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RIAA Lawsuits from a John Doe's Perspective
An anonymous reader writes "Nick Mamatas was sued by and subsequently settled with the RIAA for file sharing. He wrote a piece for the Village Voice describing his experience, and he goes on to briefly discuss the implications of "John Doe" file-sharing lawsuits. He argues that the labels are using these suits as a source of profit; he also claims that when his lawyer contacted the RIAA to discuss the suit, he was put in touch with a regular staffer, not another lawyer. 'It feels like they're doing a volume business,' Mamatas' lawyer notes."
First, is it just me or does that article come across as if part of his settlement entailed him promising to use his public position to author a "scare-em-straight" article?
Second, why aren't people going to court over these lawsuits? I don't see why you would even need a lawyer. Just go to court and say "I didn't do anything illegal. Show me proof beyond a reasonable doubt that I did."
I mean, other than a record company CLAIMING that someone at some IP address was sharing certain songs, what proof is there? If something goes missing from my garage, I can't just point a finger at a neighbor and tell the judge "no, I KNOW he took it - I saw it!". You have to have more proof than that. Something unbiased and irrefutable, preferably from an independant party.
Short of confiscating your computer, finding an installed P2P application ACTUALLY RUNNING AT THE TIME, with a configured shared directory full of copyrighted songs that you are not legally licensed to distribute and your software is actively serving them to active downloaders at the time that it is being viewed by a judge - what proof is there?
100% profit (after lawyer's fees)!
are you trying to be funny? copyright was not intended to give basically perpetual profit to a corperation. it was originaly, what, 7 years? it's now life of artist, plus 75 years. that's 75 years that *record company* is able to sell the song exclucively at pure profit. no artist royalites.
your copyright system is a equally screwed up as your patent system. both need a serious overhaul, soon.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The **AA suing people is no different than what DirecTV has been doing for a few years.
The "problem" with these lawsuits is that it will cost you more to defend them than to settle.
Additionally, both the **AA and DirecTV typically sue you civilly where your guilt or innocence is based on a "preponderance of the evidence", not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That is, if their heavy-handed attorneys can make some jury full of idiots think it's 51% likely you did it, then you lose. You get no court appointed attorney and you don't get to plead the 5th ammendment without any negative inference. These **AA attorneys have these cases cookie-cuttered/boiler-plated out and don't care whether you are guilty or innocent. They care about billable hours and whether they think there is enough evidence for them to win.
And when you lose under the DMCA, you lose big time. You not only risk hefty fines, but attorney fees that are often in the tens of thousands. Look at the PACER reports of those people who try and fight these corporations in court -- the defendent typically has one attorney while the plaintiff often has four to six attorneys on their side. Is it NO WONDER nearly everyone settles, even if they are innocent?
So learn from the mistakes of those poor slobs, many who were innocent, but settled anyways.
BE ANONYMOUS.
Because if you get sued by one of the above, you always lose.
If you are gonna do anything that even remotely has the risk of you getting targeted for a lawsuit by one of these big corporations that could care less if 10% of the people they sue are innocent, make sure there is NO WAY it can get tracked back to you.