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Interview Lawyers Who Defend Against RIAA Suits
Attorneys Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman maintain a blog called Recording Industry vs The People, subtitled, "A blog devoted to the RIAA's lawsuits of intimidation brought against ordinary working people," which was most recently linked from Slashdot on Sept. 10. They've agreed to answer your questions about RIAA suits -- and they obviously will not preface their answers with "IANAL," although we must note that they cannot give specific legal advice about specific cases. For that you need to engage an attorney yourself. (Luckily, their site contains a directory of lawyers willing to defend against RIAA suits.) In any case, these guys obviously know more than the average bear (or lawyer) about how the RIAA goes about suing music fans, how to keep from getting sued by the RIAA, and how to fight back if you do get sued, so we're glad they're willing to help us learn more about this apparently endless legal mess. Usual Slashdot interview rules apply.
Ok, so the RIAA's modus operandi seems to be filing suit against someone living half way across the country. If someone in California is charged for file sharing in New York (like what happened here, what can they do to stop this? Doesn't our justice system prevent this we-know-you're-not-going-to-come-all-the-way-over- here-so-just-settle-out-of-court strategy?
My work here is dung.
I hear a lot that the RIAA has the weakest evidence ever in these cases. Such as screen shots of dynamic IP addresses taken from Kazaa. How the hell do judges across this country uphold these cases with such lack of concrete evidence? I mean, give me five minutes in photoshop and I'll make you a "screenshot" of Kazaa with www.whitehouse.gov's IP address listed over and over on it. Can't an expert witness cause this evidence to be thrown out quickly?
My work here is dung.
When I heard that the RIAA wanted to physically take possession of the equipment belonging to people they sued for discovery purposes, I was less than happy with that prospect. I use a hardware-encrypted hard drive that requires a bootup password. Without my cooperation, no one will every see what's on my drive. Given that the revelation of other content on my drive would place me in far greater jeopardy than anything having to do with pirated music (Assume the worst if you wish; you wouldn't be correct), I would never cooperate with such discovery.
Is there any mecahnism by which the court can compel my cooperation and are there any penalties for steadfastly refusing to provide it?
Now, this looks like chump change compared to the $150,000 per violation and 1,000 songs shared means $150,000,000 lawsuit. Is this smart or stupid? I mean, don't you, the lawyers that these people consult, tell them to fold and pay the little amount of money?
I'm more interesting in knowing how they can justify calculating that they have lost $150,000 per song "shared" and why they don't have to show any proof that this amount damage actually occured per song.
I haven't looked at so-called screenshots that the RIAA produces in court, and haven't myself looked at a Kazaa screen (or limewire, etc) to see what kind of IP addresses are shown, but there are two possibilities: the public IP address or the Private IP address. More and more on the Internet, each public IP address has behind it some private IP addresses, that typically can't be connected reliably for a given time to a specific computer, let alone a specific hard drive.
Questions:
Does current 4th amendment legal precedent allow for the confiscation of anything capable of storing files from behind a public IP address?
In otherwords, if I'm running a 'Internet cafe', and someone in my place allegedly downloads a music file, and the public IP shows up on an RIAA screenshot, is it legal for a judge to order everything in my cafe to be confiscated and searched? Does 4th amendment legal precedent allow for such mass grab-everything-and-go searches?
Has anyone ever pointed out to a judge how easy it is to fake a screenshot? Are there any rules of discovery regarding such flimsy evidence? I mean, suppose I want to accuse the RIAA of threatening me with murder in a court, and produce a piece of paper with a death threat that has the RIAA's corporate headquarters letterhead on it, all on a very good looking piece of laser printed output. Wouldn't most courts throw out something so easily faked? What if I just handwrote in crayon "I'm the RIAA and I'm coming to kill you" on a piece of paper, and them sued them using that as evidence? How far would that get in a court of law?
Are there such things as 'vexatious litigant' laws is some states? If so, how does someone get declared to be a 'vexatious litigant', and what are the consequences?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Has anyone ever considered Jury Nullification to get folks to simply declare the concept of intellectual property and perpetual copyright invalid? If most folks agree (and I don't know if they do or not) that the law is broken, isn't the judge obliged to agree?
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
Instead of playing Whack-a-Mole by defending clients that are being extorted by these thugs in Gabardine, why aren't you doing anything about stopping it in the first place? Why haven't you petititioned the Attorney General to bring RICO charges against the members of the RIAA?