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RIAA Can't Have Defendant's Son's Desktop
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's attempt to get Ms. Lindor's son's desktop computer in UMG v. Lindor has been rejected by the Magistrate Judge. The judge said that the RIAA 'offered little more than speculation to support their request for an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer, based on ... his family relationship to the defendant, the proximity of his house to the defendant's house, and his determined defense of his mother in this case. That is not enough. On the record before me, plaintiffs have provided scant basis to authorize an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer.' Decision by Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy. (pdf)"
Yeah!!!
Now back to our normal post. The RIAA is like a bacteria that has multiplied to infect many hosts. However, like a simple bacteria that replicates perfect copies of itself, the RIAA lawsuits are all exact clones. What this means is that, if you can kill one of them, you can kill all of them. Reading the postings just this week on Ray's blog will tell you that the many enemies (a.k.a. innocent defendants who are fighting back) of the RIAA are coordinating and refining their tactics in search of the magic bullet that will kill this plague once and for all. And from the looks of things, they're getting mighty close.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not really, because the RIAA tactic has been to call everyone a murderer and then ask to search their premises for knives. We have laws against that sort of thing when the police want to do it, and we should have laws against that sort of thing when corporations want to do it.
Not allowing baseless evidence gathering is the same as not allowing baseless search. But casting a very wide net and calling everyone a thief, and then when asked to produce evidence, claiming that you'd have it if you could go searching for it - this is just simply not the way the American justice system works, for better or worse.
I agree with you on this point. If a crime has been done, then all of the evidence should be investigated, and not just parts of it. You don't get a good picture, and it ends up being that you come to the wrong conclution.
Which actually could be bad for RIAA.
But we want it to be bad for them through the full picture.
Right?
IANAL, but just because an armed robber lives in the same town as a relative, and they both have cars, and are close, doesn't mean there is need, or cause to search the relatives car for evidence of the crimes committed by the armed robber. Yes, I know that might not be the best analogy, but where is the judge to stop? Can the RIAA look at her neighbor's pc? Can the RIAA request that all her friends computers be searched? If there is no evidence of infringement, well, then there is no evidence. Going fishing in the computers that she might have had access to is just that, fishing.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'm not supporting the RIAA but this seems wrong to me. If the person they are sueing has access and may have used the PC for copyright infringement should the PC not be investigated?
She "may have" had access to your computer. That doesn't mean that she did. Even if she did, that doesn't mean that she used it to commit the alleged offense.
It sounds to me like you just don't get it.
If your mother is accused of a crime, why in the hell should they be able to search your property, at a different house, without probable cause?
If the police can't do it for a murder case, why should the RIAA be able to do it for a civil suit?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's frustration for an organization I despise and I enjoy that. Think of it as a feel good story on the nightly news.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
You completely missed the point. If a crime has been committed by the son, then a new case with evidence must be brought against him. Since when do we, as Americans, allow witch hunts in order to save failing court cases? The only reason the RIAA is going after the son is because he is vigorously defending his mother and they want to put him back on his heels.
You're not making sense here. First off, you have to mean if the person they're suing has access and may have used his PC for copyright infringement, should his PC not be investigated? That's the first correction. They've already checked the PC in the house itself, and come up dry. It does not contain the hard drive with any of the infringing files or programs on it.
Secondly, they're not suing the son. So he is not the person they're suing, and they should have no right to anything on his PC just because he's a son who lives 4 miles away and, like any good son should, visits his mother.
Thirdly, if you have your own computer at home, it doesn't make much sense that you'd pack up your computer, drive miles to your Mother's house, and commit copyright infringement there, before packing up your computer once more and driving back home again to use your computer for everything else you normally use it for. Even if you have a notebook computer, do you drive somewhere else to do all your filesharing? That's too much of a reach for even this judge to accept, hence they're not allowed to just look at a non-party's computer hard drive because of a casual relationship between a mother and her son. There is no evidence that the son's computer has ever been in his Mother's house.
It would be like the RIAA saying that, we tracked filesharing to the IP address of your best friend who lives a few miles from you. But because we couldn't find the evidence on his computer, and we know you're friends who often got together at his house, and because you have a computer too, we want to give your computer a digital anal examination as well, hoping we'll find something to incriminate you with. And it's not even like said best friend told the RIAA to get his own butt out of the sling that, "Hey, my best friend always came over with his computer and we downloaded music on it." He would have told them nothing of the sort.
