Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Admits ISPs Have Misidentified "John Does"
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has sent out a letter to the ISPs telling them to stop making mistakes in identifying subscribers, and offering a 'Pre-Doe settlement option' — with a discount of '$1000 or more' — to their subscribers, if and only if the ISP agrees to preserve its logs for 180 days. Other interesting points in the letter (PDF): the RIAA will be launching a web site for 'early settlements,' www.p2plawsuits.com; the letter asks the ISPs to notify the RIAA if they have previously 'misidentified a subscriber account in response to a subpoena' or become aware of 'technical information... that causes you to question the information that you provided in response to our clients' subpoena'; it notes that ISPs have identified 'John Does' who were not even subscribers of the ISP at the time of the infringement; and it requests that ISPs furnish their underlying log files, not just names and addresses, when responding to RIAA subpoenas."
So the RIAA argument of "well, your ISP says you downloaded 100 movies, we don't care if you don't have access to or own a computer, or perhaps even died a few years ago, you did it and our records are infallible" maybe won't fly anymore?
If you agree that the RIAA is correct in its lawsuits (which is an if on the order of magnitude If you believe the earth is flat), then this makes sense. I think we can all assume that the RIAA believes that it is correct in its lawsuits, which means it should persue means to make the law suits more effective. This is just a another means to do so. Really, it helps consumers in that the RIAA is less likely to sue innocent people, and only sue those people who are actually violating the law. I don't condone the activities of the RIAA, nor it methods in general for reaching its goals, but at least this one is based on making its lawsuits more accurate, and its willing to pay to do so, rather than just going back to courts and attempting to get contempt charges against the ISPs, which it may be able to do. That said, there will be fewer instances of the RIAA suing grandmothers for filesharing that people can use to illustrate the futility of the overall RIAA campaign.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Because we are not only incredibly lazy but we corner the market on apathy.
It is a complete truth that the typical American is too lazy to fight for their rights let alone change their buying habits when a company acts badly.
Yes I AM an American.
Sue customers
Blame ISP's for suing wrong customer and try to make them do your job
?????
PROFIT!!!!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Funny thing about modern civilization, we have traded dueling at dawn and other acts of violence over squabbles with lawyers and the court system. In most cases this is good. But there are times when violence is necessary, and Americans have not only forgotten this but view anyone who disagrees as barbaric.
Networks, as we know, are designed to work around the problems. New technologies and equipment will very soon make it possible to establish citywide dark mesh networks such that your packets of a torrent will be shared among hundreds or thousands of IP addresses across multiple ISP's. Now run those packets through an anonymizer like Tor and things get more difficult for the *AA by orders of magnitude.
Even if the ISPs were required to keep logs, the logs will show nothing. This is the exact opposite of what the *AA and governments actually want. It is possible to make it incredibly difficult for them to track who does what. The FBI will find it even more difficult to find purveyors of child pornography. Don't think that I support child pornographers, but I certainly won't sacrifice my rights to privacy in order to catch them, or rather make catching them possibly easier for the police.
With all the post 9/11 rhetoric, I'm certain that any would be terrorists are already encrypting their communications. Its really not difficult to do. There are tons of ways currently to hide or encrypt data communications that make it impossible for the FBI/governments to efficiently make sense of it. That means that the ONLY reason for tracking and logging is to control honest citizenry. George, you were right.
The *AA can log all they want to, and try to sue anyone they want. In the same fashion that DRM is worked around, darknets will appear and ruin all the lawyer's fun. They are fighting a losing battle on all fronts. Eventually they will either capitulate and sell it cheaper and without DRM, or they will go out of business because more artists start selling their art without using the *AA.
What we have to ask ourselves is WHY do we continue to elect politicians that support this type of active spying on the citizenry?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Now let's look at it another way, and say I'm in a related business. Let's make me a writer, musician, or other professional independent artist, self-publishing my own work out of my basement for burger money. I'm slightly suspicious that all of you people are illegally trading my copyrighted work, and depriving me of my burgers. I want to investigate this. Can I have the underlying logs from all of your ISPs as well, or is the shitload of money a requirement?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
So Rosa Parks should have stayed in the back of the bus? Some guys dressed up as "Indians" shouldn't have thrown a bunch of tea into Boston harbour?
Civil disobedience has been a core technique in the expression of political dissent for as long as there have been laws and politics. Yes - it's a calculated risk to violate the law to make a political statement, but it's also one of the few ways to be heard at all.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
If she had somehow hidden her act (which was impossible of course), then her act would have had little impact. Civil disobedience does not mean breaking the law without being caught. It entails breaking the law to bring about change. "Pirating" music is about breaking the law in order to save yourself some change. Two very different things. Please, don't demean Rosa Parks by the comparison.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
They're already unveiling a website? It seems as if to the RIAA, these lawsuits are becoming not just a tool to scare their clients into submission, but rather a business model in and of itself. A "$1000 discount?" being offered to clients of certain ISPs?! What's next, 2-for-1 specials? How long are we going to sit quietly, while the RIAA unrolls a new wave of ecommerce - information superhighway robbery...
The hallmark of civil disobedience is willingness to accept the consequences of breaking the law as part of making your point. After all, if you escape punishment at any level then there is no need to change the law. The Boston Tea Party was not civil disobedience - it was outright protest. There's a difference, and one way to look at it is this: the Boston Tea Party injured the government's revenues to tell the government that the taxes were unjust. Rosa Parks did not injure anyone's interests but her own.
Theres enough dissent about that to support both your counter argument and the GP's. Not a good example.
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Try asking the IRS what the salaries (plus benefits) of the executives and directors are. Everyone gets all caught up in corporate profit margins and stock prices. Those aren't the numbers that the RIAA is interested in. The RIAA/MPAA are interested in the numbers which land in the executives pockets, the numbers which pay the greens' fees for the executive board members, the numbers which allow the attorneys to purchase newer Bentleys.
The RIAA/MPAA does not give a good gosh darn golly gee what the price of a CD is. It does not matter to them how much it costs a local band for studio time. Those numbers are convenient for PR releases and nothing more.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
- What did Rosa Parks gain for refusing to move? Personally, just a lot of trouble.
- What did the people at the Boston Tea Party gain? Nothing, they threw the tea overboard. If they'd stolen it they'd be nothing but petty thieves.
- What did the people of the Underground Railroad gain? Escaped slaves had nothing, more often than not they needed more help. What's the difference between them and modern day people smugglers? Money, money, money...
- What do Greenpeace and the like get out of distruption various activities they see as hostile to the environment? Mostly getting arrested and such.
- What do people get out of smoking pot in a protest march? Wow, you get to stand around in a crowd.
What do you get out of being a pirate? Plenty music, movies, tv series, games, applications and such for free. Even if you're doing the right thing, it's as if you stole the tea at the Boston Tea Party. The message is lost because you're lining your own pockets at the same time, and greed is a much simpler explaination than idealism, Occam's razor and all.Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings