"Probable Cause" Hearing Against MediaSentry

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "RIAA sidekick MediaSentry's 'illegal investigation' problem, which surfaced the other day when it got caught in a lie in Michigan (or got caught telling the truth after having told 2 years worth of lies in Brooklyn), has taken another turn for the worse. We learned today from court papers filed in North Carolina, in one of the cases targeting NC State students in Raleigh, that the North Carolina Private Protective Services Board has scheduled a Grievance Committee hearing to determine whether there is probable cause to investigate an alleged violation of the law by SafeNet (formerly known as MediaSentry). Fortunately for MediaSentry, they won't have to testify under oath, according to the notice (PDF)."

Comments

Lincoln must be spinning....

[Anonymous Coward]

"...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

I guess it's perishing. It's now becoming:

"government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation"

Re:Lincoln must be spinning....

[The FNP]

Corporations are legal entities too!

There, fixed that for you.

--The FNP

Re:Lincoln must be spinning....

[kdemetter]

People are legal entities too !

Therefore , corporations are people , or at least run by people ( the term people here defines the actual being , and does not refer to the set of morals required to be considered a human being)

Re:Lincoln must be spinning....

[cthulu_mt]

"...Corporations are made out of people!...People!...."

Money Machine

[grolaw]

It appears that, finally, the tables are turning against the RIAA and their counsel. Now, if the counsel are disciplined I'll believe that the system might just work.

Re:Money Machine

[thermian]

Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.

I'm not saying all downloaders should be criminalised, that's a batshit insane approach.

I'm thinking a parking ticket type system, so if you get caught, you pay a small fine, and move on without your life being poured down the crapper.

A parking ticket type system would acknowledge that not everyone plays nice, but there is a possible consequence if you choose to grab something of TPB rather than buy it. I'd say a ten, or even 100 buck fine every time your caught (not per file or anything like that) would be suitable. It would be enough to discourage some people, and if you did get caught? Pay up and move along, no big deal.

Re:Money Machine

[The FNP]

This is also the kind of signs us wags here on /. have been prophesizing (and wishing for) since this campaign of terror started. It has taken a while for the momentum to be slowed, such as we have seen with the small gains made monthly, but if the courts and the accompanying PI licensing boards go after the methodology of the RIAA, then it becomes much easier to finally stop the cases on multiple grounds. We have already seen the multiple cases summarily decided(or abandoned) in the People's favor, including with awarded attorney's fees. Now, we get to see every link in the chain as vulnerable, and a good lawyer(i.e. one on the People's side) should be able to attack every aspect of their pre-litigation discovery including their methods for discovering the IPs, the Does, the ISP's Customer, the ISP's Customer's friends and family, etc.

Thanks, NYCL, let's keep the ball rolling and see if the court system can finally stop these suits completely. Maybe the day will come when the RIAA will drop the case automatically if you refuse to pay their Settlement center.

--The FNP

Re:Money Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.

The media companies make most of the profits from anything created these days. Maybe we should start by cutting out the unnecessary middlemen (like the RIAA) and get the media companies to reward their artists & creators accordingly.

Re:Money Machine

[Darkness404]

Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.

Such as concerts? Today the RIAA basically gets most of the profits from CDs/iTunes downloads for any signed band. Now when you buy those burnt CDs from a local indie band, most, if not all of it goes to the band, but as for signed bands, they make money from concerts. If we take out the RIAA, we have a nice stream of income from CDs and because it is the bands and not some media overlord, downloading will be tolerated, if not legal.

Re:Money Machine

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

This is also the kind of signs us wags here on /. have been prophesizing (and wishing for) since this campaign of terror started. It has taken a while for the momentum to be slowed, such as we have seen with the small gains made monthly, but if the courts and the accompanying PI licensing boards go after the methodology of the RIAA, then it becomes much easier to finally stop the cases on multiple grounds. We have already seen the multiple cases summarily decided(or abandoned) in the People's favor, including with awarded attorney's fees. Now, we get to see every link in the chain as vulnerable, and a good lawyer(i.e. one on the People's side) should be able to attack every aspect of their pre-litigation discovery including their methods for discovering the IPs, the Does, the ISP's Customer, the ISP's Customer's friends and family, etc. Thanks, NYCL, let's keep the ball rolling and see if the court system can finally stop these suits completely. Maybe the day will come when the RIAA will drop the case automatically if you refuse to pay their Settlement center.