Now do you get it?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Forgive my ignorance, but... can someone who's actually from the USA explain why the RIAA would get *anyone's* computer at all? Even if there is a reason why it should be inspected at all, shouldn't that be done by a (hopefully) neutral third party, like the police? It seems like a bad idea to me to give someone who's got a vested interest in finding evidence against you an opportunity to plant it.
butter the donkey
Please note that the following artist's revenue is helping to fund this action by UMG and the RIAA:
Amy Winehouse
Bon Jovi
Charlatans
Counting Crows
Limp Bizkit
Live
Ocean Color Scene
Puddle of Mudd
Sonic Youth
Texas
The Who
By buying anything from these or any other UMG artist, you are helping to fund these lawsuits. Please stop!
That's the whole point of April Fool's day. To remind you to be skeptical.
The problem with this in the US is that the defendant has to understand that and bring it up in court. A green lawyer might easily be intimidated by some of the RIAA's paper work and anyone representing themselves is usually SOL on properly discrediting bad evidence, we tend to understand the theory, but not the procedure.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
A brief history of the case was that the plaintiff (RIAA) demanded that the defendant turn over her computer to their experts for analysis. The defendant objected and would only agree to a third party copying the hard drive and handing the copy over to the plaintiff. The judge ruled in the defendant's favor and the HD was copied. However upon further analysis, it appears that HD had no traces of any filesharing software or the copyrighted songs that the plaintiff claimed were being shared. So the plaintiff went back to the judge saying, "Well, the defendant's son had access to her house, maybe it was his personal computer that the culprit." I suspect that the MediaSentry methods of identifying infringers are error prone and that is the most likely cause of the discrepancy. What the judge has ruled is that besides just speculation, the plaintiffs have offered no compelling evidence to search the computer of the defendant's son who has his own machine in his house and does not live with his mother. Although the decision doesn't mention it, the defendant's son claimed that his files are protected by attorney client privilege (as he is a lawyer and uses his computer for work). There has to be very compelling reasons for the plaintiff to over come that objection.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This is a big decision, because it finally sets some limits on the scope of RIAA's fishing expeditions. Its not a surprising decision, given the outcomes of your discovery process with RIAA's witness, and one can only presume that the other shoe, dismissal with prejudice and a court ordered payment of Ms Lindor's legal expenses by the RIAA will soon follow. It will, unfortunately, take a lot more than this to deter the RIAA from this scorched audience policy, but its a step in the right direction. Well done.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
I'm not supporting the RIAA but this seems wrong to me. If the person they are sueing has access and may have used the PC for copyright infringement should the PC not be investigated?
It's like going "you can only have 2 of the 3 knives I may of used for that murder".
It's more like, "You can only have the knives that you have a plausible reason to believe may have been used for that murder." Why should they get the defendant's son's knife, just because he lives 4 miles away from the defendant and vigorously asserts the defendant's innocence? They need a reason to search other people's property; they can't just conjure up a hypothesis out of thin air that the property was used to commit the crime, and use that as justification to examine it.
This is all about intimidation. The RIAA doesn't like the son for defending his mother so vigorously, so they're spitefully trying to fish for evidence on his computer, on the off-chance they might be able to drag him into a lawsuit. They have no probable cause to accuse the son of any wrongdoing, or to assert that the mother is committing infringement using his computer rather than her own, and the judge is perfectly correct in denying their motion.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
No, that's not the reason. The primary reason the police are not involved is that the RIAA is not pursuing these as crimes, but as civil offenses (or something like that).
I'm having trouble right at the moment trying to define the difference in a way that makes sense in these cases.
Just playing the devil's advocate... My Mum has an unlimited home DSL account... which she uses to send about 6 mails a month with. It would be perfect to add a router and Mac Mini with a bit torrent client running on it to her existing setup. She would never notice and I could occasionally FTP in and download the files obtained. Then if she ever got into one of these lawsuits I could remove the whole setup and she could honestly deny having anything to do with it.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The RIAA has been breaking new ground with the legal branch of their customer service division. A large portion of the law is not in the laws that have been passed by legislatures, it is in previous decisions by the judicial system and is called case law.
Since the RIAA's new approach to customer service is, shall we say, innovative decisions in earlier cases can have a great effect on later cases. For example, in a previous RIAA story on Slashdot it was reported that when the RIAA draws a blank in discovery against a particular custo^H^H defendant, then they are liable for the defendants legal fees. This could be a serious blow to the RIAA's current shotgun approach.
