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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."
...the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
It's a justified analogy to what the RIAA is doing, but I welcome the work they spend trying to button up music "piracy." For one thing, the costs of the RIAA are pushed onto the consumer -- leading to higher prices of the music they're trying to protect, giving consumers more reason to work with alternative distribution mechanisms. This will also hopefully lead to more anonymous forms of file sharing, or even file-piece sharing, where you're only hosting a tiny portion of a specific songfile. At what point would a "pirate" not really be guilty of much if they're only sharing a small portion of a particular songfile, say 0.01%?
ISPs are being financially harmed, too, because they're going to have to keep these logs, and also keep them consistent. DHCP makes things more difficult since it increases the amount of tracking they have to do. What all will they track? Port usage, IP address, data transfer totals and rates, etc? As the ISPs have to spend more for legal aid and log data stores, their costs will go up. I can see a market for third party services off-shore that allow you to transfer all of your data through their proxies for a given price -- especially as bandwidth prices fall as bandwidth becomes a commodity.
Consider this: most of us demand fast (low latency) response to websites we browse. We need less response time for some use -- e-mail, file sharing, software patches. The RIAA is powerful in the US, and its power is growing internationally, but it is impossible for a cartel to control everything -- we even see that in the energy market as alternative forms of energy are a barrier to the oil cartel increasing their costs beyond a certain price point. All the RIAA can do is make their overhead so expensive that artists find reason to pick alternative distribution mechanisms.
I'm noticing that medium-level artists are finding more ways to produce an income without the sale of recorded music. I received an e-mail about David Martin, an artist I never heard of, offering a free T-shirt if you pre-buy his album. That's value added incentive to buy HIS album, rather than bootleg it. Good idea. His downloadable music is right from his site, a great way to get music without worrying about the RIAA. What will the RIAA do when their legal costs outweigh their collections, which then creates a high overhead for their artists in the form of lowered commissions?
Are these "early settlements" financially profitable for the RIAA? Lawyers aren't cheap, and settlement lawyers even less so. Even if you agree to a settlement, they still need collections agents to process the payment and make sure it is done in full.
This form of cartelization can't last forever, not with the Internet changing faster than the law can control. I'm surprised the RICO act doesn't cover an industry where 90% of published music is controlled by one cartel. The law fails us in both cases, as the law always does. If you're in a band that isn't in the top 1% of music sales (the long tail is appropriate here), do you find that you make most of your music from ticket sales, beer sales percentage, and T-shirt/sticker/button sales? Why would you need the RIAA?
When will artists start appearing with logos imprinted on their merchandise that says "0% of the proceeds of this CD/t-shirt/sticker goes to the RIAA cartel"? If you're in a band, maybe that time is now. Maybe it is time for small to medium artists to be the ones to inform the customers that there is NO reason to buy a CD or a download from a distributor affiliated with the RIAA?
I can't wait for the day when the RIAA goes back to what they started doing -- making sure that music sounds good across all playback systems through equalization and consistent sound modification.
Why don't the American people storm their buildings with pitchforks?
okinawa japan
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
If you go out of your way to make it easier to harass your customers, we'll be happy to give you a little something extra... Wonder if we can get a list of ISP's that are volunteering to comply with this.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
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
Thank you for visiting our new p2p lawsuit settlement site.
By reading this text you acknowledge your interest which implicates your guilt.
Your ISP has been notified of your crimes - expect a bill.
Love,
RIAA
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras
IANAL, but isn't this "pre-lawsuit settlement opportunity" plain-old extortion? "We know you did something illegal. Pay now and we won't bring it to light."
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I get a kick out of the fact that www.p2plawsuits.com currently points to a GoDaddy placeholder page filled with ads for P2P software and instructions for streaming satellite signals to your computer.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
So when do these start?
Geesh..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...John Doesn't is still SOL.
Ars Technica has some really in-depth coverage on the letter.
Nothing like having the *AA park their domain on godaddy, complete with such relevant ads as "Gnutella P2p: Download free MP3 music" or "eDonkey Free Downloads: Unlimited music, movies and games. 15 billion files". Also listed are ads for "American Legal Funding: pre-settlement advance, pay only if you win" and "Illegal Downloading: Experienced, aggressive criminal attourney in Texas"
On top of that, two separate ads for "The Beacon Review" and "The Download Guide", which were amusing to compare side-by-side.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'm certainly no lawyer and I don't know for a fact that this idea could work, particularly since I'm not sure what the terms of settlement may be but...
