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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.
I wish there were more 'guides' like this. Usually the corporations hide the true meaning of their T's & C's behind so much confusing babble that the end user usually has zero idea of what is actually going to happen to them in certain scenarios.
Its like contracts...I read them. Over and Over again...it doesn;t mean I understand what they mean. We all need pet solicitors.
>>>Scanning for I.D.I.O.T.S. >>>
>>>I.D.I.O.T.S. FOUND! >>>
There are some minor errors in it, and I'm busy right now, but hopefully I can go through line by line and post about them this evening.
Still the main piece of advice he gives -- immediately get a lawyer who knows what he's doing with regard to these sorts of cases -- is good advice. Waiting too long, or going without one for a while can irrevocably screw up your defense if you don't do the right things, in the right order, at the right times.
-- 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.
I read TFA and still didn't understand parts of it, despite that it is well written.
However, I would be grateful to know how this compares with the RIAA's attempts in other nations, especially here in the UK. TFA did allude to Canada and The Netherlands but only a mention. Some of the tactics outlined did seem to be only possible in the US (in particular the limitations of state laws)
If this were really happening, what would you think?
Part of the point of the article is that the judges can't do anything if you don't show up. And the RIAA makes it very hard for you to show up. But when you do show up, the judges seem to be in the favor of John Doe.
Sad that Rumsfeld is getting credit for it, when the idea actually comes from the original BHA, Carl Sagan:
http://www.fatemag.com/wordpress/?p=103
I tend to a somewhat different take on things:
1 The RIAA only has to show that is more reasonable than not to believe that you downloading without a purchase or uploading without a license to distribute.
2 The chances are pretty damn good that you or someone in your household has been making heavy use of BT and the P2P nets. It's your account and your responsibility.
3 The evidence doesn't have to be rock solid, just persuasive enough to argue for a settlement out of court.
4 Talk of "malacious prosecution," abuse of process, is so much hot air. You won't be able to prove malice in a legal sense and it will be very expensive even to try.
5 You are not a hardship case. You not going to become the next poster child for the EFF.
1 is completely wrong. Under no interpetation of copyright law can they bring a lawsuit against you for illegal downloading. None at all.
Your confusion is understandable, however, as every single news story gets this wrong, talking about 'p2p downloaders', when, even if it was demonstrated that they were downloaders, that wouldn't be the slightest bit illegal. It's akin to calling muggers 'pants owners'...almost all muggers do, indeed, own a pair of pants, and even use it during the commision of a crime, but they aren't being arrested for that. It's fucking PR by the media companies that are owned by the same people doing the lawsuit to try to make people think downloading is illegal.
Anyway, what the RIAA is bring suit on is the idea that you distributed copyrighted files. Aka, that people downloaded from you. As there is no way on a p2p network to know this, not even, in most cases, by the server, that seems a little unlikely for them to be able to prove.
Bittorrent is a little different. The RIAA is still doing mainly traditional p2p stuff, and, frankly, very little music is traded using bittorrent, but it might be a reasonable legal assumption that any file downloaded by someone via bittorrent has also been uploaded by them to someone else. OTOH, various forms of caching have been found legal, and arguably that's really all you're doing...the person running the torrent is the one who actually put it in the system. And they'd have to demonstrate that you actually allowed your client to upload anything.
However, as the article pointed out, as they don't even have any evidence you have the files, just files with names that imply they are copyrighted work, their case is incredibly weak and if they actually ended up in court, they'd lose, period. At minimum they'd have to demonstrate that you actually made their work available, and a screenshot produced by someone in their employ is not a demonstration of that, or even a screenshot produced and witnessed by an independent party.
Then they'd at least have to prove some likelyhood of someone having gotten that file, in whole or in part, from you.
See, the problem with the RIAA's lawsuit is that they could do all this before sueing people. They could match up username and IP, demonstrate to the court's satifaction that said user was violating their copyright, and then have a slam dunk case as soon as they tracked down that IP, which isn't anywhere near as hard with a court order as the RIAA is apparently having with it, suing people who don't even have computers.
Instead, their sole purpose seems to be to make the news fighting 'downloaders', which ike I said, isn't even illegal, and producing a word-of-mouth intimadation campaign.
If they were actually trying to fight piracy, they'd be going after the binary Usenet posters, which would be, incidentally, infinitely easier to fight in court, as none of them unknowningly shared their music directory and didn't know they were pirates, the result of their activity can be check from a multitude of places so it can't be fake, Usenet providers already retain a history of posters for abuse purposes, they post whole albums in lossless formats, including cover and disc scans, which are a exact-same-quality replacement for the album, etc, etc.
No, they're going after p2p 'downloaders' (Despite the fact they have to attack them via their uploading) for PR about how evil downloading is, and nothing else.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Maybe he was just trying to help the RIAA by poluting the P2P network with bogus files? Maybe he is just trying to determine how the RIAA gathers their info? He can't help it if the RIAA didn't believe him when he told them he wasn't "making available" any copyrighted material belonging to their members.
I am curious about the "baiting a lawsuit" bit. Could you point me to some law and/or cases(USA based)? I think a RIAA Honeypot could be an interesting. A network of them passing files around would be even more interesting.
If the copyright on the file the RIAA downloads belongs to another, are they now infriging that copyright and can the copyright owner sue them?
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
Personally, I think (a) the people at Slashdot are a pretty intelligent lot, and (b) the best things for them to read are not what a commentator has to say, but the actual court records.
I have seen some spirited, high-level debates in these pages where people cite to different parts of different litigation documents.
That is why my site is the way it is; it is information, not entertainment. The key elements are (a) the index of litigation documents; (b) the directory of lawyers who are fighting the RIAA; and (c) the posts highlighting significant level events. The post, How the RIAA Litigation Process Works, which Grant Robertson describes as being as 'dry as a bread sandwich', is merely intended to be an accurate summary of what is going on out there, not a substitute for informing onesself and forming one's own opinions. (I hope punkr0x is right, that it is not quite as poorly written as Grant makes it out to be.).
My site is intended to serve the following readers: (a) people who are being targeted by the RIAA; (b) lawyers who are representing or would like to represent these folks; (c) journalists looking for primary rather than secondary sources; and (d) other intelligent people, lawyers and nonlawyers alike, who want to understand what is happening here, and who don't need to be told what to think.
I think the 'laymen' at Slashdot are pretty good readers.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I've been trying to build such a directory of lawyers who are fighting the RIAA:
http://info.riaalawsuits.us/directory.htm
My list tries to include only lawyers who will definitely fight, rather than try to steer you to settling.
And the EFF has a broader list of lawyers who have expressed an interest in helping the defendants:
http://subpoenadefense.org/legal.htm
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful