"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

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

[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]

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

[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

[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.

Re:Lincoln must be spinning....

[cthulu_mt]

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

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: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.