Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Expert Witness Called "Borderline Incompetent"
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Prof. Johan Pouwelse of Delft University — one of the world's foremost experts on the science of P2P file sharing and the very same Prof. Pouwelse who stopped the RIAA's Netherlands counterpart in its tracks back in 2005 — has submitted an expert witness report characterizing the work of the RIAA's expert, Dr. Doug Jacobson, as 'borderline incompetence.' The report (PDF), filed in UMG v. Lindor, pointed out, among other things, that the steps needed to be taken in a copyright infringement investigation were not taken, that Jacobson's work lacked 'in-depth analysis' and 'proper scientific scrutiny,' that Jacobson's reports were 'factually erroneous,' and that they were contradicted by his own deposition testimony. This is the first expert witness report of which we are aware since the Free Software Foundation announced that it would be coming to the aid of RIAA defendants."
Feel free to substitute "shaky" with "unfounded".
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
Look, I'm no fan of RIAA, but do we really want this kind of childish name calling going on in our court system? I mean, really. Dr. Jacobsen's background speaks for itself. He is a widely respected scientist with years of experience in real world forensics investigation. Trying to win your case by smearing his name and reputation will likely backfire with the judge.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
MafiAA "expert" spanked. Film at 11.
Please say there's film. Please say we eventually see this guy cross-interrogated and his "credentials" and bullshit run through the wringer for all to see.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
To me it sounds like more like "borderline dishonest". Anybody with a Ph.D (especially in something technical) is automatically going to have a strong understanding of the scientific method.
When someone in this position does things that are "unscientific", it means they know that a respectable study won't produce the desired conclusions.
Of course the RIAA's testimony was "factually erroneous". We've been hearing about the shaky technical ground that these lawsuits have been based on since they started coming out, and it's "experts" like this, blatantly lying to non-technically-proficient judges, that've allowed the RIAA to keep pulling the crap it's been pulling. Thank god someone is both A. Knowledgable enough to call them on it, and B. Is in a position where they might actually be listened to.
The witness is fully incompetent.
After reviewing the material listed below I conclude the following
A)Two reports by Dr Jacobson where[sic] based in itotal on roughly an hour of work
indicates that Dr Jacobson is not competent to judge the accuracy of information...
the investigative process has been unprofessional
and of course the incompetence claim. The brilliance of this is that in reality Pouwelse hasn't done that much work himself because he just uses the report itself to slam the guy down. This isn't a case of an independent study finding a different result, this is the original report itself undermining its own principle.
Its like a Daily Show episode playing out in court.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
He was hired by the RIAA as an expert witness, and obviously felt, either consciously or subconsciously, that in exchange for the money he was paid, that he should please his benefactors. I think this is the only type of witness they could have employed however, as any expert who had a higher moral compass, or ability to take an unbiased view of the task at hand, would find that the RIAA's arguments are indeed, seriously lacking in substance.
The Mothership
Posting on slashdot is all well and good, but the EFF can only continue its work if you support them financially !
I'm a member.. are you?
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
Tends to detract from the persuasiveness of the presentation. I agree with the earlier poster regarding name calling. If there is concrete facts to back up that statement, then why detract from the facts and bring the focus language most judges will simply gloss over?
There removed the 4 redundant words in the headline!
It occurs to me that most of this junk is already "obvious RIAA troll" type information. I.e.: Let's sue them and throw pseudoscientific data at them en masse so the defendant(s), who are probably largely computer-illiterate, have to prove they're innocent or refute our "me first" "expert" conclusions. Which makes these RIAA cases simply a matter of getting the correct data in the books to use as grounds to speed up future litigation. Assuming that premise (yeah, gross oversimplification), at the rate we're going the RIAA (and the defendants) will be at this for the next decade. Gotta make someone happy somewhere but I can't think who, aside from the lawyers on both sides.
When you get bitch-slapped by the DUTCH, you know you deserved it.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Borderline??? I don't think there was anything borderline about it. How about totally incompetent?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When asked for comment, Dr. Jacobson responded, "Oh yeah? Well he's a big doodoo head!"