Why doesn't each and every person who has settled their case with RIAA counter-sue, providing this letter as evidence that they have been co-erced into their agreement with evidence that has now proven by RIAAs own admission to be suspect. Sue for damage to reputation, hardship caused by the settlement etc. Sue individually, not as a class action. Even if the cases weren't won, I'd imagine the number would keep the RIAA legal team tied in a knot for some time. Use the same frivolous tactic back against them.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Can you sue for libel?
The RIAA is now offering a pre-settlement discount of 100% for customers of ISPs who agree not to keep DHCP logs beyond the current leases.
Giving the RIAA a real presence on the internet beyond their press release regurgitating main site will give everyone the world over a big red bullseye on which to lock their sights.
I can't wait to hear about the hilarious exploits of various hackers having their way with those servers.
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?
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IANAL, but if an ISP "cooperates" with the RIAA as they suggest, doesn't the ISP become an agent of the RIAA? As an agent, wouldn't the ISP be liable in any lawsuits initiated by the defendant. It's one thing for the ISP to answer a subpoena or supply the RIAA with information that the courts have ruled they legally can request. It's another thing to help the RIAA with enforcement.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
See, here's the thing. The RIAA is filing affidavits and suits based on the information they get from the ISP's. And the information that the ISP's have is fallable.
Contrary to the RIAA's apparent claim, it is NOT a legal requirement for ISP's to collect information to which they can swear on a stack of bibles is true to track all customer activity. Even if the RIAA subpoenas them. They are obligated to provide what information they have. It's the RIAA that's turning around and swearing before a court of law that what they have is true, without verifying it.
Basically, the RIAA has discovered it's overstated the evidence that they have before them, and have potentially committed perjury or at least violated procedural rules. So now they want to say it's all the ISP's fault, apparently for not collecting information they're not obligated to collect, and which RIAA has used in court as "proof" without knowing what it entails.
This is nothing more than an attempted end-run around the courts. Having proven that they are willing to go to court in a few thousand cases (out of a few million, and rising, number of filesharers), the RIAA wants to dispense with the courts altogether. Before they couldn't get their message to you that they knew who you were, and were gonna get you if you didn't fork over thousands of $$$s first, without a court subpoena. And a few million [Who is] John Doe lawsuits weren't going to fly there. Now they claim their victims are crying out for this solution, and it is a "favor" for the ISP's to offer it. And oh, if you RTFLetter, they don't want the ISP help desk employees directing any of these victims to other web-sites any longer. Sites that might tell them what their actual rights truly are, or where lawyers can be found. That's verboten.
So this becomes a quick, cheap route to shake out those willing to settle at the first whiff of danger, and a great time and money saving opportunity for the RIAA. Anybody think that this won't just increase the number of threats they make? Like to maybe everybody Media Sentry and their still questionably secret methods can point a finger at (and we know which finger they're pointing). The record companies are certainly trying to find a way to collect their due from everyone in the entire country who they believe has infringed their copyrights, under their own expansive and untested definition of what constitutes infringement!
All this on the same day a report has come out saying that filesharing, at least back in the 2002 timeframe when the record industry claimed they were being "devastated" by P2P users, say that the effect of P2P filesharing was "statistically insignificant" in causing the drop in CD sales.
So where do I find ISP's who don't keep logs?
But what really pisses me off about this is the continual recording industry refrain of: "We doing it for the (starving) artists." What I hear is that the record companies are trying to reduce the royalty payments from digital sales -- sales that occur at virtually no cost at all to the record companies themselves -- to the artists themselves.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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?
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George W. Bush: "Yes, I'm sure, there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! I swear!"
:-/
The RIAA: "Yes, we're sure, these are the people stealing our intellectual property!"
(time passes...)
George W. Bush: "Oops, sorry. It wasn't my fault! I didn't know the reports were wrong!"
The RIAA: "Oops, sorry. It wasn't our fault! The ISPs were wrong in identifying people!"
In inverse order from your post.
I can't wait for the day when the RIAA goes back to what they started doing
You will be waiting forever then.
When will artists start
1. Is a starving artist is going to bite pretty much the only hand that has the potential (note phrase carefully) of feeding them? The economics of being an independent artist are depressing.
2. There are bands doing this. I have a feeling you want the music to show up at Walmart/Worst Buy. RIAA members control retail outside of a handful of indie stores. No, they won't tollerate someone cutting into their business.
This form of cartelization can't last forever
Yes, it has and it does. Music distribution is simply one of many cartels who have been prosecuted many times over in the U.S. to no effect.
Are these "early settlements" financially profitable for the RIAA?
Yes. They've got a fleet of full-time lawyers who have probably turned this into a cookie-cutter operation with low paid admins doing most of the work. Strike fear into the consumer's heart and demand the highest price possible for their goods. Sounds like standard operating procedure for any business to me.
This issue's been around for years now and there's no coordinated political reply to any of it. No call to action, just moral outrage. I hope you feel better because it's only going to get worse unless _you_ do something about it.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
After all, this is what top of the range direct mail houses do to ensure that their clients do not send the same letter to the same household under two different names, or that the new Porsche brochure is addressed to the father and not the 15-year-old son, so an equal standard should obviously apply to cases where a lawsuit might be involved. They could reasonably argue that a judge in a court does not have access to the necessary technical skills to make a proper judgement on correct identification, so it would be improper to release data that could not be fairly assessed by a court.
Assuming one dollar per record, the ISPs could be entirely funded by the "music industry" in short order.
Pining for the fjords
Do you even have the foggiest understanding of how the IP protocol works? You can't "alias" an IP address to make it look like you're coming from somewhere you can't. That's like saying, "I'm going to send a letter to you, but tell you I'm from New Jersey, and hope to God that the response finds its way back to London, England."
You want either a proxy or a tunnel, both of which exist.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 Whoops, silly middle mouse button...
This is a civil, not criminal, matter. You're not innocent until proven guilty. The standard is the presumption of guilt. And they presume a lot.
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?
Having been employed at an ISP a few years ago, there are a few typical reasons that a "John Doe" gets misfingered:
1.) The time is off on the RAS, radius server, or other networking gear during the timeframe the RIAA asks records to be preserved for.
2.) The admin is having a bad day and messes up the time zone shift from RIAA's request to UTC or whatever time zone the records are kept in.
3.) (Rarely anymore...) The request from RIAA fails to indicate an IP or time or some other piece of information to clearly identify what account / user was responsible is being targeted.
Requests from the MPAA, FBI, and local law enforcement can be even worse. Many were still giving timeframes of HOURS, when you could point to 10-30 or more possible infringers.
Anyway, this sort of recordkeeping is trivial for any ISP - just plunk the accounting information in a database and (depending on the size of the ISP) you know who had what IP address where up to a year ago with a simple query in a matter of seconds.
Before this post becomes flamebait, let me just say that the best course of action I found was to simply relay the notice to the customer if that's what the requester wanted, as the ISP itself has no quarrel with RIAA or the customer. ISPs simply provide a series of tubes - what comes out of your straw is your own business.
Oh yeah, and ISPs don't like getting sued. So they follow the law.
But misidentification happens rarely. Good admins do their best because they know what's at stake for a customer.
I was skeptical until I actually saw it with my own eyes. What kind of genius works for them and pulls a bonehead move like that? Switch your nameservers and set up your own placeholder you lazy bastards. I wonder if the idea of pre-lawsuit settlement violates a GoDaddy TOS...
Registrant:
RIAA
14 8th Street NE
Washington, District of Columbia 20002
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: P2PLAWSUITS.COM
Created on: 23-Jan-07
Expires on: 23-Jan-10
Last Updated on:
Administrative Contact:
Lamy, Jonathan lkennedy@riaa.com
RIAA
14 8th Street NE
Washington, District of Columbia 20005
United States
(202) 775-0101
Technical Contact:
Lamy, Jonathan lkennedy@riaa.com
RIAA
14 8th Street NE
Washington, District of Columbia 20005
United States
(202) 775-0101
Domain servers in listed order:
PARK9.SECURESERVER.NET
PARK10.SECURESERVER.NET
If the RIAA is pushing forward with criminal cases, shouldn't they be brought forward by the local district attorneys?
If the RIAA is pushing forward with civil suits, what gives them the legal right to subpoena information from other entities?
There's already been cases that have thrown out ISP responsibility for copyright infringement cases, so they don't have that *handle* to hold onto with ISPs anymore.
I'd say, make the RIAA file charges with a REAL law enforcement agency and wait for trial.
If they choose to make civil cases, make them come up with the identities on their own - they should not have the right to force ISPs to hand over any information whatsoever.
Why do they think they have a right in (and seem to have gotten away with) asking for this information so far?
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
I don't see a way out of this.
Start your own business?
The RIAA is offering up the ability for you to go to a website.. pay a "pre-settlement" and then not be libel if they get around to suing you. Is that it?
Wait... Does this mean I'm clear of future lawsuits?
How about they just be more up front and sell a $250 "Get out of lawsuit free" card. Then you buy that, download all you want, if/when they sue you, you hand them the card, and it's done? Or is that too close to the "we know you're a criminal" iPod tax?
