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Fighting RIAA Without an Attorney
2think writes "Yahoo News is reporting that Patricia Santangelo of New York will be taking on the RIAA in court without an attorney. It seems that Ms. Santangelo has committed over $24,000 due to her case and simply cannot afford to continue with the services of an attorney." From the article: "Her former lawyer, Ray Beckerman, says Santangelo doesn't really need him. 'I'm sure she's going to win,' he said. 'I don't see how they could win. They have no case. They have no evidence she ever did anything. They don't know how the files appeared on her computer or who put them there.'"
In a serious vein, if she wins it will set precedent and give hope to others that can't afford a lawyer.
The Mothership
I'm guessing the RIAA will drop the case anyway and try to find someone with a bit more cash on hand next time. She's flat broke, what use is she to them now? Wait, this is supposed to be about justice? My bad...
Vandemar.org
'I'm sure she's going to win,' he said. 'I don't see how they could win.
Well, I don't know. Maybe her lawyer could stop defending her. Then they might win.
"Gee, judge, I have no idea how the cocaine got in my suitcase or who put it there. Can I leave now?"
That's her defense. Good luck, Patricia. Yer gonna needit.
While the RIAA may have the law on its side to pursue these cases, is it truly just to file blind lawsuits in this manner. If they believe that everyone who buys a PC must know how to adequately secure it from external and internal users, doesn't it then stand to reason that it should be suing the OS and hardware companies who sell their products in a completely unsecured state? Or shouldn't the RIAA work with these companies to make their products secure out of the box ?
Why is it the responsibility of this woman to become a security expert in order to benefit the RIAA ?
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
How and why is downloading something illegal? Wouldn't distribution be illegal because it's copyright infringement? But how or why is downloading be illegal?
Isn't that just an extension of freedom of speech? The freedom to listen/watch?
Is listening to someone, who didn't pay the RIAA, sing the copyrighted song Happy Birthday illegal? Or is flipping through a stack of unpublished/unlicensed photos illegal?
Is it because there's a copy of something on the computer? Would streaming be more legal?
I want to know what law is being broken. I looked this up in the internet and still have no definite answer. I simply need to know.
The music industry is shooting themselves in the foot, once again, with these lawsuits. Conceivably, many of the people being targeted in these lawsuits are using versions of Kazaa/Limewire/iMesh for which they have paid. The more computer-illiterate among them don't know the difference between paying for an ad-free program and paying for music.
As an on-site computer technician, I've talked with many parents who didn't understand they were still taking a risk by letting their children download from Limewire Pro. They think since they paid for the program, they have paid for the music. They don't under the difference between peer-to-peer programs and legitimate music download services.
I often think that the RIAA is going to turn many novice computer users off from online purchasing altogether because they are going after the unsophisticated user who doesn't understand copyright and what constitutes a legitimate channel and what does not. If they really want to stop online piracy, they need to go after the makers of the software, not the poor people they duped into believing that they had "purchased" music.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
And we all have an interest in her winning.
Where can I make a donation to her legal defense fund?
And why has the EFF not taken up the case?
Reality has a liberal bias
Except that, on the net, this really does happen. People take over other's computers all the time, to host porn sites, warez sites, to use them as hops/storage on the way to another computer, and for all sorts of other crap. There's really no reason to assume that someone is guilty for having files on their computer with the net as it is today, and security as it is today.
How do they know what is on her computer? Did they raid her house for a civil suit, or do they have some sort of remote monitoring software?
Unlike drugs, or kiddy porn where the mere possession is a crime, copyright infringement is only a tort if it can be proven that you transferred the files to someone else. In any event, it's very possible that her box could have been a zombie, rooted by some bored teenager looking to file share without risk.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is something most people don't get, and it's a misconception the RIAA/MPAA push as much as possible when they go on about "illegal downloads". They've gone way past the limits on *distribution* that copyright imposes, and they'd like to attack your right to watch and listen to the speech of others at its very core. Their business model can't easily coexist with basic human freedom in the digital age, just as many moguls and kings in the agricultural age couldn't get by without slavery; after all, didn't their incomes depend on it?