Likewise, if this current ruling stands it could help establish limits on how far the RIAA can go poking their nose into other people's business. IMO, the RIAA (like SCO) has greatly abused the legal system to pursue their own selfish and greedy ends. It's great news that the legal system is responding and is putting in limits on how far the RIAA can go.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
> This isn't some sort of ideological blow that cuts to the core of the RIAAs actions.
I don't know how ideology applies to this unless you believe that unrestricted fishing expeditions without any real probably cause make good law. If you believe that, then is is a major blow to your ideology, because the judge just said no, I'm not going to allow you to examine computer unless you can directly link that computer to the alleged violation of intellectual property law.
> It's a mundane legal decision in one of their many cases. Why, exactly, is this newsworthy?
Its not mundane at all. Its a major blow to the RIAA's current policies and it sets up a much larger blow that I suspect we'll see ordered shortly. The RIAA had it easy when they were bullying college students into handing them their savings in order to avoid a costly litigation. All too often these students hadn't done anything wrong. Now that people are fighting back, decisions like this will start to cost the RIAA something, and that may cause them to rethink their strategy.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
"For as long as you have had "grand juries"."
But this isn't about a crime. It's about a tort. No grand jury involved.
Please learn the difference.
One of the reasons why the RIAA isn't asking for criminal charges is that the evidence they have is so slim that even thinking about filing criminal charges, which require a _much_ higher burden of proof, is idiotic.
The RIAA is on pretty thin ice. Their "expert" claims to be a "software engineer" yet when asked if he's got a PE stamp, he says...well...no. Yet another wannabe expert.
--
BMO
Actually, the big thing that emerged in discovery is that they hadn't done any real police work.
All they had was one expert witness who wrote three statements, all of them questionable on a number of grounds, based on a ten minute examination of a hard drive and additional examination of IP records generated by software that has dubious reliability and a statement from Verizon about an IP address that could easily have been wrong in several different ways.
That's one of the big reasons this case is crumbling and, from all appearances, taking a lot of RIAA cases with it.
The truth is that this was never about good "police" work. It was about intimidation; about identifying people who could be easily intimidated and railroading them with a blizzard of impressive looking paperwork; about using their settlements to intimidate others into not accessing online audio files, even when it was perfectly legal to do so. The intimidation worked (and continues to work to some extent) because the legal costs of fighting this RIAA paperwork were much higher than the price of a settlement.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
Posting anonymously....
In discussions with a real lawyer about all this, my lawyer friend and I came upon the solution...
Should you get The Letter, which has no legal value whatsoever, put a bullet through the drive, do a Jeff Merkey and bash it against a rock, melt it in a Sentry heat treating oven at 2250F (FUN!!). "We're sorry, but the drive no longer exists"
Should you get The Subpoena, it's too late and you're hosed. Bend over and take it or mount a real defense, because if you destroy the drive, it's spoilation of evidence and the court really frowns on that. That's what hosed Jeff Merkey when Novell subpoenaed him.
Timing is everything.
Glad you're not my kid, ya little brat.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
I'm not supporting the inquisition but this seems wrong to me. If the person being investigated is a woman and has a cat, then shouldn't we see if she floats?
Watch, in fascination, as the RIAA "expert" in the Lindor case is eviscerated....
0 73736822
...less than unassailable.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070302
This is why the RIAA wants to go on a fishing expedition. They have no case, and what they have is
--
BMO
A brief history of the case was that the plaintiff (RIAA) demanded that the defendant turn over her computer to their experts for analysis. The defendant objected and would only agree to a third party copying the hard drive and handing the copy over to the plaintiff. The judge ruled in the defendant's favor and the HD was copied.
Sounds like a reasonable judge. Taking the defendant's computer would deprive them of it for a long period of time, whereas taking a copy of it's data only deprives them of it for a short time.
However upon further analysis, it appears that HD had no traces of any filesharing software or the copyrighted songs that the plaintiff claimed were being shared. So the plaintiff went back to the judge saying, "Well, the defendant's son had access to her house, maybe it was his personal computer that the culprit." I suspect that the MediaSentry methods of identifying infringers are error prone and that is the most likely cause of the discrepancy.
Or something as simple as a typo on the part of the plaintiff.
What the judge has ruled is that besides just speculation, the plaintiffs have offered no compelling evidence to search the computer of the defendant's son who has his own machine in his house and does not live with his mother.
To the judge it may look as though the plaintiff is on a "fishing trip".
