MediaSentry Defied Michigan Investigation For Months

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "You may recall that MediaSentry, the RIAA's unlicensed investigator, has been the subject of an investigation by Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth for its conduct of investigations without an investigator's license, an investigation in which it has made contradictory and false statements to the government's investigators. Well apparently this didn't deter MediaSentry from simply continuing its practice of conducting 'investigations' without a license. In Michigan, no less. We have learned from court papers (PDF) filed in Michigan that the practice continued for months after the DLEG had begun questioning the practice."

Comments

Makes sense

[seeker_1us]

No reason to stop business as usual while he RIAA tries to buy, err make "campaign donations" to more politicians.

Little things like questionable legality and ethics aside...

IANAL, so...?

[serviscope_minor]

What's the penalty for this kind of thing, in terms of the company and individuals? I hope there's some personal liability in there somewhere.

Re:IANAL, so...?

[betterunixthanunix]

Personally, the penalty I would like to see is for Mediasentry's corporate charter and registration to be revoked. That would teach their directors right and quick.

Oh well, we don't live in a country where citizens come first.

Re:IANAL, so...?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What's the penalty for this kind of thing, in terms of the company and individuals? I hope there's some personal liability in there somewhere.

I believe the criminal penalties max out at $5,000 and two years. Multiply that by the number of incidents and it could be some money, but I doubt anyone will go to jail. The civil liabilities, however, might rack up some additional costs if all the people they testify against sue them and the RIAA for court fees and damages resulting from their illegal investigation.

Re:IANAL, so...?

[nurb432]

Far less then the lives they are trying to ruin with non existent evidence.

Re:IANAL, so...?

[entrylevel]

I think it is more likely than one might think, but it won't help.

How many people do you think are actually on MediaSentry's payroll? How much actual cash do they need on hand to troll P2P sites and the like?

More to the point, how long do you think it will take after MediaDefender *ahem* I mean MediaSentry is completely dissolved before MediaProtector springs up?

The problem is that the **AA hired these folks to do a job and can't be held accountable if MediaWhatever broke the law unless they explicitly instructed them to do so.

Re:IANAL, so...?

[pxlmusic]

they'll get away with it because they're fighting piracy and by extension something "for the children".

Re:IANAL, so...?

[John Hasler]

Much better would be for at least some of the judges with jurisdiction over some of the "settlements" extorted using MediaSentry's illegal investigations were to reopen the cases sua sponte, void the settlements on the basis of fraud and unclean hands, disallow all MediaSentry evidence, and invite the defendants to move for legal fees and malicious prosecution damages. Say, two or three thousand cases at perhaps $50,000 each, with the RIAA, its member publishers, MediaSentry, and the law firms jointly and severally liable.

Re:IANAL, so...?

[Original Replica]

Corporations exist to shield people from liability, not to allow people to indirectly commit crimes.

When you have an amoral guiding principle such as "maximize profit" as the primary goal of your corporation, then there is little to no difference between a "shield from liability" and a carte blanc for white collar crime. I think that is the line that divides good corporations from evil corporations; the primacy of profit. A good corp might have profit as second in it's list of priorities after something like "make the best product we can" or "provide a low cost service" but a soon as profit overrules all other aspects of the company they crossover to the Dark Side. While a protection from liablity is a societially good thing when a good corporation has it, it is a societally bad thing when a evil corp has it. MediaDefender/Sentry/Thug is a tool of the RIAA which is purely based on profit maximization.

Re:IANAL, so...?

[Kaenneth]

How about $5000/2 years per employee, per day, per per person illegally investigated.

the more factors you can toss in for damages the better, like per infringment times per person shared with, times per person sharing, times punitive damages...

Re:IANAL, so...?

[Lunarsight]

What's the penalty for this kind of thing, in terms of the company and individuals? I hope there's some personal liability in there somewhere.

I hope there's a penalty too, but going after MediaSentry itself is pointless. They're just a disposable face.

The court should take out its judicial fury on the corporations pulling MediaSentry's strings. I'm not talking about the RIAA either. Keep going even further back. Follow the money. Make the real people calling the shots accountable.

Re:IANAL, so...?

[mpe]

Corporations exist to shield people from liability, not to allow people to indirectly commit crimes.

The original idea was to shield people from financial liability so as to encourage people to invest money into a businesses. If the business failed an investor would only be liable for the amount they'd out in, unlike with sole ownership, partnership, etc, where an owner would be liable for all debts.
Somehow this has mutated into the idea of protecting executives and employees from the consequences of their actions, even breaking the law. Together with the idea of corporate entities being "people" without the necessary infrastructure to enforce criminal laws against them.

What could happen?

[Xelios]

I'm interested in knowing what's the worst that could happen to the people behind Mediasentry if found guilty? What kind of fines are we talking about here? Could they face jail terms? Or will it just mean they have to dissolve the company and start again under a different name?

Re:What could happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the private investigators who got hired by HP's Dunn to spy on board members to try and find who was leaking stuff to the press? The PIs who used social engineering/pretexting to illegally obtain cellphone records from the phone companies? Remember what happened to those PIs? Yup, nothing. That's what will happen here.

Re:What could happen?

[daninspokane]

From another article:

The prosecutor can prosecute these cases as felonies, with a maximum penalty of a $5,000 fine and/or up to four years in prison.

Nothing too stiff compared to what you can get for pirating a movie... :/

Re:What could happen?

[FooGoo]

I'm interested in knowing what's the worst that could happen to the people behind Mediasentry...