To understand the blatantly false statements the RIAA and their shills love to make, you have to see through their numerous incorrect premises:
1. Copying and sharing, the basis of all human culture and advancement, are somehow heinous crimes in the digital age.
2. Seeing something is the same as doing something.
3. The US's laws apply to everyone in the world, and are superior to every other law.
4. Legality is more important than morality.
5. Your property belongs to some corporation instead of to you.
6. Creativity cannot exist without cartels and monopolies.
7. Guaranteed profits are better than freedom.
Every person who advocates for the RIAA and punishing downloaders falls for one or more of these errors. Reject these, and you see the RIAA's legal tactics for what they are: criminal extortion and racketeering. Now that the RIAA gets to teach these awful anti-values to elementary students, however, the future of freedom is in serious jeopardy.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Nonsense, Judges read briefs from normal folks when they represent themselves in the US and the UK. Remeber that in September 1990, McDonald's sued Dave Morris and Helen Steel, activists with London Greenpeace, for producing and distributing a leaflet titled "What's Wrong With McDonald's." McDonalds went after them, they represented themselves and it went around and around but they won.
1 705.cfm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/politics/mclibel2
Furthermore, in the United States, you have a Right to self representation, any Judge who would refuse to read a brief from someone self representing would be overturned on appeal, something no Judge wants.
More recently, the Supreme Court has expounded the right to represent oneself, holding first in Faretta v. California 422 U.S. 806 (1975) that the power to choose or waive council lies with the accused, and the state can not intrude, even as it later held Gidinez v. Moran, 509 U.S. 389 (1993) if the state believed the accused less than fully competant to adequately proceed without council.
The circuit courts have narrowed the right to exclude appeal procedures as in Martinez v. California Court of Appeals 528 U.S. 152, 163 (2000), and again by reference in US v. Moussaoui (4th Cir. 2003) (No. 03-4162); however, this restriction is new, inconsistent with precedent, and has yet to be tested in the Supreme Court.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Agreed that she should have a lawyer. Gotta call bullshit on "They have her IP Address. She did it." We know the former, but only speculate about the latter. Sounds like, "The police wouldn't have arrested 'em if they hadn't done it."
Something like this:
Now a lot of people, me included, prefer their music to be a bit noisy and distorted, and prefer the fuzzy warm sound of vinyl, but to say that digital is a con is silly, To anyone that thinks that analogue is better than digital, try this:
Record digitaly onto a computer your favourite vinyl, make sure it's done well, but don't go processing it or anything, then burn it onto a CD.
Then with the help of a friend do a blind listening test, listening to both the original vinyl and the CD copy of the vinyl side by side and see if you can tell the difference.
Try it with a few different tracks. All things being equal ie same amp and speakers etc, I'd be very surprised if there are many people out there that can consistently tell the difference between an original analogue recording and a digital copy of that same recording.
The sound of a CD isn't a limitiation of the medium it's it's strength, it is capable of reproducing the vinyl sound almost entirely and what you're hearing when you listen to vinyl isn't more lifelike, it's more fuzzed and noisy.
The same arguments come up with tube (valve) amplifier equipment vs solid state. The idea that tubes sound 'warm' (what does that mean anyway? How does the sonic spectrum get modified to sound warm?) and transistors cold is strange to me. I DO understand the idea behind even and odd harmonic distortion and why one is less destructive to the music. (Tubes and FET's, both VOLTAGE amplifiers, have a more pleasing effect than bipolar transistors when they are driven into overload).
.1% parts here). If CD's were sampled
Digital recording makes a PERFECT copy of the analog original. Even though it seems that only bit samples are made while analog is "continuous" the math involved proves that nothing is lost. (NOT talking about MP3 here!!!!). However CD's use a sampling rate that is TOO close to the nyquist limit. Practical low pass filters need at least an octave of room to work without distortion. CDs sample at 44khz with a cutoff of 20khz requires brick wall filter design that would need at least 8 poles to have the required shape. A filter this sharp will ring like crazy unless built with extreme precision. (We are talking
closer to 250khz, the filter design would be a lot easier and the sound would be a lot better. Only now can we put enough data on a opto disk (DVD's) to make this possible. Too bad DVD audio never got off the ground. CD's sound as good as they do thank's to clever digital filter tricks, but such tricks probably leave some 'water marks' in the sound.
Finally, few people have ears that CAN hear the difference. If you are over 35, your hearings upper range is probably no higher than
15khz if you are lucky. If you lived all your life away from loud noises (never been in the subways, never attented a 'stones concert, never been near loud machinery, etc) maybe your ears can still tell an MP3 from the original. At age 53,mine no longer can.
(Quick test. Listen to the back of a tube type TV set and see if your can hear the Horizontal deflection coils 'singing' I used to be able to do this...That's 15khz. I used to be able to hear the burgler alarm in the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of gems. That's 20khz. No longer)
There are a lot of falsehoods and misleading information being reported about this case. A full set of court documents is available; scroll down to "Elektra v. Santangelo".
