs available, downloading, uploading...

No, are you seriously that daft? I don't care who they are going after. My point is that even if they catch somebody who was sharing thousands of songs what kind of fucking evidence do they have that they themselves did not obtain?

My whole point (if you had bothered to read it) was that more likely then not any evidence they have they themselves collected. It's hardly impartial third-parties scanning the p2p networks looking for violators.

Picture this:
RIAA Expert Witness: I detected IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx on Kazaa. When I scanned the computer it had X number of copyrighted RIAA songs up for download.
RIAA Lawyer: And you downloaded some of them?
RIAA Expert Witness: Yes, I downloaded the latest Dido song and as you all know that song was published by Arista records who holds the copyright.
RIAA Lawyer: So this person was sharing copyrighted music?
RIAA Expert Witness: That's right.
RIAA Lawyer: I have nothing further for this witness.
Defense Attorney: Who do you work for?
RIAA Expert Witness: I work for such-and-such a company.
Defense Attorney: What does your company do?
RIAA Expert Witness: We scan the P2P networks looking for copyrighted material that belongs to our clients
Defense Attorney: Who are your clients?
RIAA Expert Witness: RIAA, MPAA, etc etc
Defense Attorney: Do we have any evidence besides your good word that my client was actually sharing these songs?
RIAA Expert Witness: We have the IP address and we downloaded sever...
Defense Attorney (cutting him off): So all this evidence was gathered by your company, correct?
RIAA Expert Witness: Yes, you could say that.
Defense Attorney: And your company provides this service to RIAA as a courtsey?
RIAA Expert Witness: No, we are compensenated for it.
Defense Attorney: So it's fair to say that RIAA pays your salary?
RIAA Expert Witness: Well I wouldn't exactly say th...
Defense Attorney (cutting him off): Right, we'll get back to that. Tell me, what actual evidence do you have that my client was the one sharing those songs? Isn't it possible that you got the wrong address or that someone else was using his computer?
RIAA Expert Witness: It's possible but it's not very...
Defense Attorney (cutting him off): Thank you. Is it possible for somebody to hack a computer on the Internet and use it to relay copyrighted material to P2P networks?
RIAA Expert Witness: Yes it's possible but again...
Defense Attorney (cutting him off): Yes and if the computer was hacked and used in this manner would it appear to your software that it was my client sharing the copyrighted material or the person who hacked his computer?
RIAA Expert Witness: It would appear to be your client.
Defense Attorney: Thank you. Now, about that IP address -- has your company ever provided the wrong address to RIAA?
RIAA Expert Witness: Not to my knowledge.
Defense Attorney: Really? What about this case [hands him newspaper article about 90 year old woman who was subpenoed] -- would you read that to the jury please?

Blah blah blah. I think you see where I am going. It would be interesting to see. All the power to the people who are fighting these suits. Whether or not file sharing is legal, moral, or whatnot, I won't support an industry that sues broke college students and 13 year old children. I bought my last piece of RIAA music when they filed the first round of lawsuits.