Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
A tech novice with 4 computers? That seems sort of unlikely. I'm not saying he's guilty, but the facts just don't seem to mesh with the description there.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
... what, like Johnny Dep?
either a slick film pirate or an unwitting victim of someone who fits that description
Which is of course why these kinds of tactics don't, and won't, work in the long run. All the unwitting victims just net you bad publicity, while the slick file pirates just sit and laugh.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
It will be interesting if his arguement holds up, as I always thought this might be a good defense for people who do this sort of activity --- keep your wireless networks wide open and claim that it wasn't you but someone who snuck on your network.
Just another reason to have an open/unsecured wap on your network so you can have plausible deniability.
dupe, dump, deny, and divide.
a slut did tulsa
Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence. The company has filed a federal lawsuit against the Blue Ash man.
Movie companies have the right to look at all the computers in your house, because you allegedly commited *copyright infringement*.
Wow.
If he keeps a lot of old machines around it's not that unreasonable.
why do movie/music companies use the naive method of mutiplying the cose of the dvd times the # of movies uploaded?
there are thousands of variables that go into the calculated 'loss'.
- would all the downloaders actually buy the dvd?
- would the dvd stay on sale until all those would be customers buy it?
- would the dvd price stay the same?
more importantly, why does the law accept take their word on it?
The news article is short on facts. So, what's this guy's motivation for uploading a movie to the internet? Did they even establish that he possesses the movie or a copy of it? Did he admit to such possession? What about his computer that was supposedly "cleaned"--what makes them think so, and how can they prove it? And, one might ask, how can they establish that this alleged uploading cost them $100,000.
There are a lot of unanswered questions here. This is typical of the big media companies now, just like the Mafia: shake down the little people and get the word out that you should toe the line and pay your protection money, or we'll get you.
I do agree that circumstantial evidence seems to suggest he's a bit more tech savvy than one might think, but on the other hand, a tech-savvy person can also get their network broken into or their password stolen. Basically, this company doesn't have a leg to stand on. Maybe that's why they're shaking him down for so much money, to make him feel he has no choice but to settle.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
1) Is anyone else extremely troubled by the following line from the article "A DVD that retails for $21.99 could cost a local man more than $100,000,".
Seriously? $100,000? Quick math tells me that he would have had to share the movie 4,547 and 1/2 times to have shared enough copies to equal that price tag. I get the idea of a deterent but man. Side note even if the film was compressed to around 700 megs or so (to fit on a CD) that would take 3,183,265 and some change megabyes of bandwidth (3 terabytes if my late nite mind is still working at all) to share that file that many times. Seems a little unlikely the punishment fits the crime.
2) Isn't there a burden of proof on the prosecution in this case? Don't they have to show he was the one responsible for uploading the file? If someone steals my car then commits a drive by shooting, I can't be held responsible, can I? To me, having an open wireless access point seems perfectly reasonable (if that is your preference) and it would seem to be a tough sell to get a judge to fine this guy when there's no evidence he did anything wrong and he can produce a line of reasonable doubt.
I'm not up to date on case law in the US, so maybe I'm wrong but seems really shaky at first glance.
In Iowa, he recieved the MPAA letter through his cable ISP. They requested ~$5000 for his sharing of several movies on Bittorrent. His response was to get a wireless router, tell them that it was someone accessing his unsecured WAP, they let him off. But they didn't have police raid his house. Maybe that raid is the result of guys like him using the "open wap, sorry" excuse? Now that they know people can create excuses, the MPAA has to escalate the response. Soon you'll just get a package at your door that explodes when it hears the MGM or Paramount music and senses a WAP.
Why are women so complicated? Find out how little I know here.
Even if this man did not know what was done on his machines, he's still responsible. That is the law that the law givers made. The punishment must be death by mahi mahi. Feigning ignorance of the law by claiming that he did not know what was done is a white herring designed to try and make people think otherwise. This displeases the law givers. He will feel their wrath for his ignorance as they beat him.
-Grobo, Son of Chinea in the Tenth Dynasty of Koll
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
What sickens me here is far more serious offenses than this go ignored if reported by your average citizen. I know countless people who've been the victims of theft or internet fraud, and even with names and addresses of the perps they haven't had any action taken, just another report going in the file bin.
The tech-novice maintains his innocence, and contends that he is a victim of a drive-by upload.
I admit I haven't seen "Coach Carter", and I'm not using hard numbers here, but I estimate that uploading an entire motion picture at any worthwhile quality would take at least six hours, maybe twelve. That's not a drive-by, that's your next-door neighbor using your bandwidth all day long.