Although the decision doesn't mention it, the defendant's son claimed that his files are protected by attorney client privilege (as he is a lawyer and uses his computer for work).
Plenty of people may have confidential material on their computers. A lawyer has the advantage that he or she can phrase this in language a judge is likely to understand.
Viacom is being sued for copyright infringement, too (by people whose copyrighted works were the subject of misguided DMCA removal demands to YouTube). I like the idea that these plaintiffs could get, not only all of Viacom's computers, but also all of Viacom's employees' computers.
If you applied the RIAA's "logic" that would probably include computers belonging to any relatives of Viacom employees. "Hand over your PC your third cousin, who you never knew existed, married the second cousin of someone who once did some agency work for Viacom!"
Even simpler. Bittorent-capable router. With web interface.
I know it is pointless, because the RIAA does not target technophiles that can afford multiple computers and a lawyer, the target those who can not afford neither and who lack technical expertise (at least not any more ;)). It saves the embarrassment of continually losing cases and likely hood of some rather severe legal ramifications, for what is becoming pretty clear is nothing more than legalised extortion.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
And ya know what?
That's a defense that your mom's lawyer can use. Indeed, having an insecure POS computer infected with malware, a wide open wireless router, IP addresses being spoofed, etc, yadda yadda yadda, were all used to pull Dr. Jacobson's deposition into a million little pieces in this case.
In other words, there is _no way_, using the RIAA's methods, to definitively trace music files to the specific computer, not after reading Dr. Jacobson's testimony. Read it. The URL is in one of my earlier postings.
--
BMO
While many people agree with you that April Fool's day on Slashdot is indeed way over the top, it's still no reason for insulting random strangers that did you no harm.
Lots of people don't think that far.
Every time you buy an album or a movie through these big companies, your money will be used to sue you or your friends.
If you stop paying them they will fold with less collateral damage, and music will be free sooner.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
If the person they are sueing has access and may have used the PC for copyright infringement should the PC not be investigated?
I think you are infringing on the RIAA's copyright. Expect them to take your PC soon.
Get it? It takes more than someone's "say so" to go into someone's private property and rummage through their things. The RIAA has to actually show some sort of proof that you've wronged them, not just "oh, we say you did it". Unfortunately (for them) they don't have enough proof to convince the judge. So why should they get the hard drive? First things first - establish that copyright infringement happened by some other means.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
shouldn't we see if she floats?
She turned me into a newt!
What? Well, I got better!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
For those who havent noticed, gay doesnt necessarily mean homosexual anymore, it often just means crap. I can understand that some Gays might be upset about this but that doesnt change the fact. Gay is just one of those words that changes meaning from time to time: once upon a time it meant happy, then it meant homosexual, now it means crap and at some stage in the future it will probably mean quiche or something.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Well according to South Park swapping music means Lars Ulrik can't get his gold plated shark tank and Britney Spears has to fly around in a Gulfstream IV - it means they get to live in slightly less luxury.
In Australia they tried doing that for theft the idea was that if One family member is a crook they all are. The idea didn't get much support Could not even find someone stupid enuth to take it to parliament.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
s/that far//
That oughta do it.
the flag > corporation > the one true religion > porn > Terrorism > Communism > piracy > drugs > crime > sports > education > science > false religions > consitutional rights > human rights
Unfortunately the UK seems to be harmonising
And dont call me Surly
If this were really happening, what would you think?
I don't know how many steak knives know me, but I hope I haven't pissed them off.
For a complete list of the bands financing this terrorism, please see the following URLs:
:D
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=1
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=2
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=3
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=4
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=5
Who knows - there might actually be someone you lot actually like in there
this is the sole reason why i read slashdot - cos seeing yanks fialing to understand basic humour is funny as hell. is it not clearly obvious that theres a joke intended by the previous post? is sarcasm really that difficult to grasp?
Why the hostility? Attaining a PE in any discipline requires documented proof of real world experience. Whether it gets rubber stamped by "some incompetent civil servant" doesn't matter.
For one, it shows a level of accountability when an engineer stamps a drawing. This is important when dealing with real world structures and systems that the general public's welfare depends on (i.e. life safety). Would you want it less stringent?
Whether it's worth much or not, much less exists right now in the world of software "engineering".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Incorrect. In this case the defendant turned over her complete hard drive. When the RIAA could find nothing on it to support their case, then they started pursuing her relatives. That's the way they operate.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Their policy is to sue people who have paid for an internet access account that they think is linked to a p2p shared files folder.