Three words...
Voracious Rectal Mites

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

As soon ...

[daveime]

As soon as an investigation is instgated, any "evidence" submitted by the RIAA to the courts should immediately be recognized as non-admissible ...

Look at i this way ... would you trust the word of a homeless tramp, a drug dealer, a hippie, Jay OR Silent Bob ?

There are standards of conduct that the RIAA and it's investigators have broken time and time again ... and yet their "evidence" is STILL admissible in court ? WTF ?

Re:As soon ...

[Nerdfest]

I'd totally trust Silent Bob. The man's a visionary.

Same company

[Enderandrew]

This is the same company that admits to using illegal denial-of-service attacks. They have no regard for the law, and if they get busted, they'll close shop and reopen under another name.

Re:Same company

[RobertM1968]

Oh, they have regard for the law... (a) the ones they can buy, (b) the ones they can use to further their cause, and (c) the ones they can ignore because no one is stopping them.

As for (b) they have already made mention (and the MPAA has already won such suits) of trying to drag these things into criminal prosecution - and folks, though people here claim that is not possible, the laws already exist to allow it. The MPAA won one such case (already talked about someplace on slashdot not too long ago) and the video game industry recently won another:

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/15143.cfm

If they start getting more wins in civil suits, I can guarantee you they will be going for a two pronged attack (civil and criminal) - at least that's my opinion from reading what they have said, what they have done and what the MPAA has done.

The key difference in the type of suit (if I understand it correctly - and IANAL, so I might not) is that for it to be criminal, the person must be doing it for the purpose of gaining some sort of compensation (such as money). (1) I am sure the **AA would love to see that expanded to these type cases, where compensation is not the reason it's done, and (2) I am sure they could always argue that the file sharer is indeed gaining compensation via downloading songs of certain value during or in conjunction with the commission of their distribution crime. Remember, compensation does not have to be monetary... and while this may be a stretch, the RIAA has made numerous other "stretches" that they have been allowed to carry on over the years.

Enderandrew is right - though the situation may become even more bleak as the RIAA become even more desperate.

Big question is, will they shoot themselves in the collective foot before they maneuver or legislate themselves into a protected haven? (wish I knew - wouldnt wanna bet either way)

Re:Can't blame them really

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

They haven't had any injunctions against them or any court orders to stop... so why would they quit? They may be a scummy company, but I can't really blame them for not stopping when they're just being investigated, but no one is forcing them to stop. However, my hope is that the investigation will make them have to pay fines for each infraction, and that any evidence found in every single case they help with will be thrown out.

They weren't exactly ordered to stop but they were gently reminded on February 22nd.

Re:MediaDefender and MediaSentry

[daninspokane]

They are 2 different companies. This is actually a pretty good read Worth the time.

Re:Can't blame them really

[phulegart]

What?? They sure do go dump Toxic Waste because there aren't specific injunctions and court orders not telling them to...
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/11165
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/27/93622.shtml?s=ic
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Toxic_waste_dump_killing_children_in_Kenya_UN_report_999.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/06/MN2510MASF.DTL&type=printable

You think these companies waited until they were in trouble to start dumping their crap?

Much much better

[symbolset]

Would be to abolish copyright altogether and get rid of this and the whole basket of related problems in one fell stroke.

It's more likely than you might think.

Re:MediaSentry == SafeNet

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Just so people are aware, MediaSentry is owned by a greater company, SafeNet. SafeNet controls their operations and is headquartered in Belcamp, MD (1/2 mile from me, as it turns out).

Actually SafeNet is MediaSentry; MediaSentry just changed its name to SafeNet.

Re:defied an investigation?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Michigan *law* prohibited unlicensed investigations without the need for a court order to explicitly stop each occurrence, which should have been as much legal proscription as these bozos needed. Similarly, burglars generally aren't sent subpoenas or C&Ds in connection with breaking into people's houses.

What makes me feel good is that these additional instances of violating the law, after they were informed by the DLEG that they need a license, will weigh against them at their sentencing.

Re:defied an investigation?

[NormalVisual]

Let's hope so. Also, I just noticed your new tagline URL - best of luck with the new practice!

Death Penalty

[johnos]

OK, its a bit extreme. But let's at least waterboard them.

Re:Why Lie?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I wasn't lying; I just made the mistake of relying upon RIAA/Safenet/MediaSentry's court papers which refer to Safenet and say "formerly known as MediaSentry". In reexamining them, I note that in at least one of those documents (PDF) the phrase "formerly known as" could be read to be modifying Safenet, or it could be read to be modifying just "the MediaSentry product development unit of Safenet". So if it is so that MediaSentry was acquired by Safenet I apologize and stand corrected.

Re:Four more letters: RICO

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Or in establishing the case and penalties in a RICO countersuit... It seems to me that this lawlessness qualifies for RICO counteraction, against both MediaSentry and RIAA. (and could it be a class action??)

Very technical question. It's all quite new. American judicial history has never seen a litigation campaign like this one before, all based upon conduct which violates various states' licensing laws, some of which make violation a felony, some of which make violation a misdemeanor. Probably you should follow Andersen v. Atlantic and Atlantic v. Raleigh for some specific instances of RICO litigation, and UMG v. Del Cid and Atlantic v. Boyer, on civil conspiracy to commit crime of unlicensed investigation, but nothing is definitive at this point. It will be years before we know the answer to your question.

Re:MediaSentry == SafeNet

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The information comes from MediaSentry's lawyer. If it's neither "informative" or "true" that is par for the course. MediaSentry is known for making contradictory statements.