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Judge Excludes 3 "John Does" From RIAA Subpoena
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In one of the RIAA's 'John Doe' cases targeting Boston University students, after the University wrote to the Court saying that it could not identify three of the John Does 'to a reasonable degree of technical certainty,' Judge Nancy Gertner deemed the University's letter a 'motion to quash,' and granted it, quashing the subpoena as to those defendants. In the very brief docket entry (PDF) containing her decision, she noted that 'compliance with the subpoena as to the IP addresses represented by these Defendants would expose innocent parties to intrusive discovery.' There is an important lesson to be learned from this ruling: if the IT departments of the colleges and universities targeted by the RIAA would be honest, and explain to the Courts the problems with the identification and other technical issues, there is a good chance the subpoenas will be vacated. Certainly, there is now a judicial precedent for that principle. One commentator asks whether this holding 'represents the death knell to some, if not all, of the RIAA's efforts to use American university staff as copyright cops.'"
...a new law requiring better IP tracking built into all new routers and laptops.
No sig today...
When file sharing your music and movies, use public wifi points to crush any lawsuit potential from the RIAA!
Really? Even if they used it without your knowledge?
That's like saying that if I let my mates take my car and they go commit a crime with it (say a hit and run), I should be punished for it.
I wouldn't be classified as an accessory to their hit-and-run, so why should I be an accessory to their copyright infringement if I let them use my connection?
Most of my neighbours have wireless.
I could crack into them in minutes and download.
Are they supposed to be security experts now?
What about when WPA gets cracked? even the ones with a little knowhow will be open for a time.
If someone breaks into your house and commits mail fraud while you're away are you guilty because your door wasn't strong enough to keep them out?
"accessory to their infringement" is bullshit
The suddenoutbreakofcommonsense shown on this small scale is coming too late, I fear. Because even now, ISPs are caving to big media. Phorm worms its way through many UK ISPs, apparently undiminished. A consortium of service providers have agreed to keep tabs on the situation for the record insdustry, amongst others, and send out warning letters to infringers. Usenet has been all but dropped from the roster of ISP services.
Unlike the naysayers, I always believed that the internet would remain free. After all, ISPs have always been protected as carriers, just like the postal service - and the postal service is not subject to search and seizure without due process. Nobody can open my private mail (unless it crosses borders) and check for pirated DVDs, without a really good reason to suspect that I'm pirating DVDs.
But I was wrong, and stupid, and for once in my damn life, too optimistic.
Because for every smart call like the one above, there are ten stories of companies we need to be able to trust voluntarily caving to pressure. It's too damn late.
In 2001, my alma mater had 2 45mbps lines for the university and they were consistently hammered by the students doing file sharing. It got to the point that some people in the CS department joked that banging out packets across tin-cans-on-strings would be faster than using the campus network when classes were generally over for the day.
Then, the university instituted packet shapers across the network and it got usable again. Usable to the point where I didn't feel like I was on a 14.4k modem again.
If you want to bootleg content, then pay for your own connection.
The RIAA could demand some draconian cerberos system, but I doubt that rendering large campus networks unusable will garner them any support from the already annoyed campus IT admins. Anyway, much like the AV companies vs virus-writers, this battle is an entirely defensive one.
It's nice to see something logical leaking out of the judicial system, however.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
Isn't every one of these stories tagged as being the death knell for the RIAA? Don't get me wrong, I'm always glad to see the RIAA losing in these types of cases, but 'death knell for the RIAA' is getting to be 'Year for Linux on the Desktop'.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Isn't that what I'm did by paying the obscene "technology fee"? What ELSE is that 1224$ going toward?
Is it hookers? Hookers and blow? You can tell me the truth. I won't be half as mad if you tell me it's hookers and blow.
If you want to bootleg content, then pay for your own connection.
I have to disagree with your final point; in almost any University environment the students ARE paying for their connections one way or another. The terms under which they can use it, however, are usually a bit more restrictive that your standard ISP.
This isn't flamebait (I hope) but a genuine query. I have the distinct impression that, now people know that, specifically, Cheney is on the way out, judges are perhaps slightly more willing to assert the rights of the individual and liberal institutions and politicians are starting to find their backbones. (I'm reminded of Jay Gould's joke about the biologists who discovered a creature with a very small brain and almost no backbone, only it turned out to be a fish not a member of the House.) After all, the President-Elect is an expert on the Constitution, whereas the previous Administration seems to have contained some people who were experts on bypassing it.
It is not just in the US. Would the British Labor Party have dared to increase taxes on the rich and cut consumption taxes if Obama had not proposed something similar? Would they have dared to have an attack of socialism where the banks are concerned had Bush not had to do exactly the same?
As Clinton so rightly said, it's the economy, stupid.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Via other legislation, it looks like colleges and universities in the US are going to be expected to take active steps - training and education, and likely technical as well - to curb piracy or else risk losing federal funding. It's part of the "Higher Education Opportunity Act". They're now in the "rulemaking" phase, but I find it hard to believe that the Department of Education is going to be particularly accommodating, and I'm not confident that the new administration will be substantially better than the old on this issue. I think this case is going to give the RIAA/MPAA and their allies in congress something to point at to say "See! We need more protection".
If we're required to do blocking and monitoring, the BU defense won't hold, because we'll have the data. At this point, the biggest factor is the delay. If you're a university buying service through a provider, and the letter goes to them first, it takes at least a week, often more, to get to you. By that point, there's usually not even any reason to look for the torrent they're complaining about.
You bring up something that I think about somewhat often.
On the one hand, the Internet is incredibly useful and provides so much information and entertainment which I believe everyone SHOULD be able to access. It would be a huge loss to society, imo, for people lose this.
On the other hand, computers are complex. Networks are a complex part of computers. Security is a yet more complex part of computer networks. These are things that people spend years learning about and are constantly learning more about, yet here we are encouraging average, untrained people to stick computers which they are basically system administrators for on the largest, most complex, and hardest to secure network in the world? How much sense does that make?
I work at a U, and they charge the students, faculty, staff, departments, and everything else that has any money, an obscene amount of money for a network connection. Students ARE paying, and barely getting their money's worth, even when file sharing.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
Of course, it would be so very socially awkward to point out that virtually all policies slashdot have supported so far amount to in effect a regressive wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy, where the poor who are for whatever reason unable to use a p2p service and thus purchase CDs subsidize the entertainment of those who otherwise generally can afford it. Oh no. Pointing out such things is just not cool.
Policing the network requires a mindset which assumes the students will do bad things and the administration is determined to catch and punish accused systems perpetrators.
Managing the network, as your example shows, is the proper implementation of policies and configurations which allow the University community to effectively perform their work.
Managing the network is more effective and provides a more collegial atmosphere.
In my CS Department, all the information which could be used by the RIAA to track student usage of systems is NOT logged. Attempts to obtain unauthorized access are logged; but not successful authorized access. [All you security types can take your immediate objections and stuff them in your policy orifice.]
Protip: In most places you would be charged as an accessory in that case. Unless you can prove they stole it. At the very least you could get charged with negligence.
This is flat out bullshit. Criminally, It doesn't matter if the car was stolen or borrowed.
This analogy is bad, because it's relatively simple to determine who the operator of the car is (spoofing cars is really hard), where it is not so easy to peer through the ether and see who using a PC, or even if that PC is the one you think it is.
Why don't you get your facts straight?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
We paid $125/semester. Granted, our school also didn't feel the need to keep up with the Jones WRT bandwidth.
I think the problem here is poor definition of "left" vs. "right."
Ask a question pertaining to abortion, and most of the answers here are "anything goes," which sounds left-wing. Ask a question about the economy, and the answers are more "government isn't your sugar daddy," which sounds right-wing.
I think the most common /. viewpoint is best described as "libertarian," which can be summed up as "leave us alone and don't tell us what to do."
The sinister "three strike law" pushed by Sarkonazy and his subordinates creates a new category of "crime", that of "not securing properly one's connection", I shit you not. That way you can't use the defense of having been infected by a virus or having your router hax0red, it's your fault, you should have been a master sysadmin.
Nevermind that megacorporations themselves can't be fucked to secure all their systems, you, Joe SixPC, are supposed to one up PCI/DSS or FIPS whatever, or you can't be allowed to the interwebs.
Of course it's a massive pack of FAIL on so many levels, but that's what GWB's BFF has in store for us.
How do IPs not specify identity?
They just don't.
Sure, you can build a system with multiple paths of registration and logging and authentication, but a majority of those processes can be spoofed or socially engineered.
If you came up to me with a subpoena asking who had IP address 192.168.1.X on this day at this time, even if I still had the logs on my DHCP server, it would take a significant amount of forensics (IE, an audit of every laptop my friends or neighbors own) to determine who the culprit was.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Simply putting up the money doesn't mean you have the right to impact other peoples use of the same infrastructure they're paying for. Downloaders aren't the only ones using the network.
I agree that when you pay for something like an iPhone it's yours to do with as you please. A uni, however, is offering you a service for a fee. They're free to dictate terms on the use of that service. Don't like the terms, goto a different uni.
No sig for you!!
How do you "audit" to find out what a MAC address was temporarily set to?
DHCP logs only get you from IP to MAC, they don't tell you anything about what that MAC is being used by.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
An IP specifies identity just like a home address does. Sure, the house may belong to me, and you have reasonable suspicion that it's me in there, but it could theoretically be ANYONE in the house. My mom, my wife, a neighbor, a burglar, whoever. That's why an address existing is not enough to positively identify me as the person who, say, crank called.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I defer to the expertise of an attorney, but unless this was a ruling by a court of appeals or above, there is no precedent set. Trial courts render judgments which can be referenced in litigation, but not cited as "precedent" on other legal cases... is this not correct? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's a precedent. It's not 'controlling' or 'binding' but it's a precedent.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
It's as simple as that.
Buy used CDs and DVDs. Preferably from local independently owned shops.
The ONLY new DVDs I've purchased in the last year or so have been the FUTURAMA movies, because I want MORE FUTURAMA! And the best way for that to happen is to show Fox that it's to their financial advantage to make more FUTURAMA.
However, other than those purchases, every DVD and CD I've bought for the past few years has been previously owned.
I get the movies and music I want, and the MAFIAAs get not one penny of my money in return.
When I get my newly purchased used discs home, CDs get ripped to iTunes, DVDs get ripped & stripped via MacTheRipper. Discs then get filed away for safekeeping, and my digital copies are used in their place.
If you MUST download music and video, USENET is a much safer alternative. The alt.binaries hierarchies have just as much digital new content as BitTorrent, and the popular/most used newsgroups have dedicated users who will, if asked politely, take requests for content reuploads.
Via NZB, downloads are as simple as one or two mouseclicks and are usually faster than BitTorrent.
Oh, and they are almost completely untraceable. Making life for the MAFIAAs all the more miserable.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Actually the correct permalink to the story is here. Sorry about that.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful