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The RIAA vs. John Doe, a Layperson's Guide
Grant Robertson writes to tell us that he has made a pass at translating a recent guide to surviving an RIAA lawsuit from technical lawyer-speak into a much more easy to understand layperson's guide. The law, being complex and sometimes cryptic, allows ways for the RIAA to tilt the odds in their favor forcing unsuspecting victims to settle rather than fight. Take a look at Ray Beckerman's tips to survival translated into words anyone can benefit from.
It is all in the blog entry my friend. Your best course of action is to get a lawyer with two qualities:
1. FAST !!!!
2. Knows about the RIAA tactics.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
It wouldn't be illegal at all, but you would get the privilege of paying thousands of dollars to defend yourself. And no you wouldn't be able to sue for attorney fees since you set up the files for the purpose of baiting a lawsuit.
There's a LOT of misinformation about what the RIAA is suing people for. I wish the article had said it more forcefully, but it did make the point that the RIAA is suing people who disseminated their members' songs illegally. (I.e. "to scatter far and wide; spread abroad, as if sowing; promulgate widely".) They're not suing you for downloading songs, they're suing you for sharing their songs illegally by being a distributor of copyrighted material. They know which IP address shared the songs on the P2P network at what time (do you know what your IP address was a year ago? last month? right now?) because that's public information on most P2P networks. Note that the RIAA can't bait you, by disseminating their own songs on P2P networks and letting you download them, because they'd be giving away their own songs and it wouldn't be a crime then. If you're sued, about all you can do is prove it wasn't you who committed the crime. The IP address wasn't yours at the time (most ISPs don't keep logs as I understand), or that your IP address was pirated by a hijacker who used it. I do not think anyone has ever successfully proved it wasn't them -- most of these cases are thrown out on technicalities and not on the actual issues. Is what the RIAA is doing -- asking ISPs to turn over who had which IP addresses at what time -- legal? I don't think this has ever been decided (in the USA). Hard to say this should happen, because it's just a civil suit by an entity that isn't in law enforcement. If it was a law enforcement agency getting this data for an actual criminal case, that would be different... The burden of proof is on the RIAA, but if they have the ISP say an IP address allocated to John Doe who is paying the bill for Internet access did the P2P disseminating, it's hard to see how that could be proven any more solidly. Great lesson for civics teachers to bring to class!