Gota love the Dutch "directness." An American might see his comments as rude, but Northern Europeans tens towards directnes.
It is possible to have a doctorate and even win the Nobel Prize and appear to have little understanding of the scientific method. The two examples that come immediately to mind are:
Linus Pauling who evangalized for Vitamin C in spite of having little proof for what he was saying. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling
Sir Roy Meadow who sent lots of people to jail with his crackpot theories about sudden infant death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Meadow
Up here in Canada, we have a couple of high profile cases of physician incompetence right now. One case resulted in innocent people going to jail. The other case resulted in cancer patients dying because of botched medical tests.
The mere possession of a doctorate is no guarantee of any kind of competence.
Look at the courses he teaches. He should know better than to present something like this to the court.
Am I misremembering, or was he the one who in one deposition that he worked with some company that sold P2P-filtering software that the RIAA is trying to peddle to universities? The RIAA is even trying to turn schools into copyright cops, with the linked story being a Tennessee copy of some federal legislation that would do the same thing. Except that the TN legislation more explicitly threatens their funding if they don't "do something" about student piracy.
This is typical lawyer b.s. not ownage or LOL or haha etc..
Are we seriously running a /. article based on what one litigant is saying about another's position?
/.), it's not news until a judge says it.
Whichever side you favor (and we all know who that is on
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
I have served repeatedly over the past 9 years as an expert witness in technology-related litigation (including intellectual property cases), which means that I have analyzed (and, as required, rebutted) many expert reports and written quite a few of my own. Here are my observations:
..bruce..
-- Expert testimony in federal court (and for the most part, in state courts and arbitrations) is largely governed by several federal court decisions (Daubert v. Merrell Dow, Kumho Tire v. Carmichel) that require the judge to act as a 'gatekeeper' in deciding what expert testimony to allow or exclude. Much of Dr. Pouwelse's criticisms are aimed at the Daubert/Kumho standards, including qualifications and methodology, with an eye towards having these reports (and possibly Dr. Jacobson's testimony at trial) excluded.
-- Not having Dr. Jacobson's four reports/declarations, I can't critique them directly. However, the admissions by Dr. Jacobson during deposition that he spent only 45 minutes on his April 2006 report would appear to be pretty damaging. Even the briefest report I've ever written has taken at least several hours to put together, and I'm a fast writer; in most cases, it takes me anywhere from 40 to upwards of 100 hours of research, analysis, and writing to put together an expert report. Likewise, the 15 minutes on the December 19th declaration seems pretty short as well. This would naturally raise questions in the judge's mind whether Dr. Jacobson did his own research and writing and how well founded the reports and declarations are.
If someone has Dr. Jacobson's reports and declarations or has a link to them, please feel free to send them along, and I'll take a look at them directly.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Prof. Johan Pouwelse got 220 Euros per hour plus expenses for his "investigation" and report. Do you really think he was unbiased in his report? Could one of the reasons he agreed to do this was to toot his own horn as an "expert"? He states he is a P2P expert. He makes no mention of being a computer forensics expert or even slightly competent
There are a few things I noticed that the initial testimony and Pouweles's report that need to be addressed......
1) What was Prof. Jacobsen hired to do? If he was not hired to investigate something like how Verizon identified the IP addresses, he cannot be faulted for not knowing these.
When hired, what level of forensic proof was requested? If the RIAA did not specify a level that would hold up in criminal court then Prof. Jacobson cannot be faulted for not meeting that level. Was he even asked to pursue alternate explanations as part if his "marching orders"? Or was he asked to do a cursory "first look" at the hard disk and RIAA never went further to cover all their bases?
2) Stating that you did not know what processes and procedures MediSentry employed is not incompetence. Stating that you were absolutely certain of the process but in reality have no clue would be incompetence.