First, Ms. Santangelo is not being charged with just downloading. The complaint actually says that Ms. Santangelo used Kazaa "to download the Copyrighted Recordings, to distribute the Copyrighted Recordings to the public, and/or to make the Copyrighted Recordings available for distribution to others." As evidence for this charge they present a series of screen shots of Kazaa showing an account that is offering thousands of songs available for upload. Their claim is that this account corresponds to Ms. Santangelo's computer, although no evidence for that has been presented yet at this stage of the proceedings.
They did not inspect Ms. Santangelo's computer, which supposedly is in her ex-husband's possession and has had the disk wiped due to virus infections. They got the data from Kazaa by looking at the files which were (supposedly) being offered by her computer for upload.
So this is not a case of "downloading", it is a case of downloading and/or offering to upload. If that account actually does correspond to Ms. Santangelo's computer, the simplest explanation is that her kids were doing it, and she is responsible for their actions.
Even if it is the kids' friend, it's unlikely that he downloaded thousands of songs onto their computer without the kids knowing it. And even if he did, Ms. Santangelo could still be liable herself, and then she would have to sue the friend to recover damages on her own. In other words, she would owe millions of dollars to the RIAA, and then she would sue the friend for millions to cover her debts. But the RIAA would not depend on her success in suing the friend.
In short, instead of paying a few thousand to settle this and make it go away (and punishing the kids for getting the family into this mess), she is now out many times that already, and is likely to end up owing an astronomical sum. Her only recourse will be to declare bankruptcy.
There are two lessons from this. The first is that parents ought to keep better track of what their kids (and their kids' friends) are doing on the family computer. But the deeper lesson is that even with cases like this in the press, the odds are still so much against any given person being caught that most parents still don't worry about it. Unless or until we reach the point where most people have personal friends who have been sued, or at least friends of friends, nobody is going to take these threats seriously. At this point it's still like being struck by lightning or killed by bears, a theoretical threat that is so abstract and rare that few people take it seriously.
Ouch!
mitch
This is correct, but it's not the only reason.
The legal system functions like a club. Even if you're fully aware of your rights and the laws, if you're not in the club, you will grossly mistreated no matter how right you are, and when all is said and done, you'll end up screwed.
When I was a broke college student, I tried to represent myself in court one time against a minor offense I was accused of. I thought it was going to be open-and-shut, with me being the beneficiary of our fine system of justice. I had incontrovertible proof that I was 100% right. (Incontrovertible proof in the "photographic evidence" sense, before the days of digital cameras and desktop photo editing.) I was up against an assistant prosecutor who was obviously trying to get a promotion (aren't we all, right?) and two police officers who flat-out lied on the witness stand. (Again, I had incontrovertible photographic evidence that they lied.)
While I was testifying, the prosecutor objected to my pictures because she hadn't seen them. (I'm sorry, since when does the prosecution have the right of discovery?) The judge cut me off while I was questioning one of the officers about how he knew where I was at a particular time (which was the crux of the case against me) because it was "irrelevant." Before the case, the judge told me that I was not entitled to a jury trial, and after the case, when the judge said, "Guilty," she literally leaned over the bench as I was walking by and said under earshot of everyone else in the room (including the court reporter), "You know, you never really had a chance."
I saw the prosecutor a little later, and she said, "You can appeal if you want to, but they never overturn these cases, and it will cost you thousands of dollars. You should just pay the fine and be done with it."
If I had money backing me and a lawyer with me in the room, I'm 100% sure it would have been a totally different story, and I'll never set foot in a courtroom (or a police station, for that matter) without a lawyer representing me. Not because I think they're particularly smart or because I don't think they're scummy like everyone else does. In my estimation, the vast majority of them are not providing a valuable service, they're just bottom scrapers who leech off benefits from a crooked system.
Needless to say, I have a very grim view of our (lack-of-) justice system to this day. While most people are so worked up about how a miniscule number of guilty people walk free because of it, I'm much more concerned about the opposite problem, which is how many innocent people get screwed by a system that is geared to find everyone guilty regardless of the truth, and how many people get extorted by this stupid system. Now, whenever I hear of someone who's been accused of a crime, especially a poor person, who pleads not guilty and is convicted, I keep a much more open mind to their situation. I'm just glad that I found out how it works on, as I said, a minor offense that ended with a fine, and not something serious.
Thanks, Judge Nancy Campbell of Cobb County, Georgia. I used to have a lot of respect for the law and for judges. I really appreciate you showing me just how naïve I truly was.