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RIAA Says Accused Students Are Settling
As we've been reporting, the RIAA has been offering settlements to college students suspected of sharing music online. Reader Weather Storm notes that more than a quarter of the alleged music pirates have accepted the RIAA's offer. Quoting: "...an attorney Ohio University arranged to meet with its students... said $3,000 is the standard settlement offer, though cases have settled for as much as $5,000."
What choice do they have but to settle really? Unfortunately the RIAA can throw mountains of money into any legal proceeding, what's Joe Pirate to do :) ?
Many college students live off of credit cards and have no time for anything else. Consequently, without neither the time nor the financial resources to defend themselves, they are a vulnerable group. As former college students, the RIAA attorneys almost certainly know that.
Do you like German cars?
Mr Orwell, you were right.... sadly
FTFA:
"Reasonable data retention policies are essential," he said. "Lawsuits for music theft are just one example, but there are a host of other crimes regularly perpetrated on computer networks.
"As services providers, one would think universities would understand the need to retain these records."
This only goes to highlight what I believe is the governments complicity in the **AA litigation activities.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Even the innocent will settle. The only people who stand a chance are those who are so obviously innocent that the RIAA case against them is ridiculous. If you're a 95 year old illiterate, non-computer-owner there is still a chance that the RIAA will come after you because somebody with the same name lives within twenty miles of you. The RIAA will continue to push the charges even after they should know they have no basis because most people won't/can't afford to fight back.
If there is ANY chance that you could be guilty, you don't stand a chance no matter how innocent you are.
The thing I can't figure out is if you're talking about the RIAA or the pirates.
What a choice - give us all yer money now, or we'll grind you into poverty for the next x years of your life.
Yeah - I'm sure I'd be ready to sell out quick for a few grand - beats the hell out of working for the RIAA for the next twenty years of my life!
Sure. But who are we supposed to vote for?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Suppose I'm innocent. Suppose I never did what they claim I did. There's all kinds of reasons why they could improperly target me. Maybe the P2P program identified the wrong person as the source (Kazza was known to do that), maybe the ISP gave them the wrong IP to person information, maybe my computer was hacked, and so on. So let's say one of these is the case. What am I to do? Defending myself is hard because this is civil court, not criminal court. This means that I don't get a free lawyer, and that the burden for proof is much lower. It isn't beyond a reasonable doubt, only to a preponderance of the evidence.
So the problem is that I am stuck having to prove my innocence, and that I have to pay a lawyer far more than $5,000 to do it.
THAT is what is wrong with this. We don't know that these people ever broke the law. All we know is that a company who gets paid when they find someone, like BayTSP produced a screenshot from a program that claims ot be a list of files that are allegedly from some IP. I can poke a bunch of holes in the chain of evidence right there:
--How do we know the company isn't lying? They get paid to find these people, it'd be in their interest to make it up if they can't find someone.
--How do we know the information from the P2P program is accurate? These are not vetted, approved forensic tools and some of them are known to make mistakes.
--How do we know the songs in the list are what they claim to be? P2P networks are full of fake material, how do we know these are real?
--How do we know that this is the correct IP address? What if the P2P program or something else reported the wrong one?
--How do we know the ISP gave us the correct person behind it? What if a hacker hand altered the records to cover their tracks? What if an employee at the ISP did?
--How do we know that it was a computer owned by the owner of the connection that did it? What if someone hopped on their wireless network?
--How do we know that the computer that did it wasn't hacked? There are over a million botted computers out there, how do we know this wasn't one of them?
This kind of thing would likely not even make it past pretrial in a criminal case, but in a civil case, you have to pay to defend yourself.
Then, of course, there's also the issue of the whole 8th amendment thing, you know "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Specifically the "excessive fines" part. They ask for statutory amounts vastly exceeding any real harm caused. You can't tell me that downloading a single tracks causes tens of thousands of dollars of harm and yet that is the kind of amount they ask for, and they are allowed to because of a statute they pushed for. Seems damn unconstitutional to me.
So yes, it IS extortion. They don't care if you are innocent or guilty, they force you to pay because it is too costly to defend yourself, and you risk losing too much. It may be wrapped up in some legislation, it is still extortion.