To quote Longfellow:
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small."

Re:Money Machine

[Confused]

Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.

So how was it before copyright was invented? There the artists did for a good part commission work and had no claims to any further pay after delivering the work. And, surprise over surprise they could also make a living.

I gotta rolls royce, cause its good for my voice, [...]

-- T. Rex

So what will happen in case that whole media business collapses and artists can't get any money at all from that evil internet for their hard work?

First, it'll affect only the very few acts that make it into the charts of any kind. Most musicians across the world don't live off their royalties, they live from playing music. Some famous acts like the Grateful Dead have proven it works.

Well, Britney-darling and Christina will have a harder time to get that Roll Royce for their voices, but do you really think this would be a global cataclysm?

Re:Money Machine

[TheGratefulNet]

this poster has it right.

think back to a few hundred years ago. the king had a court jester. he was there to entertain the king. when the jester performed, he got to eat dinner with the rest. if he 'called in sick' he would not get paid.

if you perform, you get paid.

do you think the king would continue to bankroll a jester whose last performance was a few years ago?

so why does the concept of 'perform once; get paid many' work? THAT seems highly unfair. I don't get paid again and again when I wrote code. why should 'entertainers' have a different standard?

do football players get paid each time someone watches their past performance?

here's a hint: performing artists (note the magic word there) should get paid when they PERFORM.

kids today see thru this; that's one reason why they are rebelling. the system is unfair and so 'we' fight back to holding onto our cash and not giving it time and time again to the same old non-performing sitting-on-your-laurels artists.

if the entertainment industry wants to 'fix' the payment model, lets REALLY revamp it. small tweaks are bullshit; it needs a total re-do if its going to be at all acceptable to the kids (buying public) today.

Re:Money Machine

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small."

I'm hungry for dinner and you're talking to me about grinding cornmeal??

It's 10:03 AM and you're hungry for dinner?
When did you have breakfast? Last night?

Re:Money Machine

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Although the RIAA likes to tell judges and the press that these cases are about downloading, in all the cases I've seen I've yet to see one where the case was about downloading.

Re:Money Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't get paid again and again when I wrote code.

Really? I thought that was called selling software? Maybe everyone should just code until a project is done then give it away! Surely the big gains from giving years of effort away will cover the expense of paying for an engineering team. Otherwise, what are we supposed to do? Code nights & weekends for free while working at a gas station during the day?

Record companies essentially do the same thing everyone else does. They produce a product (music) that has demand. Nobody is obligated to buy music. Nobody needs music to live. People do buy it because they want to listen to it (because they like it). So, just stealing it and later saying "the system is broken" is some pretty strange logic. Ford makes cars. Should we just steal those too?

And don't say that record companies have no overhead (compared to Ford). Obviously they employ people (people like you & me, that have families, etc). They have studios. They have to buy hardware, etc. These things need to be paid for. So is there some reason why they can't charge for a product + take a profit off the top like every other business in the history of mankind has done?

And... last but not least, nobody is stopping indie bands from releasing their content online to everyone. They can do that if they want. Many do, many don't. Probably because record company promotions and distribution are still a better way for indie bands to make money than "posting stuff online for free".

Re:Money Machine

[grolaw]

Artists who make a living from their work are few and far between. When an artist does manage to find an audience the income is siphoned off by (now, entirely ancillary) distributors.

I buy all of my music - either as CD / DVD and I still have 5000 vinyl records.

I also use an iPod in the car - radio being in the terrible state that it is.

True fidelity only comes from uncompressed files or original sources and a fairly expensive home reproduction system. I have over $15k invested in my preamp/amp & speakers- and I bought them well over 20 years ago (kind of amusing that my computers and stereo have the same name).

At root, this is a market issue and the RIAA isn't doing anything to help the market. The people who are concerned about the sound of their music and the artists who create it will always pay. Those who don't care about the music aren't part of the market in the first place so there really is no "lost sale" - if anything it is possible that a "pirate" may come into the fold with the sample and the artist gains a new customer.

Moreover, where the media changes (for the better) the music lover will repurchase the same music - to hear more and to enjoy more.

Me? Oh, I've bought quite a few things from iTunes - albeit that I don't like the sound quality of AAC files. I have at least five copies of Dark Side of the Moon - two vinyl copies (one MFSL edition) two CD copies (again, one the MFSL) and it was the first thing I bought on iTunes. I well remember the Hirsch-Houck Labs tests of the first CDs - the "curves" were flat! The first DDD recordings were phenomenal - I have a copy of Jay Leonhart's Salamander Pie that I bought in the early 1980s on the DMP label - it was fantastic. Four years ago a remastered SACD was issued by DMP and it was even more nuanced and incredible.

I don't think that I'm unusual - the majority of my friends and associates have extensive music collections and many are professional musicians - albeit that they have day jobs.

The artist and the quality of the sound are what make me buy music. It is the same as it ever was and when lossless digital files start becoming the primary material "pirated" I'll be shocked and appalled - but, you see - those of us who love music won't steal from our artists.

Re:Money Machine

[Just Some Guy]

Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.

Why? They chose to invest in a market with no intrinsic value that depended on an artificial scarcity.

I wish someone would find a (fair) way of helping me to make a living from sleeping all day, but that's not a reasonable expectation - and neither is yours.

Re:Money Machine

[hairyfeet]

The problem is that we,the people,and the *.*.A.A had a contract,which they have broken through bribery and manipulation of our laws. The whole point of copyrights was the granting of a LIMITED monopoly,for a LIMITED amount of time,in return for sharing it with the world at the end of this time through a richer Public Domain. We should have all the great music of the '50s and '60s for free right now. But they are still charging a buck a song on iTunes,why? Because through bribery and manipulation of our laws they have rigged the game in favor of themselves.

To actually feel sorry for the greedy pigs to me is just the height of insanity. It is like feeling sorry for the dealer at a blackjack table who is dealing off the bottom so the house always wins. Personally I haven't seen any of their garbage that I want,but if anyone wants to rob them blind,I say more power to them. Until a new contract is written,one in which BOTH sides get something out of it, the copyright laws are as corrupt and evil as anything passed in your average banana republic. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:Money Machine

[pfleming]

So, just stealing it and later saying "the system is broken" is some pretty strange logic. Ford makes cars. Should we just steal those too?

No. But if someone burned me a copy of their Mustang I would probably take it.

Re:Money Machine

[pfleming]

It might go hand in hand, but downloading isn't the same as "making available" which is the angle they seem to be going for.

Re:Money Machine

[ScrewMaster]

That would only work if there were an infallible (or near infallible) method of determining when copyright infringement occurred. There isn't, and the only way to make that happen would require technological infringement upon so many other rights that it would be unacceptable. Furthermore, who would you like to have in charge of issuing said "tickets"? The RIAA? Ha.

Even cops, who have the luxury of actually seeing a citizen commit a crime, often get it wrong. Worse yet, what you're proposing would be wide open to abuse and would, in effect, become a tax, not a penalty. Presumably there would be no court time involved, so we would end up with an automated MediaSentry-like system spitting out demands for cash. No thanks.

Copyright law is supposed to be a balance of the needs of society and those of content creators. Keep in mind that society is supposed to determine that balance, not megacorps who have acquired ownership (through often dubious means) to works they did not even create. Regardless, they've resorted to bribery of high government officials to maintain their hegemony. That eliminates any claims to moral high ground to which they might otherwise have been entitled.

Keep firmly in mind that this is not about We the People vs. The Artists. This is about We the People vs. a corrupt government colluding with an equally corrupt entertainment industry that does not, and has not ever, represented the creative members of our culture.

Re:Money Machine

[wikid_one]

...

do football players get paid each time someone watches their past performance?

...

No, they don't. But the body that owns their work does... does this sound familiar: "Any rebroadcast, retransmission or other use of this telecast without the written consent of the National Football League is prohibited"

Re:Money Machine

[Paradise Pete]

Yes, but we still need a (fair) way of helping media creators to make a living from their work.

And it has to start by having a reasonable copyright law. Things have to come into the public domain *much* more quickly. If holding a copyright became increasingly costly as it ages, most items would naturally fall into the public domain, and yet Disney could still keep Mickey. But a free, nearly perpetual monopoly is absurd.

Re:Money Machine

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be all fine and dandy, except they want you to pay once for the CD, once for your iPod, once for your cellphone, once for your car stereo, once for your home computer, once for your work computer, once for... you get the drift.

If they could they'd make us pay once everytime we hear it, whether intentionally or not, even if it's just in the radio of our mind.

Re:Money Machine

[honkycat]

Fuck Steven Tyler with a chainsaw. What he produces, along with the idiots at Metallica is not music. BUT, they have found an audience.

Sorry, didn't realize we had to run things by you to figure out if it's music or not. Thanks for clarifying!

Re:Money Machine

[Strix Varia]

That's a common view from a non-musician. If musicians made money solely from performances, it wouldn't be long before there were no more professional musicians left. None would be able to afford it. Touring and putting on shows and concerts costs money. It's that simple. Whether the costs are for gas, plane tickets, food, music equipment, or roadies, not to mention the cuts of ticket sales that go to the venues. Every band/artist has to start out at the bottom, and many bands that haven't yet "made it big" often come back from a tour with not that much more than they left with. Expecting people to live on just that income would mean the eventual death of your PERFORMING artist.

Re:Money Machine

[mpe]

That's a common view from a non-musician. If musicians made money solely from performances, it wouldn't be long before there were no more professional musicians left.

This would be bad because?

Touring and putting on shows and concerts costs money. It's that simple. Whether the costs are for gas, plane tickets, food, music equipment, or roadies, not to mention the cuts of ticket sales that go to the venues.

It's not unknown for venues to pay bands (and PA companies) to play there.

Every band/artist has to start out at the bottom, and many bands that haven't yet "made it big" often come back from a tour with not that much more than they left with. Expecting people to live on just that income would mean the eventual death of your PERFORMING artist.

You are missing that plenty of people want to see live music and they are prepared to pay to do so. They might not always be prepared to pay what "artists" think they are worth and be fickle when it comes to tastes, but that's just human nature.

And let me say a resounding

[esocid]

What?! Only in a country where a democratically controlled congress passes a bill giving a free pass, sorry for using pass so much, to the telecoms for violating the law would the courts allow a company that illegally collects data to testify in a case without being under oath. Now how about the defendants, they get this free pass too, right?

Re:And let me say a resounding

[Attila Dimedici]

What?! Only in a country where a democratically controlled congress passes a bill giving a free pass, sorry for using pass so much, to the telecoms for violating the law would the courts allow a company that illegally collects data to testify in a case without being under oath. Now how about the defendants, they get this free pass too, right?

If you had actually read the summary, you would see that it is not the courts that are asking MediaSentry to testify, it is the North Carolina Private Protective Services Board. This is no more the "courts" than the FCC is on the federal level.

Corporation: "they", not "it"

[lenski]

Legally speaking, corporations are considered to be individual entities. But this causes all sorts of problems with understanding what's really happening under the cover of darkness under which corporate management operates too frequently.

Every corporation is run by a group of ordinary people, making decisions for themselves, the stockholders and (on occasion) their employees and customers.

It is this impedance mismatch between the legal interpretation and reality that causes such difficulty: The people whose decisions determine the corporation's behavior in society are insulated from responsibility by the "corporate veil". This insulation of personal responsibility from corporate authority is the cause of great difficulty.

Someday, I hope our use of language will be altered to reflect reality. A corporation is run by a group of people which is best understood conceptually as they, not a singular entity which is incorrectly referred to as an it. And it stands to reason that they need to be held to account for their decisions.

Except that it's not at all unreasonable...

[Animaether]

"I wish someone would find a (fair) way of helping me to make a living from sleeping all day"
1. Get hunderds, thousands, perhaps millions to see value in your sleeping all day.
2. Let that value be enough to make a living
3. done

"but that's not a reasonable expectation"
I don't see why not.

Let's say I make a movie - let's say it costs me a mere $1,000 to make. That $1,000 has to come from somewhere.
Now a hundred thousand people watch that movie and are entertained, the value they found in it being said entertainment. Now comes the difficult part... turning that entertainment value into monetary value. Presume it was a regular movie ticket... $8 or so. That's $800,000 that would've been mine. But alright, I'm sure I'm not entitled to $800,000 when the thing only cost $1,000 to make... (and yes, I find $5,000,000 actors unreasonable - same as I find multi-million dollar baseball players unreasonable, but that's not stopping people getting baseball tickets to a single event that they can't even tape with their own HD cameras and ... I digress) so let's say I price the thing at $0.10. That's still $10,000 but what the hey, I can use that $9,000 to make 9 more movies, or maybe 3 more with better quality props.. or I'll donate the $9,000 to charity.. whatever.
I would say that $0.25 for a full length movie is not just *reasonable*, it's ludicrously cheap.. you won't even find scratched-up mangled rental-place DVDs for that price.

And yet... somehow... the mindset of the masses is that that's not reasonable at all - they feel that the only reasonable price for intangible goods is $0. And that is what I find unreasonable. Paying $50 at a restaurant for foodstuffs that will just come out as fecal matter... that's unreasonable. Paying $4/gallon gas to drive 5 miles back and forth every day... that's unreasonable.

I'm all for reform and getting media creators to get with the program (some do - opening their own YouTube channels and sharing in ad revenue, for example)... I'm not for the mindset that media creators will just have to find a job making tangible goods which magically -are- worth actual cash, and do 'that media thing' in their spare time as a hobby for zilch. If enthusiasts do want to make free media - go for it, that's nothing new - but that doesn't mean that we should all be forcing others to do the same just because we're cheapskates.

So as for the grandparent... the technical solution is simple - offer the things in online stores for cheap. The mindset problem is another one altogether.. and the genie may be out of the bottle on that one.

Re:Except that it's not at all unreasonable...

[Just Some Guy]

I would say that $0.25 for a full length movie is not just *reasonable*, it's ludicrously cheap..

But here's the thing: consumers decide how much goods are worth. Always. That's how markets work. It's incumbent upon those who want to cater to a market to decide how to deliver a product at a price that their potential customers are willing to pay.

If consumers have collectively decided that music and movies are worth $0.00, then producers have three options:

1. Convince consumers to pay. Include cool, tangible items with movie purchases like posters or gloves or whatever.
2. Get sponsors. Advertising pays to bring "Lost" to viewers; maybe Coca-Cola can pay to let them see "Hancock".
3. Find an easier way to make a buck. Maybe holding down a real job isn't as much fun as snorting coke off a hooker, but them's the breaks.

Seriously, it's out of their hands. Again, producers don't decide what a reasonable price is for their products - consumers do. The best producers can do is figure out how much people are willing to pay and try to make a profit at that level.

Re:Honesty

[ScrewMaster]

Not at all. The little white lie is lubricant which makes civilization possible. Most of us, in fact, don't even want to know the absolute truth about the people we know, love, and with whom we work.

Re:AC from beyond the dead?

[Khyber]

AC has it right. Also, the NFL has no rights over what happens to anything transmitted over the airwaves once it reaches my property, it is mine to do with as I please, including recording it, encrypting/decrypting it. I may not rebroadcast (but that's purely due to FCC rules and regulations) but the FCC ruled specifically about OTA broadcasting and things like the use of police scanners for citizens - once that signal hits your property, it's yours to do with as you please.

Of course, the media corporation's response is to try to force everyone to Digital *COUGHMODIFIEDANALOG* broadcasting and encrypting the media OTA so it would be a violation of the DMCA to record it successfully.

Re:Honesty

[Crazy_CorranH]

And it would be perfectly truthful to say I'm not going to give that info out to random people on the Internet. Being truthful doesn't mean you can't have secrets, just that you don't lie.