We could have drive thru courts!
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Also,if the RIAA wants ISPs to retain log files, they should have to PAY for the disk and tape storage to cover this retention. Depending on the size of the ISP, this could be terabytes of data to keep.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
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 RIAA should be forced to retain permanent logs of every song, cd, cassette, music dvd purchase so that when the defective by design media is damaged and or destroyed, they can provide a FREE replacement of the music we purchased.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
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.
Look at how much trouble a loosely-organized rag-tag group of people willing to die for their agenda can cause an organized military machine orders of magnitudes more powerful than them.
I won't disagree with your comments on civil disobedience, as I don't want to get on Thoreau's bad side. However, I do think that one has to believe that what they're doing is fundamentally right for it to be civil disobedience. My opinion (and of course there's no way to back this up) is that most people who break copyright laws do not think it's the right thing to do. They just think it's not that bad. It's no big deal, etc. I imagine it's hard to keep a straight face and claim that it's the right thing to do.
Are copyright laws broken? Absolutely. However, I don't know how anyone can think a two-year rule is unreasonable. (By that I mean at least two-years. I've set it below where I think it makes sense.) I suspect that most downloaded music violates even that simple two-year "rule". Should people be able to copy music they've bought to other devices for their own listening, or even for playing at parties, etc.? Sure. Again, that's not what I think we're talking about here. I hear these excuses trotted out, but I suspect they're just that. Excuses.
You mention that people misconstrue civil disobedience to mean that it has to involve getting arrested or cited. Well, I think people also misconstrue civil disobedience to mean doing the wrong thing because I feel like it and I don't think I'll get caught. That's what it sounds like to my ears, anyways.
Again, I'm not defending the RIAA. I'm just defending Rosa Parks, the Boston Tea Party, and I'm trying to defend civil disobedience (perhaps imperfectly).
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You would be surprised at how many people pirate specifically to make a statement.
I know plenty of people who could easily afford iTunes or CDs or DVDs or what have you, and who USED to be good customers, but as the RIAA got slimier and slimier they have taken a 'not a penny to the RIAA/MPAA' attitude and have gone to great lengths to buy stuff from outside their control when they can, and pirate when they can't. Such people could be easily brought back into the fold if the politics of all this changed.
If the laws of the universe were such that they could have had infinite free copies of the tea, you can be damn sure they would have. In fact, if it were possible to make an unlimited amount of tea for free, anyone who was denied tea on the basis that they hadn't paid would be really pissed off.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
If a duck flies north over the Golden Gate Bridge at 2pm on the first Sunday in March, they'll offer a $1000 discount!
What a deal!
Maybe that should be a pig. Or a RIAA executive.
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
Tor. JAP (www only). I2P.
I personally like JAP, though it only does WWW. The servers are in Germany, go to google.com and you get "Google Deutschland". It's the easiest of the three. Tor makes you set up something like Privoxy, not sure about I2P. For JAP, just start it (it's in Java and runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows) and point your browser's proxy settings to localhost:4001.
Tor has the advantage of letting you route anything through it. If you use it, don't be an asshole by using it for Bittorrent or anything else high bandwidth or illegal.
I personally like using JAP when at public access points, though for anything other than casual browsing I use OpenVPN and browse through my home network.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I think he means he's looking for a proxy server somewhere?
ARP poisoning of any kind only works on one network segment, not on the Internet. You can still be located to the network segment, and from the network segment probably located by tracing your MAC address.
"Relaying" is functionally the same as a proxy server, except that the proxy doesn't know they're a proxy.
As an AC said said above, NATs also doesn't help for hiding your location. Really, it's also, for this purpose, a proxy. The only difference is that you're probably close geographically to the gateway, which means you're also easier to locate.
Whether any of these methods are good enough entirely depends on your privacy needs, but none of them are very secure. You can't disguise your identity on the public Internet. Even proxy servers can be raided/subpeonead/hacked, exposing your identity. The only secure solutions are darknets using onion routing or similar.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 Whoops, silly middle mouse button...
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. - from the Rosa Parks autobiography My Story
The story is actually much more involved than that as well. Rosa Parks was sitting in the blacks only section but when more white people got on the bus the driver moved the sign designating where blacks could sit back one row. He then told the four blacks in those seats to move, three of them did but Rosa Parks did not. I don't know if she thought it was going to bring ab out social change, but it seems pretty clear she had a point to prove.
Politicians are like diapers - they should be changed frequently and for the same reasons.