They know, and don't care, that this will result in many innocent people being sued.
Then if they figure out the defendant didn't do it, they try to use their pending lawsuit against an innocent person as an investigative platform with which to look for others, all the while terrorizing the innocent defendant.
That is exactly what happened here. (The defendant here, in fact, has never even used a computer, believe it or not.).
A ruling like this is important.
The case should have been thrown out a long time ago, but every little bit helps.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
They don't. The screenshots that that are referring to are screenshots of Media Sentry's computers. They search the various P2P networks and when they "find" a PC that is sharing what they "believe" to be music, they take a screenshot of the P2P search page on their computer. The screenshot gives the name of the file and the ip address of the hosting computer. It may also give a hash for the file, but I am unsure about that. From what I've read, it doesn't seem like they actually download the file to verify that it really is the music file in question.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
(PS They don't. They get a screenshot of shared files, which could be on one computer or spread out over a whole group of computers called nodes and super nodes.).
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I think I'm a software engineer, and I don't even know what a PE stamp is.
I have a degree in Computer Science, and I have been a systems programmer designing and writing networking software for over 25 years, can I claim that I'm a software engineer?
So... what is a "PE stamp"?
And iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them ...
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Very few people can clean files off a computer in such a way that there is not a detectable trail that something was erased. Most people can't even delete files without leaving a backup copy in a hidden folder, cache, media player library, or word document edit header. There was also a case with the RIAA where someone did have traces that the harddrive was cleaned, and the judge ruled in favor of the RIAA. By destroying the evidence, the defendent ruined any chance of showing that the RIAA's case was possible exagerated and got nailed for everything that was claimed.
If the RIAA is willing to pay a 3rd party to copy and examine the drive, then they are willing to pay for the procedures that can recover lost data. Some of them get expensive, but the RIAA can wright it off as PR funding.
The RIAA is on pretty thin ice. Their "expert" claims to be a "software engineer" yet when asked if he's got a PE stamp, he says...well...no. Yet another wannabe expert.
Your snobbishness is ridiculous.
There are plenty of legitimate experts in all sorts of fields who do not happen to be engineers.
Vint Cerf is not an engineer. Richard Stallman is not an engineer. Eric S. Raymond is not an engineer.
I have a PhD in chemistry and many years of experience doing research. I think I'm an expert in my field, but I'm not an engineer.
Now, this "expert" might be a fraud, but the fact that they aren't an engineer doesn't mean they are a fraud. Depending on where you live, calling yourself an "engineer" when you're not is illegal. Calling yourself a "software engineer" might not be. In some places, only calling yourself a "professional engineer" when you're not is illegal.
It stands for Professional Engineer, a kind of licensing process demonstrating knowledge and competence to practice one's profession. They're mostly relevant for civil engineering (i.e., people whose screw-ups end up on the news as "major bridge collapses, 300 dead or missing"). PE also exists for mechanical and electrical engineers, but isn't uniformly required, as far as I know. I've never even heard of PE for anything software related, though some people have argued in favor of such a requirement.
In some locales, you can't legally call yourself an "engineer" unless you have a PE to your name, much like you can't start working as a doctor or lawyer without appropriate paperwork.
You are correct. The original Architect's drawing was almost impossible to build. (Architects don't get much respect from engineers either, at least where I went to school. They're viewed more as artists than engineers, with all the negatives that entails. Architects frequently support those views by proposing impossible to build designs that merely look pretty).
The rod was supposed to thread through 2 walkways in one piece, so each walkway's brackets would only support 1 walkway's weight. The contractor split the rod, causing the upper walkway's bracket to take on the full load of both walkways. Even so, it might have held due to factors of safety usually being quite conservative in construction, but with the opening ceremony, the walkways were heavily crowded with viewers watching the ceremony below, and the brackets on the upper walkway gave way dropping both walkways to the ground.
And therein lies another reason to not get a PE. They're your drawings, and you're liable, even if someone changes them to be realistically able to build them. (A junior engineer I believe approved the change btw, or did the change, it's been way too long ago) Either way, this incident finished more than one career.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
You missed my point entirely. Yes, we can accomplish feats of engineering the Romans could only dream about (lack of materials and computer models are merely two reasons) But will our feats last 2000 years and be serviceable? I doubt it.
