RIAA Backtracks After Embarrassing P2P Defendant

Harmony writes "When the RIAA sued Sgt. Nicholas Paternoster, it included a screenshot of a shared folder with over 4,600 files — some of which were pornographic images unrelated to the case. Last week, the RIAA got permission from a judge to, as a 'professional courtesy,' swap out the original exhibit for one with only the 350+ songs the defendant is accused of sharing on Kazaa. The RIAA's carelessness may come back to haunt it, however: 'After the suit was filed — and the exhibit made public — Sgt. Paternoster decided to fight back, filing a counterclaim accusing the RIAA of violating his privacy and seeking to "shame Counter-Plaintiff... into giving in to their unreasonable demands regarding their copyrighted materials."'"

Comments

Better article

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

The linked article is pretty light on content. It does have a link to this article which actually goes into detail about the countersuit.

Re:Sue em all

[TheRaven64]

The list of shared files is public, but the connection between the list of shared files and the real identity of the person sharing can only be obtained with a court order or by the ISP publishing the information (which will almost certainly violate their privacy policy and various data protection laws).

Publishing the sub-set of this information required for the lawsuit is acceptable disclosure, publishing unrelated information is not. While analogies are often misleading, this one might work:

Consider a prosecution for producing something like methamphetamine. It would be acceptable for the prosecution to enter as evidence (and thus make public) the information that the defendant had purchased certain precursor chemicals at a pharmacist. It would not be acceptable for them to publish that the defendant had also purchased STD medicines (for example) at the same time, and this publication.