"I don't even know what they're talking about," Lee said. "I didn't do it."
Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence. The company has filed a federal lawsuit against the Blue Ash man.
But Lee claims that because his wireless connection was unsecured at the time, anyone could have parked near or in front of his home, tapped in and then driven off.
"If I can do anything to make people understand that please, if you're using wireless Internet, have somebody install it that knows what they're doing," he said. "Because if you don't, they could get in trouble just like me."
nice attempt at defence: but it wasn't me, it was someone else who used my unsecured connection.
Who the hell wants to 'share' a movie with others of p2p networks so much that they would go war-driving? I have a very strong feeling that this guy is lying. Of-course this will have to be proven in court, but it is just a gut feeling. In the case he actually did this, he deserves what is coming to him.
You can't handle the truth.
Only way that dog of a movie could make $100K is to sue someone - that and all the chump change picked up from the PR resulting in curiosity sales. //no body = no conviction, but this is the RIAA so don't count on logic figuring into the case.
Sounds like you've convicted him already; I thought it was "innocent until proven guilty."
Sniff for IP addresses active during business hours, but essentially are unavailabe after hours .
.... priorities...
Then figure out that persons MAC address, and spoof it with MAC change on ur router/firewall .
Upload ur movie, reset, adios .
Odds are it isn't even that brilliant, the guy with the router prolly picked a MAC address
assigned to a NIC type that he does not even own, as the list is published .
He prolly picked the last few hex digits at random .
Alot of dorm ppl are doing this to ppl that have their computers direct connected ,
and the Uni is too cheap to replace the hubs at the edge of the network .
So they don't get fried for doing p2p over their dorm connect .
If they had managed switches at the edge of their network they could stop this behaviour .
Not all Uni's have switches at the edge of their network yet, ones where sports is
more important often neglect the tech/sci to spend multiple millions on chasing sewn
together animal skin, aka baseball, volleyball, football, basketball .
Stadiums and Arenas that could house all the US homeless 10 times over are left empty
more days than they are full, pathetic .
We wonder why other parts of the world are starting to pass us by
Rome...Bread and Circuses...
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Who's going to believe that a man with 4 networked computers (one recently "cleaned"), high speed internet, and a wifi setup (perhaps with security disabled for just such a defense) is a "computer novice" subjected to the attacks of a roving gang of drive-by internet pirates? I'm sure it looks good for his friends and family to hear him proclaim innocence to the claims, but he should be aware that perjury is a crime!
Um... ME? I help friends all the time with their computers. In fact I am about to help a friend set up the fourth computer in his house. He has one, and all 3 of his kids have their own computers. Guess what? They are all networked and they use WiFi to do it.
Why am I doing that? Because he and his family are novices when it comes to networking.
As for the clean machine? First thing I do is wipe the drive and reset it up to get rid of all the preloaded crap from the factory. Guess I'm trying to hide something too...
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
If he didn't want to draw attention to himself, he shouldn't have been going by the name "Ohio Man" in the first place.
I don't live too far from this guy, and it just struck me that maybe the idea is to hit a sweet spot geographically with these lawsuits.How do they decide who and when to sue anyway? I'd be really interested to see a map overlay of the places media cabals have filed suit against people. I have a hunch its pretty well distributed across the US.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
"Usually none. If the police execute a search and seizer, it is under the color of their official duty. To be held liable, it has to be shown as a clear abuse, not just a major screw-up."
Still, it can't be a good point for the plaintiff.
"Your honor, we stand before you with our dicks in our hands, since we found no evidence. We move for a change of venue."
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I hadn't heard of this movie until this story. Further proof that piracy helps the movie industry.
I have 5 networked computers at home. My WAP's security is a bit shaky. I sometimes "clean" computers. This is not enough information to determine if he did it. I would like to think the prosecutor have more information that we are not privy to.
This guy I know has a lot of guns. He also makes a lot of his own ammo. Recently, he *gasp* cleaned his pistol. Clearly he is hiding evidence and he is the killer we are looking for.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
Why are all of these lawsuits based on false numbers? $100,000 for a movie that sucked which he may/may not have uploaded. "Who cares, take everything he has, someone has to pay!" Its not like Paramount would ever see that money anyway, it all goes to the lawyers. And its not like that guy could just fork over 100grand either. He'd have to file bankruptcy. Aside from ruining the rest of his life financially, they still wouldn't get any money out of him. Sure, you could say "these deter would-be pirates." My ass, just hits home that all any big company cares about is money, even if they have to ruin your life to get it..
Who's going to believe that a man with 4 networked computers
The article didn't say they were networked. The article said, "Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence."
And what does cleaned mean, really? The article doesn't clarify. Does cleaned mean he got so sick of Windows running slow from spyware that he reinstalled his operating system, formatting the drive in the process because his friend told him to do so? Do you think that might be possible, mister guilty-until-proven-innocent with your snarky little perjury-is-a-crime comment bullshit?
Do you know how many people have wireless set up because their "Home DSL/Cable Gateway" that the man at bestbuy/circuitcity/compusa sold them on the pretense that "wireless is the future" and "if you get a laptop you can roam your house and always be on the internet." Care to venture a guess at how many stupid consumers get duped into that one? That's right I said stupid consumers, people who don't know how to secure the WAP they just bought "to keep the hackers out of [his] computer."
And before you go on the "why would a computer novice have FOUR computers?" rant, I offer you this: It's 1990, a man gets a computer. It's 1994, the man's computer stops working, he puts it in the closet, he gets another computer. It's 2000, his second computer stops working, he puts it and the first out in the garage and gets a new one. I'm sure you can guess where the fourth computer came from unless you are actually as stupid as your comment would lead me to believe.
Really, I don't know how you got modded insightful at all, because you lend no insight to the conversation, only FUD.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
The "4 computer" argument sounded funny to me, but then I thought about it. I just went to a distant friend's house and helped him with his computer.
He had his "new" computer, which actually worked.
He had his "old" computer, which worked but was really slow.
He had a much older computer, that was dead. Bad hard drive, flaky memory, and it was only 133Mhz.
And finally, he had another computer, a friend brought over and abandon, that was in unknown operational order, and he didn't care to find out.
It took me three days to talk him into changing the memory in it, which I picked out specifically for that machine. He didn't want to, because he had never opened a computer before. He doesn't deal with installing many softwares, because he doesn't understand how they all work. He uses his mail client, his web browser, and that's about it. Completely not technical, and he "owns" 4 computers.
If his house was raided tomorrow, of course he'd get the same report of having four computers. He doesn't do anything illegal, immoral, or questionable, but that fourth abandon computer may have something on it. How responsible can he be for it? He can't even finger the friend who had it. They were on a first name basis, and the friend moved out of state. "That computer? Oh that was Joe's. He lives in some other state now. I haven't heard from him in a year."
If *MY* house was ever raided, they'd just shit themselves. I have roughly two dozen computers. Most of them are non-working workstations from an old office. Others are old servers, and lots of old parts. I don't throw much of anything away, because I know there will always be something useful. I grabbed a 20Gb drive from the pile, for someone who needed a drive, and didn't have money for a new drive. It was an identical match, and she didn't do much of anything with it other than check Email. It formatted, it didn't click or whine, and they're happy to have a working computer again.
Now, the question would be, would they find anything illegal? Nope. They'd spend weeks searching through the 100+ hard drives until they found the worst thing I have is ISO's of Linux distributions, and possibly they could recover some old web sites from drives that go "click". Maybe the BSA could get me, because I don't have the Windows licenses associated with the old parts.
I know I should destroy the clicking drives, but sometimes they're entertaining to take the top off, and watch the platters spin while I grind them down with a screwdriver. Wheeeeee... The magnets make cool things to stick to light switch screws, and the bearings bounce really well on hard surfaces. Ya, I've made some very unrecoverable drives.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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.
I use partimage off a CD for Windows or Linux partitions.
Given that, according to the link you gave, partimage's support for NTFS is experimental and for HFS beta, the grandparent's method of zeroing, dd'ing and compressing seems a safer bet if it's not one of the stable supported file systems.
Yes, yes, I'm sure that it will probably work, but sometimes you need to be sure. After all, a backup that won't restore properly isn't a lot of good.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
That's not so far fetched, actually. Around here, Cox Cable would come out and install a home network package for you, with cable modem and multiport firewall/router. I didn't read TFA, but 4 computers could easily be one each for him, his wife, and 2 kids. Or one or more might be virus-ridden junk that were "upgraded" rather than being wiped. The one that was wiped could have been taken back to the store for reinstallation.
Computers have approached commodity status these days - you can get a reasonable PC for around $300 and non-tech-savvy folks wouldn't necessarily know that they get dog slow when loaded with viruses and spyware. They'd assume that, just like a fridge or TV or cooker, the PC is wearing out...
that typically, when the police seize anything--ESPECIALLY computers--- they tend to hold on to the items as evidence that they "did the public duty". Worse, than having your shit seized is having it in THEIR hands for MONTHS because of either their being backlogged (in which case the complainant should pay an expedite fee so that even IF their is their stolen material on it, it should be scraped, tagged, and your original stuff returned PRONTO so you can get back to work or homework), OR the cops LIKE what they see and decide to drag ass on returning it.
With digital content being wrung harder for profits and with the studios and others hell-bent to make examples of others, and with the police needing to show the public its money is being well spent, it's probably inevitable that more people will be pulled into the hollywood/content provider dragnet.
The best thing WE can do is to archive ALL our work and make SO many identical copies that it would be PROFOUNDLY egregious (in the eyes of a FAIR judge AND in the eyes of the public) for ANY police or complainant to say "give us ALLLLL of your archives, no matter how redundant they are".
What the law enforcement agencies need to do or be FORCED to do is this:
Perform NO search and NO seizure unless the party asking for the warrant provides forensic and archival equipment to protect the accused from suffering work stoppage, psychological damage (hey, I'd go goddam ballistic if my shit were seized, as I PAY for my DVDs and music, even if it costs $15-$30-- I don't even really lament not copying music from amaroK), and to keep unnecessary eyes from prying too deeply and too long at stuff on the seized machines that is NOT their business (business plans, school work, love letters, research...), not of danger value and probably would take them YEARS just to sort out before even reading the multiple versions and revisions of endless stuff.
Nice police will insist the accusers not run all over the accused. We're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. With abuse of unsecure (not INsecure) internet access, poorly protected windoze boxes, ignorant users, and a lot of greedy or lazy pirates and "fair-use" abusers, it's just a matter of time before almost ANYone with a computer connected to the Net is a recipient of a boilerplate letter.
SCARY.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Osama Bin Laden is an extremely wealthy fanatic who believes that all Westerners and all Americans in particular are criminals because of either their religion or just their nationality.
He believes that he has the authority to do anything to these 'criminals', including the most extreme and gruesome murder and maiming.
But there are just too many Americans around, and Osama is just one man. So he randomly selects 'criminals' to be 'punished' in the horrible ways imaginable.
Paramount is a wealthy corporation that believes that all of the Westerners and most of all young Americans are 'criminals'. They bought the laws from politicians to ensure the legal details were in order from their perspective. They believe that all of these criminals should be punished. But they aren't Arabs, so instead of blowing people up, they just take everything that a person has ever owned and get a legal warrant to take from the person everything that they will own in the future. All for their 'crimes'.
But there are too many young Americans, and Paramount is only one legal person. So they randomly select people to be punished in the most spectacular fashion. Criminals are punished: all is in order in the world.
Osama is a terrorist; hunted by all civilized people on earth and protected by the uncivilized.
Paramount is a respected corporation owned by General Electric.
But they both operate in exactly the same fashion!
I'll practice some restraint and avoid calling you "stupid" or "dumb" like many, many other people have done for other reasons.
Then figure out that persons MAC address, and spoof it with MAC change on ur router/firewall
Instead, I'll just point out the flaw in your plan. MAC addresses don't traverse over routers. If there are any routers between your workstation and a server, the server sees "your" MAC address as the router on the same subnet as that server. Your spoofing trick would be a colossal waste of time.
I advise you to study the ARP protocol and really learn what a MAC address is and how it works.
I'm a big tall mofo.
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.
And you were doing so well. Up to a point.
"But they aren't Arabs, so instead of blowing people up..."
Shame on you.
Multiculturalism is a good thing. But it is basically an illusion because it assumes that all cultures are equal and that people are basically good.
However, we owe it to the thousands of people who have been randomly murdered by the adherents of a specific culture that there is the possiblity that certain cultures may be disfunctional and therefore be unable to be able to understand and follow the ideals of multiculturalism.
I deliberately chose to emphasize the fact that since the beginning of the modern age of terrorism, it has been the Arabs that have consistently and deliberately blown up random non-Arabs to bring world attention to their issues. No other people have done this to the extent that the Arabs have. I therefore am compelled in the memory of the people randomly and horribly murdered to call attention to the possiblity that it is the Arab culture that is unable to function within the ideals of multiculturalism. I should be ashamed and would be ashamed to say that this particular culture is disfunctional in the modern world, were it not for all the blood and body parts lying in the street whereever Arabs feel that they have been mistreated or slighted by either history or the modern world.
How thorough are the searches. I mean, if you had CAT5 running through your walls, and it just so happened that a V-Gear LanDisk was connected into that network and actually dry walled into the wall... would they ever find your data? They'd essentially be hauling away dumb terminals :)