3) When giving testimony, the witness must consider the "audience". When speaking of highly technical things, there are two ways to go - a) completely technical and difficult for the layman to follow (and possibly lose the court case as a result), or b) a simplified explanation that can get the main point across and be understandable to the average person. So explaining a "network of networks" should not imply incompetence.
... the RIAA "expert", who is against P2P, is called "borderline incompetent" by not just an expert, but by one of the world's foremost experts on the science of P2P file sharing! That's right. The RIAA's shill is an "expert", the guy who opposes him is a scientist, so he must be right!
Look, to be fair, the guy probably is incompetent, but Slashdot just has a way of questioning the facts only at convenient times.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
This story is on Groklaw, too.
There's an absolutely night-and-day comparison between the "expert" and the expert. One won't discuss his fee arrangement without a court order, the other put it in his report. One was produced as a witness to testify about things that, under oath, he said he knew nothing about, while the other wasn't.
I simply cannot understand why Dr. Jacobsen would put his name on a report like that, but I can't imagine that it will enhance his career.
Well, it somehow brings to mind the concept that willful disregard isn't on the table. Is it a get-out-of-jail-free card?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
When my wife collapsed at work they did some bloodwork and it came back "borderline pregnant". She was told to come back for another test after a few days.
"Borderline"...It's called a euphemism.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I wish NYCL were here right now. I know he has all that stuff on his site... somewhere.
Here's what I was able to dig up:
* RIAA Lawsuits UMG v. Lindor Index
* April 12th report (this is the long one)
* Another one
* Original declaration (this was the first one, IIRC)
-----
* NYCL's index
* Deposition transcript
If NYCL shows up and contradicts me on any point, listen to him, not me. He's MUCH better than I am at keeping track of all these crazy lawsuits.
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
In a completely OT note, if someone posts this before me, it's because I have to wait an hour or more between posts. This is one of the few things I regret about submitting without an account.
This guy was definitely an expert. He had a string of well respected papers a mile long. He was an IEEE Fellow. He'd been, I believe, the head of the EE department at one or major engineering colleges. Advisor to numerous top companies, and member of numerous standardization committees. But he's retired now, and was probably getting $50-$100k (plus expenses) to find a way to say that disk cache was RAM cache, so even if that is a ridiculous position to take, it's not going to harm his career, or even his reputation. Even if his ridiculous position at this one trial came to the attention of people currently active in his field, they all know about the expert witness game, and will dismiss this. As long as you don't outright perjure yourself, taking a ridiculous position for money in court won't hurt you.
Common slang is "my bad" to indicate that someone takes blame for an error. The opposite would logically be "your bad" and the contra-positive would be "your right" as it was potentially used here. To paraphrase the original, "Gosh, that correct statement that belongs to you!"
Iffin eye no y its rong, aint it steal rite?
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Forgot to put the links to Saturday's Groklaw article and also the earlier Groklaw Analysis work (the later has links to analysis of an even earlier report).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I had him for a class at Iowa State and he couldn't quit staring at the cameras in the classroom long enough to actually teach anything. Terrible prof, terrible witness. He's one of those profs who latched onto computer security b/c it was the hot new thing the gov't was giving out grants for
> so when the judge calls his testimony "borderline incompetent," the judge is signalling that it may be likely to get thrown out.
...
... but I don't think he's a judge.
I really hate to undermine you because you make a lot of good points, but unless I've badly misread this whole story, it was an expert witness hired by the defense who called the RIAA's 'expert' testimony "borderline incompetent"
Now, don't misunderstand. I fully agree with that characterization. I was here on Slashdot (and Groklaw) helping to dissect every wrong statement in it I could find. I trawled through all those leaked MediaDefender emails to see if there were any juicy bits that could help at trial. This man is right!
Hopefully the judge WILL agree with this soon and we'll have a ruling making you retroactively correct, though!
Oh, I should mention one other thing. The RIAA *DOES* have an odd habit of citing random posts online and airing them in court. Mostly they focus on Mr. Beckerman's blog and try to use that against him in court, but I would _NOT_ put it past them to cite any other random comment online if they thought it would prove anything. I don't think it's bought them anything, and you're certainly correct that judges do not seem to pay much attention to them.
