University of Michigan Student Wants SafeNet Prosecuted

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An anonymous University of Michigan student, targeted by the RIAA as a 'John Doe,' is asking for the RIAA's investigator, SafeNet (formerly MediaSentry), to be prosecuted criminally for a pattern of felonies in Michigan. Known to Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth — the agency regulating private investigators in that state — only as 'Case Number 162983070,' the student has pointed out that the law has been clear in Michigan for years that computer forensics activities of the type practiced by Safenet require an investigator's license. This follows the submissions by other 'John Does' establishing that SafeNet's changing and inconsistent excuses fail to justify its conduct, and that Michigan's legislature and governor have backed the agency's position that an investigator's license was required." SafeNet/MediaSentry defended their actions by claiming their company simply "records public information available to millions of users. If private investigator licenses were required to do what MediaSentry does, every user on Limewire and other illegal p2p networks would be required to have a license. Indeed, every search engine and Internet user would be required to have a private investigator license if MediaSentry needs one."

Comments

p2p != illegal

[snl2587]

Why do they insist on calling p2p itself illegal? Do they actually understand the law at all, or are they relying on public ignorance to keep them justified?

Wait....nevermind...

Re:p2p != illegal

[Greyfox]

Some P2P company should sue them for defamation.

Re:p2p != illegal

[moosesocks]

or are they relying on public ignorance to keep them justified?

You must be new here (that is, to the US....)

And no, I'm not trying to be funny. If you've been following the current election cycle, especially this past week, you should be well aware that this is a perfectly viable strategy.

Re:p2p != illegal

[maxume]

I'm not sure critical thinking courses would help a whole lot.

Re:p2p != illegal

[Z34107]

You may have had a hard time explaining why file-sharing isn't theft because the two are pretty close.

It's true that file-sharing involves intangible goods with no loss to the other party. However, in both cases you get something you didn't pay for that belonged (or still belongs!) to someone else. The results for the "thief" are the same even if the means (and their side effects) are drastically different.

But, you know that. And, evidently, most people don't. But, I wouldn't trust those same people to teach others how to think critically.

Re:p2p != illegal

[chinakow]

Because people need to understand the LOGIC before they can think critically about some thing. Indeed they need to know at least some structured logic for them to even understand what a logical fallacy is. while it may seem easy to understand that:
Sharing IP without permission is illegal.
All P2P File sharing shares IP.
Therefore, all P2P file sharing is illegal.
Seeing the fallacy here is easy but being able to detect a more subtle fallacy is more difficult and when someone does it intentionally can be quite frustrating. So really what we need is logic classes, the critical thinking can be learned from other students when they use the logic to trick the others out of their lunch money.

Re:p2p != illegal

[Khyber]

It's the student that absorbed only 50% of our material that's running the country now. What point were you trying to make?

Re:p2p != illegal

[plasmacutter]

To most people, theft is taking what you didn't pay for. That's exactly what file sharing someone else's IP is - you have something you didn't pay for, even if nobody else "lost" it as a consequence. That's how they're "pretty close", even though the presence of intangible, non-rival goods is significant.

dirty air thieves (people who live), dastardly noise thieves (people with ears), horrific light thieves (photographers)

if you don't pay for it it's a sin, viva extremist capitalism!

Re:p2p != illegal

[Khyber]

I may not speak for everyone, but I'm sure I speak for a fair percentage when I say thank you for proving that a protocol is a protocol, and not some piracy lane. Piracy can happen from HTTP to P2P to Torrent to FTP to Newsgroups to E-Mail, and all of those are at the most basic level peer to peer to begin with. Yes, there are middlemen in the way, but it's still basically one person networking to another through various connections, social, digital, or otherwise. To single out a specific protocol made for information transfer as a lane of information piracy when all protocols are designed for the transfer of information is asinine.

Re:p2p != illegal

[Z34107]

dirty air thieves (people who live), dastardly noise thieves (people with ears), horrific light thieves (photographers) if you don't pay for it it's a sin, viva extremist capitalism!

Except in this case, the dirty air thieves are at one of those hippy-dippy-trippy oxygen bar places, those dastardly noise thieves snuck into a concert, and those horrific light thieves were photographing your intellectual property in the nude.

Re:p2p != illegal

[MBGMorden]

Most people don't see file sharing as "taking" anything though - and that's a sentiment that is common far beyond computer geekdom. I'm the only Slashdot/computer nerd type that I know of. My other friends are more the drinking/partying/fantasy football type crowd that uses a computer for stuff like Myspace and the like but not seriously. HOWEVER, they all grab music off of some P2P service or another. The thing is, they know people get sued for it, but they don't really understand why. To them music is free anyways, so who would pay?

This attitude stems from the fact, I think, that music HAS been free for God knows how long on the radio. It might not come on exactly when you want it to, but you've always been able to listen to your fill of the latest one hit wonder simply by tuning in each day. If if you felt like it you could pop in a cassette and record those songs. Sure you could always buy the CD, but that was seen as just a way to get a "good copy" of it. The music was still seen as freely available in some form or another.

The same is true for TV shows. They come on every week and nobody pays to watch them. They are paid for by the commercials, but the average person, at doesn't understand that. They just see that TV shows are free to watch. Even most movies eventually make it to the major networks. When I was really young my family was pretty poor (my father managed to work hard and improve our situation by the time I was 10 or 12, but prior to that we were pretty bad off), and the only exposure I had to movies at all was whatever come on the local broadcast networks - and I saw a TON of movies. I remember seeing the entire Star Wars trilogy on broadcast television. We didn't have a VCR yet (early to mid 80's here) so there wasn't even a means TO buy a movie. Movies to me were free things that came on the TV.

So, what you have with those are two industries that have created an entire empire BASED on giving their stuff away anyways. Now when they come in and try to explain that "yeah the music is free on the radio, but it's not free on the internet", no normal person understands that. And hence you get the enormous numbers of file sharers on the net today. They're not hurting anyone directly (because they're not depriving of physical property) and they're merely shifting a behavior that they perceive as normal into a higher tech area.

Re:p2p != illegal

[spidr_mnky]

Thus illustrating the power of the real strategy, here: obfuscation. Start with a false premise, draw logically flawed conclusions, and complicate the argument as much as possible. It seems a lot of folks get taken along for the whole ride, and while some peel back a layer or two of BS, by the time anyone gets done explaining the whole bad argument down to nothing, he's lost his audience because it's been more than five minutes since anyone said an exciting word like "illegal", "criminal", or "pirate". Yo ho.

Hopefully the courts will serve as a more captive audience and hear the whole thing out soundly.

(I'm not a lawyer, a mathematician, or a philosopher, and should probably just clam up now.)

Re:p2p != illegal

[plasmacutter]

the mintuiae are quite relevant.

one is morally reprehensible because it denies people property.

the other is not because only a "potential sale" is lost.

Under that level of reasoning, we should call competition theft too.

Theft is to copyright infringement what "nigger" is to african american. It's a slur designed specifically to denigrate the practice and those who engage in it.

We don't call people on anti-depressants "druggies".

Re:p2p != illegal

[Jafafa Hots]

In that case, all of human advancement from the caves to about 150 years ago was something "pretty close" to theft... because what is now called "property" used to just be known as culture. You figure out how to make a wheel, I see yours and copy it. I find out that you can eat tomatoes without dying, I pass the word on to you.

The very thing that built all of human culture - the free flow of information from person to person - the thing that built language, art, science, technology... is now being artificially restricted.

Its literally an attempt to change the very basis of human culture, to throw out the way we got here in favor of short term profits for a few.

Not much different than charging people to breathe - now, in order to be an informed active member of our human culture, you have to PAY an admission fee.

Re:p2p != illegal

[MBGMorden]

Again - your average person doesn't understand that nor care. They download a song to listen to.

Put it this way - that damned Kid Rock "Sweet Home Alabama" rip-off for a while there was playing almost constantly. I was driving home from a nearby town after dinner and in that 30 minute drive it came on once on one station, I turned it to another station (because I hate that song), it then came onto the station that I had switched to, so I switched BACK, and right before I got home it started playing AGAIN on the original station I had it one. They played that song TWICE within 30 minutes.

Now, lets thing about your average American. The type of person who just doesn't give a damn about copyright law or it's semantics. The analogies and such are not going to change the fact that a major company will sue them for downloading a songs that you can barely turn on the radio without hearing multiple times per hour for free (and legally).

With my own weird-assed analogy: you're in a room in a hotel. There is a TV screen on the wall showing ads, but every 5 minutes a waitress runs in throwing free food and goodies at you. A sandwich this time, next a steak, now some popcorn, now sushi, oops, another sandwich. Day in, day out, they give you all the food you want. You can't really order what you want specifically (you hate the spinach dip they sometimes bring), but it's constant food being delivered free. Unbeknown to the rest of the world, this hotel happens to have a Star Trek style replicator in the basement and can effectively make all the food they want for practically nothing. Now, assume that you need to run to the bathroom down the hall. There's a big table outside your room full of fried chicken. A lot of other guys are grabbing a piece as they walk by. Some even offering to share. You figure "what the hell" and grab a wing. The same waitress that has been shoveling food into your mouth forever (including identical style fried chicken) rounds the corner and exclaims "Oh. My. God!!! Call the cops! This bastard just stole a chicken wing!!!!!".

I'm guessing that they dude would be pretty perplexed. He gets chicken wings at least 3 times a day from them and never has to pay. Why the heck were they blowing a gasket of an extra one that wasn't costing them anything anyways?

The modern media consumer has effectively been thrown into a similar situation. They have gotten tons, and tons of media for free for as long as they can remember, and it makes no sense to them that it should suddenly cost money when it's not even involving anyone but another party willing to share with them.

Re:p2p != illegal

[RodgerDodger]

*ahem* Pay attention to the language. "Reproducing" does not mean "copy". Furthermore, by "making available" via P2P, you are not "reproducing" - the person downloading is doing the copying.

Futhermore, the punitive penalties the RIAA go for are around the distribution angle. There is nothing in there about giving away for free - yes, you can't re-sell or otherwise transfer ownership, but there's nothing about giving it away (especially if the other person makes the copy); there's an inbuilt assumption that copying & distribution is expensive, and therefore nobody would do it for free.

This is one of the reasons copyright law needs to be reconsidered in an era of digital content, and that laws designed to protect book publishers in the 18th century may not quite be appropriate now.

Re:p2p != illegal

[Sobrique]

Copyright infringement is illegal. So's theft. So for that matter is rape, assault and arson.

But being illegal, doesn't make them the same thing - and very specifically all the people who insist 'piracy is theft' are entirely incorrect. It's no more theft than it is murder.

We grade our legal system, because we do recognise there's a difference between killing someone, sexually assaulting his children and then burning his house to the ground, and freeloading off his wireless broadband.

It's a question of _how_ illegal - when an item is pirated, then the original owner has LOST NOTHING in someone doing it, apart from some esoteric measure of 'possibly lost sales', which relies on certain assumptions as to how many people would have paid for it if they _couldn't_ have pirated it.

It's tenuous, but a valid grievance to protest this. But proving that piracy harmed your business, is a lot harder than outright lying, and demonising everyone who does it, in the hopes that you'll get a prosecution to stick.

Re:p2p != illegal

[hey!]

That's the problem with analogies. People don't know how far to take them. When people fight with dueling analogies, at best they could hope to do is find some midpoint determined by the relative artistic appeals of the analogies. Since that midpoint is not chosen in any way according the actual issue at hand, it's about as arbitrary as flipping a coin.

If we remove ALL the figurative language here, what we are talking about here are the following questions:

(1) Does making a copyrighted work available for somebody else to copy fall into any category of activities that the copyright holders have an exclusive right to do under the law? (Noting exceptions to each category in the law, of course)

(2) If the activity is an infringement, does it damage the interests of the copyright holder established by the law?

(3) If an infringing activity damages the copyright holder's interests, can (or should) we put a monetary value on that damage?

It seems to me that these are the relevant questions. All the figurative language, even the term "intellectual property" itself, only confuses the issue and invites an overly emotional response where a little cool judgment would suffice.

Re:p2p != illegal

[AcidPenguin9873]

No offense to you in particular, but the fact that you got modded +5 Insightful shows the lack of understanding of copyright in general by the Slashdot community. TheVelvetFlamebait's post above nails the real issue.

laws designed to protect book publishers in the 18th century may not quite be appropriate now.

Like TheVelvetFlamebait alludes to, the law was not designed to protect book publishers. It was designed to protect book writers. The fact that the RIAA is using the law to protect itself is an abuse of that law, but copyright was designed to protect creators of artistic works that could easily be reproduced.

Re:p2p != illegal

[Atlantis-Rising]

You are implying (well, stating outright) the RIAA cases are illogical, and I disagree. I think they can be certainly logical, if you understand the premises from which they arise.

I agree that the original poster needs to get his premises right (and as a rule that's where a law school education helps, in my experience) but once he does that, there is not necessarily a problem.

For example, class action torts; lay-people often find it immensely discouraging that a class action lawsuit which may give rise to a multi-billion dollar judgment nets each of the individual plaintiffs a $20 coupon off their next purchase from the defendants. But that does not make such a system illogical, and from some ways of thinking it is in fact eminently logical.

In much the same way, lay-people (especially lay-people on Slashdot) often find the RIAA's actions infuriating, and many believe they are ultimately ineffective and self-defeating. I'm not so sure that's necessarily true; the fact that this string of comments arose in the first place suggests that in fact, exactly the opposite may be true. The Content Industry (if you'll pardon me coining a new term) may actually be succeeding in their approach, at least temporarily. Only time will tell, of course.

To be honest (and this is slightly off-topic), that's why I find myself shaking your head at most of your comments and stories. I'm not at all sure that you are altering or even materially affecting the strategic direction of the Content Industry with these lawsuits, or that others are. I believe that the law needs to come into a new paradigm for digital content (really, intellectual property in general) but I don't know that you or people like you will be the driving force behind it. And, at least to my way of thinking, it doesn't help that you come off as just as bad as any other lawyer to the public opinion.

There is an old saw that one of my old law professors used to tell every day- "Clients are always happy with lawyers who deliver to them what they desire." It seems self-evident, but it can just as easily be flipped around- the public doesn't care if lawyers are doing their jobs with the utmost integrity and dignity if those lawyers don't deliver what the public wants. You're preaching to the choir here on Slashdot- these people want what you have to sell, and they're happy with what you deliver because it's what they want. But that doesn't really mean much elsewhere. Slashdot is not the people.

A shoplifter is grateful beyond belief to his lawyer who gets him out of a jail sentence, but the public at large is horrified that a criminal is being released back onto the streets in order that he may commit further crimes. The lawyer is not going to convince the public that his clients weren't shoplifting by defending more of them more vigerously. He's just going to entrench the public into a distrust of lawyers stopping those 'criminal scum' from getting their just deserts, and incite a resentment against people accused of shoplifting.

Lawyers have won some of this century's most celebrated social victories. Lawyers won Brown v. Board of Education. Lawyers won Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade. If you lean that way, Lawyers won Heller v. District of Columbia. But, and I say this with respect, lawyers will not win the Recording Industry v. The People. That's a battle The People will have to fight on their own, in the hearts and minds of public opinion and in the halls of Congress. I don't think it's something you can win in the Court. Because as long as people believe that other people are criminals, having lawyers get them off occasionally just isn't enough.

Re:p2p != illegal

[halcyon1234]

The only exception that I know of are the food defamation laws that the agricultural industry has persuaded about a dozen states to pass. These which create civil liability for claiming that a perishable food product or commodity is unsafe for human consumption.

Unless, of course, you're Oprah

During a show about mad cow disease with Howard Lyman (aired on April 16, 1996), Winfrey exclaimed, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!" Texas cattlemen sued her and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement", claiming that Winfrey's remarks subsequently sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers some USD$12 million. On February 26, after a trial spanning over two months in an Amarillo, Texas court in the thick of cattle country, a jury found Winfrey and Lyman were not liable for damages.

