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Paramount Sues Ohio Man For $100,000
ematic writes "A hapless tech-novice finds himself in a US$100,000 lawsuit with Paramount Pictures for allegedly uploading the movie, Coach Carter, to eDonkey. Paramount had the police seize his four computers, but nothing was found. The tech-novice maintains his innocence, and contends that he is a victim of a drive-by upload. According to the ChannelCincinnati story, the victim 'is either a slick film pirate or an unwitting victim of someone who fits that description.'"
There really is no such concept in civil copyright infringement cases. Remember, the standard of proof is a preponderance of the evidence. So long as it is even slightly more likely than not that the person with the WAP did it, as opposed to some mysterious other person, that is sufficient proof that he did do it. It's criminal trials prosecuted by the government that use the higher standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. That is not the standard used here.
Additionally, courts are aware that defendants may engage in behavior, knowing what the outcome is likely to be. Willful blindness, such as you suggest, is pretty obvious and does not help people get off the hook.
It's possible that you are thinking of the legal system as a mechanism that is not intelligent, and can be gotten around through cleverness. That is not the case. People are involved in the system at every step, and often they are more clever than you, and have a dim view of amateurs trying to manipulate them. Basically, if you would see through such a ploy, or if you think other intelligent people would, you should expect that your opponents in a legal battle would.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Dude, I'm a 3rd year computer science student, I know how to network 4 computers (I've got 3 at my disposal right now), set up a high speed connection and use wifi... but if someone told me to make my network secure, I wouldn't even know where to start. Well, I suppose Step 1 would be pulling up Google, but I'd still be out of my depth -- all I know about networks (beyond what I need to know to get through a basic network setup wizard) is that they have layers and... uh... stuff. Something about connecting things... and sending packets that look kinda like mRNA when you draw them. And opening sockets has something to do with it as well. I can do that in C.
In any case, the guy may still be guilty, but I'm just saying that basic knowledge of some aspects of computing does not necessarily mean that he has ANY knowledge of network security, and he may well consider himself a novice in part because of his lack of knowledge in that area.
Paramount had the police seize his four computers, but nothing was found.
Its right there, the police were wasting time on this case.
its Stupid.
liqbase
At this point, I really think that "The government is running amok".
About 5 months ago, I had a knock on my door by the "Drug TaskForce". They informed me that they had a warrant to search my house, and had been given an anonymous tip. I was a "Black-tar heroin dealer", they claimed. They had about 20 people, they searched my place end to end, brought the dog through, looking clearly dissapointed (I don't even drink).. and in the end, they said, "Well, we have to take your computers to look for activity on there". I work from home. When they seized my machines, my company lost 2 weeks of work right there.. I had to hire an attorney to get my PC's back, and in the end it was 4 months before I had my machines returned to me. I took them directly to the local computer shop so I would have a witness when I powered them on, and sure enough, one of them was completely hosed. They'd probably plugged in their diagnostic machine backwards or some crap.. The motherboard needed replacing. When I informed them that they broke my machine, they started threatening that they found a couple mp3's on my machine.. If I shutup about the whole ordeal, they wouldn't come after me for the mp3's. I said, um, those mp3's were ripped from a CD I own.. That's perfectly legal, and not even a circumvention of the DMCA. Well, I got the shaft. Unless you're willing to sue the government in a 1983 suit, you're totally out of luck.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.