But it's still one of those things to be aware of, because I've seen plenty of evidence in legal filings that the RIAA is essentially cyber-stalking Mr. Beckerman, for all the good it will do them. Sort of like how SCO reads Groklaw all the time. Must be agonizing, that. Watching the public gawk at the train wreck you're making of your own business. I mean, even if the RIAA wins all these lawsuits, at best, they'll teach people to hate corporate music.
> Prof. Johan Pouwelse got 220 Euros per hour plus expenses for his "investigation" and report. Do you really think he was unbiased in his report? Could one of the reasons he agreed to do this was to toot his own horn as an "expert"?
Umm, that's what? $500 or something per hour? If he were like the RIAA "expert", he'd have only spent one hour on it... Okay, I'm sure he spent longer, but that's not that much in the legal world, really.
As you must have noticed, he put that in his declaration under the heading FULL DISCLOSURE, so it's not exactly a secret. The RIAA "expert" and his fee arrangements are the subject of a discovery motion. Does that make you think THEY are honest? They're hiding it unless they get a court order requiring its disclosure!
The fees they pay MediaSentry are also being withheld. And the RIAA "expert" is the one who peddled his anti-P2P software to Ohio State as mentioned in one of Mr. Beckerman's comments, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to suspect that he has some business arrangement there he's not eager to disclose.
I don't mean to claim that either one has an improper financial conflict of interest, mind you, because there isn't sufficient information to prove that yet to my knowledge. But if anyone did have one, well... let's just say that the RIAA and their witness are far more suspicious and far less forthcoming than the defendant and leave it at that.
Glad to have you double-check it. I wouldn't care to miss anything. But I'm terrible at remembering names, so I didn't want to get confused by all the record labels, Does and their various cases. So for that, I thank you.
...). Mind you, I'm just someone who supports the EFF, not someone who represents it, but I feel like it would be a good way to help increase support. Though you might have trouble with the RIAA getting confused about who you work for again :-)
In a completely unrelated note, I noticed a lot of calls for EFF donations in this story, which is a good thing because it's my understanding that they helped fund this. If you've seen any of my submissions, you might know that I often submit http://www.eff.org/support as my "homepage" so that my name becomes a link to it (I rotate between a few sites that I advocate, but the EFF support page is the most useful). Would you care to consider doing that for the EFF donation page, too? I feel like it might help.
Your stories are already on your blog (which, of course, also has an expert witness fund donate button), so it seems to me that readers will already go to your blog anyway, so that URL is sort of an "extra" you can use for a bit of light advocacy, or at least that's how I like to use it (heck, I even use my "name" for that
It's just a thought, so feel free to ignore it. No matter what, I'm glad to have you representing those being oppressed by the RIAA, and I wish you many victories in court.
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
Oops, I get all the people confused sometimes. Like I said, I'm bad with names :-/ So I appreciate the correction.
Might want to consider making a link to that fund your "homepage" then. I know that both do good work and I do tend to confuse what they're doing at times.
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I'm interested in reading it, but I fear that this discussion will leave the front page in not so very long. Do you plan to put your analysis here, then?
Nah. Thanks for the interesting defense, but your wrong and the grammer Nazi is right. I was not intentionally using a contra-positive.
a first semester CS student with rudimentary knowledge of networking could pick apart the prosecution's arguments.
All you'd have to do is set up a server on one side of the room and two workstations behind a router on the other. Sit someone down behind each computer and have them access a web page on the server. The web page would show the IPs of both workstations as the same IP - hence IP does not identify a unique computer. Then have different people sit down at the exact same computers and read the IP info again. Of course it wouldn't have changed thus proving that an IP can't be linked directly to an individual either.
Basically 5 min of setup would destroy the RIAA's entire case.
I think your sarcasm meter may need adjustment, my good man.
The amount of abuse a sarcasm meter gets around here will cause it to explode if you don't protect it from overload.