The ability of an individual to recall and apply engineering principals on an examination only proves that an individual can take an examination. Even 8 hours is no where near enough time to do anything in depth. I regularly had single problems for homework that took more than 8 hours each to solve, and that would only prove I knew how to solve a single problem. Covering multiple topics on an 8 hour exam is proving nothing more than literate knowledge of the topic. That's why PEs require 5 years of experience and a sponsor.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
My former employer, a California aerospace outfit, ran into something like that around 1970 when it opened a good-sized operation in Denver. There was some bit of paperwork with the city and county that involved listing the number of engineers on the payroll, and the local PE association cried foul: local ordinances forbade representing someone as an "engineer" who didn't have a PE license.
We replied that we would be delighted to come into compliance, and would they please send over eight hundred license applications, a copy of the sample test, eight hundred PE Assn membership applications, and when would their next officer election be?
Last we ever heard from them.
rj
So if a criminal matter isn't important enough for the police to invade a person's privacy and search through their house and take their property, then a civil "contract violation" is?
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
That may be true, but there is software that is used in critical applications everday.
The same people riding that airplane that was designed by a "professional engineer" are relying on software as well.
The safety and security of a structure or a piece of code is not contingent upon the credentials of an individual,
but how well the individual did his job in formulating his work and testing the results.
Software Engineers may not have an equivalent PE exam at this time, but there are organizations (ACM is one) trying to establish the
accountability among the community that the PE exam is supposed to provide.
Do not judge others based on a set of standards that do not even apply to them. I'm quite certain that civil and mechanical engineers do not send out their first set of blueprints as the finished product. I would gather that they test their design to ensure it meets the required standards. This is also the case for software engineers.
In addition, everything that is designed by civil and mechanical engineers do not require the same measures of safety. The same holds true with software. Some applications are more critical than others.
Just remember, there are morons in every profession.
Romans and their PEs. ... 2000 years and still serviceable!
Well, we only have the examples that lasted 2000 years to go on. The stuff that fell apart after a mere couple hundred years is so long gone as to be forgotten.
-- Alastair
The issue is whom exactly is the RIAA going after and what level of responsibility do they have? Somehow, some fairly bright guys seem to have messed this up. Unbelieveable!
So the mother is the holder of the Internet account and denies any knowledge. Some folks come along and pretty much say that there is no evidence on that computer. If the holder of the Internet account has no further responsibility, then there is clearly no point to trying any legal action whatsoever - anyone could have used the "account resources" and provide a quite adequate defense.
Obviously what the RIAA would like to have is what any sane individual would want - the account holder is responsible for activity using the account. This is especially true since the true user of the account is invisible.
If only the "end user" (anonymous and unknowable) is liable, then there is no point to any prosecution involving the Internet. I can always claim that it was a son or daughter or a neighbor and they cannot prove otherwise.
Now, this business of going after other potential user's computers to prove that the activity took place on the account would seem pointless. They (obviously) have proof that the account was used. That should be all that is needed to prove - the account holder is responsible. This would seem to be going down the road of the account holder not being responsible. Then it is clearly just a fishing expedition and there is no legal basis for holding anyone at all accountable.
The record labels persecuting Ms. Lindor are:
-SONY BMG
-Motown
-Interscope
-Arista
-Warner Bros
-UMG
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
It stands for Professional Engineer, a kind of licensing process demonstrating knowledge and competence to practice one's profession. They're mostly relevant for civil engineering (i.e., people whose screw-ups end up on the news as "major bridge collapses, 300 dead or missing"). PE also exists for mechanical and electrical engineers, but isn't uniformly required, as far as I know. I've never even heard of PE for anything software related, though some people have argued in favor of such a requirement.
A PE license is actually a trademark, and if you claim to be a PE when you in fact have not been granted the said license you can be fined for trademark infringement as well charged for other civil and criminal offenses (just like being a fake doctor).
I work for a large multidisciplinary engineering firm and when we do any programming related to say traffic lights, the whole "engineering" design gets stamped by an Professional Engineer(s) that may be an civil engineer or an electrical engineer depending on the situation.
It appears that the rigor of liability associated with the more "conventional" engineering practices have not caught up to the computer sciences\engineering field, yet. But this will change in the future. For the time being, the title "software engineer", unlike "Structural Engineer (SE)" is as relevant as the title "car wash attendant".
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
I agree with the way that you are handling the case. The RIAA should not be able to go on a fishing expedition. They should have solid evidence before even sending out those annoying letters.
I do have one question about this case. Why is she paying for an internet access account if she has never used a computer? That does not make sense to me.