Weasel-worded bullsh!t

[Ethanol-fueled]

From TFS:

"SafeNet/MediaSentry defended their actions by claiming their company simply "records public information available to millions of users. If private investigator licenses were required to do what MediaSentry does, every user on Limewire and other illegal p2p networks..."

Limewire is illegal? What other "p2p networks" are illegal? Good to see that the judicial system is finally wising up to those weasel-worded bastards.

Re:Weasel-worded bullsh!t

[tinkerghost]

You don't need the PI license to record data from Limewire, you need the PI license to present it in court as an expert witness.

MediaSentry absolutely doesn't want to be an expert witness. As an expert witness they & their methods are subject to cross examination. They've been dancing this dance since day 1. They aren't private investigators, because then they could be regulated, have oversight, etc. They aren't expert witnesses because then their methodologies would have to be displayed & would be eligible for review. They want to play both roles without having to be subject to the rules governing either side.

we all need licenses? Ha...

[throatmonster]

Gotta love that: "If we need a license, everyone that uses Limewire needs a license." Sorry, but the rest of the world isn't hired by the RIAA specifically to start legal proceedings based on the data they are collecting. There is a difference.

Let's see what happens....

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

when they're under oath. Right now they're speaking through their mouthpieces, who will say anything, anything at all, no matter how nonsensical it is. It will be hysterical when one of the actual crooks is actually required to testify under oath about his or her illegal conduct. I'm betting (a) they take the Fifth, and (b) the RIAA's whole litigation campaign goes down the tubes.

Re:Let's see what happens....

[swillden]

Two questions, Mr. Beckerman:

First, is there some court proceeding in progress which is likely to require one of the crooks to testify under oath?

Second, assuming they do take the fifth, and the "evidence" upon which all of the cases are based is wiped out, won't SafeNet just hire some people with investigator's licenses to continue the farce? Or is there some reason that a legitimate, licensed investigator would refuse to participate?

Interesting stuff.

Re:Let's see what happens....

[whisper_jeff]

...and (b) the RIAA's whole litigation campaign goes down the tubes.

I want to agree with that final bit - I REALLY DO - but I somehow doubt it will. The RIAA has shown that they are adamantly determined to see this particular gambit through to the bitter end and, short of the execs responsible for it going to jail (which I doubt will happen), they'll keep pushing forward, just slightly altering their tactics as each old tactic fails them. I would love to be proven wrong and, gawd knows you know more about the law and its processes than I do, but I just put more faith in the RIAA's pig-headed-ness than their common sense and willingness to play by the rules.

Re:Compelling case...

[geminidomino]

Nobody likes MediaSentry but they do make a compelling case. If you require a PI license in order to simply view logs of connections to your machine and to contact the people referenced in those logs then the law would be extended to a lot of other things.

If I not mistaken I thought the line between requiring a PI license and not is simply where the information exists... If you are using third parties or other people's hardware then a PI license if clearly warranted.

But on the other hand if all the information you're using is in-house then the license is simply not warranted or helpful.

I don't think it would serve the public good at all to require a PI license, particularly if all Network/System Administrators ended up requiring one.

It also wouldn't stop SafeNet/MediaSentry from operating the way they currently do.

It also, ostensibly, involves the chain of custody of evidence.

Legal Requirements

[xmarkd400x]

You can't exactly present a file called "IllegalDownloaders.txt" to a court of law and have it be proof. Yes, anyone can view the data that they collect(IPs, etc). So far, they have been using "We are a giant corporation! Of course we would not lie!" to vouch for the authenticity of their data. MediaSentry has never been through any sort of rigors whatsoever. It could be a seagull pecking at a number pad for all we know.

Not quite...

[Fishbulb]

Indeed, every search engine and Internet user would be required to have a private investigator license if MediaSentry needs one.

But not everyone using a search engine or collecting data from a p2p client are doing so for the purpose of presenting evidence in court.

Nice try.

What's the big deal about a license!?

[gilkyboy]

By claiming that you shouldn't need a license to practice these types of claims, MediaSentry has essentially decided that any simple google search of a user should suffice as verifiable evidence. The reason the law was created, and the reason that the law exists is to make sure that the supposed evidence is actually legitimate. A private investigator is likely to do a real search into the evidence to see if it is legitamate, whereas a simple google search leaves no proof, but merely a statement of possibility. If someone were trying to deceive people who were spying on them, they might use a false IP address, and thereby throw off the untrained. This is why governments require a PI license, and why these ready, shoot, aim lawsuits aren't legally sanctioned. It's based on the idea that most of the time they'll get it right, not proof that they're right first.

Re:What's the big deal about a license!?

[DragonTHC]

agreed.

[MediaSentry] simply "records public information available to millions of users. If private investigator licenses were required to do what MediaSentry does, every user on Limewire and other illegal p2p networks would be required to have a license. Indeed, every search engine and Internet user would be required to have a private investigator license if MediaSentry needs one."

This seems to be snake oil doublespeak for "quick get in the car and drive!"

1. connecting to the users' computers for the purposes of determining what files are stored there is not public information.
2. presenting that as evidence in court requires that you are license to perform the investigation and that you have at least learned proper protocols for handling evidence.
3. users are not presenting evidence in court. They are simply using a service. Recording the information you get by connecting and then using it for purposes of prosecution seems a bit dodgy at best. At worst, it seems like a violation of the computer fraud and abuse act. Mediasentry is connecting to a private system. It is connecting for reasons other than what it is representing at the time of connection. It is taking information from those systems. Isn't that a violation of the CFAA?

Re:Gotta take SafeNet's Side on this one

[techno-vampire]

ANYBODY should be able to collect evidence of criminal activity from the public Internet and should be able to testify in a court of law.

IANAL, but AFAIK, anybody can collect that type of evidence already and testify in court, provided that they are doing it as private citizens doing it in the interest of Justice. What Media-Sentry is doing is different: they are acting as paid agents of the RIAA, investigating on their behalf and charging money for it, without the proper licenses. It's the same as with home renovation; you don't need any type of license to renovate your own home, but you do if you act as a contractor, doing it on other people's property and receiving payment for your work.

Re:Gotta take SafeNet's Side on this one

[nog_lorp]

Anyone can testify in a court of law so long as they have some assured credibility. If they "were there", that is credible (eye witness). Otherwise, they should have to be an expert witness with some sort of credentials - something to lose if they are bullshitting. They are CLAIMING to be expert witnesses, and at the EXACT same time (in a different concurrent suit) claiming they do not have the responsibilities of an expert.

~nog_lorp

Re:Gotta take SafeNet's Side on this one

[QuantumG]

I'm a big freakin libertarian too, but the fact is that without licensing what you get is exactly this situation: jokesters who lie through their teeth and get away with it.

Hmm...illegal P2P?!

[iMouse]

"Illegal P2P"? So, I guess that means that the WoW patches I just downloaded from the Bittorrent network are illegal.

I should expect a cease and desist letter from Blizzard any minute now...

WTF is with these RIAA and affiliate companies always making the statement that P2P is illegal? It is some of the MATERIAL that may be a violation of copywrite to distribute without license. The networks themselves and the sharing of free-to-distribute medias are perfectly legal. Maybe if they understood this, they would have a better result in court.

Really, the RIAA and MediaSentry/SafeNet need to be grilled in court over and over and over again. They still won't get the point, but I'm sure a few kicks in the nuts will wipe the grins from their faces.

Doing it for hire

[MDMurphy]

I'd lean towards your opinion, except for one thing: There are a multitude of things you can do on your own behalf, but once you want to sell your services, it's different. [see: prostitution]

Electricians, cosmetologists, lawyers all do things that you could many times do yourself. But if you want to sell yourself as an expert to others, there are licensing and other rules.

While SafeNet might only be using public information, but who's to say they aren't also illegally tapping into information they aren't supposed to? If they were licensed P.I.'s their licence would be at risk if they violated the rules. Risk of their professional license is another way to keep them straight, for things that criminal and civil law don't cover.

Re:Typical Slashdot Hypocrisy

[Cormophyte]

Yes, our support of laws is generally tainted by their application (of course that's what the whole jury nullification thing is about, so our legal system does, in fact, support the idea of the people actively interpreting the application of the law). However you're wrong in saying they shouldn't require a license to gather non-private information. Because this information could result in monetary and possibly even criminal penalties it's essential that not only are the individuals involved trained properly to collect and preserve the evidence but they also collect a proper paper trail that can be independently verified by the defense.

It's also very important that the people involved in pursuing litigation be faced with penalties if it's shown they did not act in good faith, something the contractors of the RIAA do on a regular basis (I'm not going to look up the supporting documentation for this, but it's out there and it's not anecdotal). An individual who's shown to be sloppy in his evidence collection only loses credibility if a lawyer in a future related case happens to know about their sloppy work. On the other hand a licensed investigator who's shown to be incompetent can lose their license, thereby preventing them from doing the same shady investigating in the future. Big difference in terms of someone habitually whoring their "expert testimony" out.

Glancing through a window from the street is legal

[Jane Q. Public]

... but conducting organized and covert surveillance through it is not. At least not in my state.

MediaSentry deserves to go down. Hard.

Re:Gotta take SafeNet's Side on this one

[hedwards]

Nice to see fallacious arguments still garner mod points. What you're suggesting is a false dilemma.

In this case they are engaged in spying on third parties without their knowledge and doing so for a price. They are collecting information which requires an education and training and using that as sole support for a civil case. And have not been proven to do so in a manner which is in accordance with the laws of the state of Michigan.

That's completely different than when a person sees a car accident and is later called to testify.

Following your logic, I should be allowed to open my own lab to examine DNA to solve murders without involving the police.

Re:Gotta take SafeNet's Side on this one

[Foobar of Borg]

I hate this notion where ya can't do squat without some license from the government.

Yes! Just the other day, I wanted to take some kid's appendix out. But, the damn Nanny State government said I actually needed to have a medical license! What kind of fascist dictatorship are we living in, anyway?

Re:Typical Slashdot Hypocrisy

[Zorque]

We're not all "good Libertarians" and I resent the insinuation. I agree that if this student wins his case it'll set a dangerous precedent, but that's about as far as I'll cooperate there.

Re:SafeNet is acting as an investigator

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

This move seems more like a maneuver against the RIAA then a chance to catch Safenet doing something illegal. The impression I received from reading the article [beckermanlegal.com] you wrote concerning the RIAA's legal practices was that Safenet only made it to the stand a handful of times at most, and each time made no attempt to insist their methods met the relevant reliability standards.

It has not yet been deposed even once.

With that in mind, it seems like the RIAA lawyers are the ones presenting Safenet as legitimate investigators, and then dismissing the case once in possession of the desired name.

You are confusing the "John Doe" cases with the "named defendant" cases. In the "named defendant" cases the MediaSentry investigator is the RIAA's sole fact witness.

Putting Safenet under the spotlight puts their methods directly in question, and offers the chance to expose a part of the RIAA's own methodology that seems to much harder to achieve when directly dealing with the RIAA's suits and actions. All the same, criminal charges against Safenet for what they are doing specifically with technology and information might have unintended, negative consequences. Is the push to prosecute Safenet being put specifically into terms of it's actions as agent in the RIAA cases?

Of course it is. We don't know about their other illegal activities.

Downloading a file, verifying it's content, recording the IP address from which it came hardly seems illegal.

1. You might feel differently if someone accessed your hard drive under false pretenses. 2. Doing it without an investigator's license is certainly illegal. 3. It might even be illegal with an investigator's license, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

All normal things that legitimate software might do.

It is software. You haven't persuaded me it's "legitimate".

>Safenet hands that information over to the RIAA, and the RIAA of course misuses that.

That, too. But Safenet and the 'expert' Dr. Doug Jacobson are partners in the misuse. Without being clear on the Michigan law, is it the last step, the releasing of that information to a client with the knowledge that it's going to be used in litigation, what specifically defines it as computer forensics and requires an investigator's license?

Re:Gotta take SafeNet's Side on this one

[EzInKy]

I know you were attempting to be sarcastic, but I wouldn't have any problem with that provided you didn't commit fraud by claiming medical credentials you don't have.

Licenses are creditionals.

If the kid's legal guardians want you to do the surgery despite your lack of formal approval by the state I see no reason to interfere.

Does that hold true even if that kid were you?

Re:Gotta take SafeNet's Side on this one

[sofla]

I know you were attempting to be sarcastic, but I wouldn't have any problem with that provided you didn't commit fraud by claiming medical credentials you don't have.

Bingo! That is the supposed role of government licensing requirements: How can Joe Average tell whether or not you are claiming credentials you don't have? The answer is he can't, but he might trust some official-looking papers from the government. It is the government's role in protecting its citizens from fraud that ultimately justifies licensing regulations.

Re:Every time you run `whois'...

[EzInKy]

Free music has been making people happy since the dawn of civilization, that is why there are so many who pursue it.

You have it backwards

[Mr2001]

To most people, theft is taking what you didn't pay for. That's exactly what file sharing someone else's IP is - you have something you didn't pay for, even if nobody else "lost" it as a consequence.

No, I don't think that's true. To most people, theft is taking something away from its rightful owner: the fact that someone "lost" it isn't just an irrelevant detail, it's the most important part.

Go ahead, ask someone, or just try a thought experiment. Suppose your neighbor told you they saw someone "stealing" your car, but then you looked in the driveway and your car was still there. The neighbor explained that it was a new kind of "theft" that doesn't cause you to lose the "stolen" item.

Would you feel robbed?

I doubt you'd care at all, and I'm certain that most people wouldn't care. Most people consider theft bad because of its impact on the victim, not because the thief gets something for free.

Re:You have it backwards

[Mr2001]

First, it looks like there was an HTML problem with your comment, so I don't know what the subject of your analogy is supposed to be. Let's call it a widget.

You plan to bring [the widget] to market and use the proceeds to provide for you and your family - keep a roof over their heads, food on the table, clothes on their back, education, etc... You look, but your [widget] is still there. The neighbor explains that it was a new kind of "theft" that doesn't cause you to lose the "stolen" item. As he's saying this your neighbor is walking back into his house carrying a brand new [widget] under his arm. [...] Would you feel robbed?

No, I wouldn't feel robbed, and I don't think many people would. In your analogy, just like in mine, nothing has been lost: I still have everything after this supposed "theft" that I had before it.

I might feel disappointed or upset that my plans to sell widgets wouldn't come to pass, certainly. But not everything that makes a person disappointed or upset has to be called theft.

But let's try an alternate analogy. Suppose no one made a copy of my widget in the first place: let's say I finished developing it, manufactured it, and brought it to market... and still nobody bought one. They didn't get widgets for free without my permission; they just didn't want any.

Would I feel robbed? No, of course not, for exactly the same reason as above.

Would I feel disappointed and upset? Yes, for exactly the same reason as above: because I had invested all this time and effort into a plan that didn't pay off.

In other words, as the widget producer, I'm not worried about whether people get widgets for free; I'm worried about whether I make money from them. If I'm not making money, then I'm disappointed, no matter what the reason is.

Re:LICENSE

[Dunbal]

If private investigator licenses were required to do what MediaSentry does, every user on Limewire and other illegal p2p networks would be required to have a license.

      Not only that, but Limewire and other p2p's presumably have THE USER'S PERMISSION. SafeNet does not. QED.

Re:

[clint999]

You're right about "to most people"... However, that just means that those most people need to be educated... I agree entirely. However, there also needs to be "wiggle room" for the common vernacular to be (at least!) mildly different from legal jargon. See "hacker v. cracker" - another misappropriation of words that are "pretty close," but where anyone with enough brain cells and ego to care would be able to tell the intended meaning from the context.