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WSJ Confirms RIAA Fired MediaSentry
newtley writes "Two days ago we discussed the earlier p2pnet report that the RIAA had fired MediaSentry (now called SafeNet). Now the Wall Street Journal is confirming this report. MediaSentry has been 'invading the privacy of people,' the WSJ quotes Ray Beckerman; 'They've been doing very sloppy work.' Beckerman cites MediaSentry's practice of 'looking for available songs in people's filesharing folders, uploading them, and using those uploads in court as evidence of copyright violations.' MediaSentry 'couldn't prove defendants had shared their files with anyone other than MediaSentry investigators.' The WSJ notes, 'In place of MediaSentry, the RIAA says it will use Copenhagen-based DtecNet Software ApS. The music industry had worked with DtecNet previously both in the US and overseas, and liked its technology...' "
ARE they legal investigators in other states? That was one of the whole points with Mediasentry, they where illegally doing what they where doing in a number of states the RIAA had cases in. If this new company does the same shit then guess what, nothing changes and the RIAA is again violating the law.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Beckerman cites MediaSentry's practice of 'looking for available songs in people's filesharing folders, uploading them, and using those uploads in court as evidence of copyright violations.
The MSN article reports:
Mr. Beckerman cites MediaSentry's practice of looking for available songs in people's file-sharing folders, downloading them, and using those downloads in court as evidence of copyright violations.
Whilst it's still a scummy thing to do, it's not as bad as uploading to peoples' filesharing folders and then taking them to court for copyright violations.
Shut up. I like to dream.
From their web site:
"The evidence generated by DtecNet has been used and approved by criminal and civil courts alike across Europe."
I know it's too early to tell, but assuming if their claims were true...
If their evidence can satisfy the European courts, which are more protective of the individual (my POV, barring history), then what trouble would they have in the US courts?
"By only targeting content positively identified as illegal, the system avoids the problems of targeting P2P protocols indiscriminately securing maximum bandwidth for legal traffic."
Interesting, how would they know - they'll have to download a copy, right? If I record my own karaoke and share it out, does it count?
Also, won't they fall into the same "couldn't prove defendants had shared their files with anyone other than investigators" situation? (Imagine if they say that my <insert lousy movie here> episode is downloaded 50,000 times!)
So what're the odds of some sort of memo surfacing from a jilted SafeNet from the RIAA saying something to the effect of 'Use any means possible! We have good lawyers! Don't worry about breaking the law! These fools can't fight us, this is America!! And in this country the laws are written by the people with the most money! Namely US! The RIAA, and all our members! Wahahaha!'?
Aside from the obvious self incrimination I mean.
I have nothing compelling to say
I've got nothing against the RIAA enforcing copyright for illegally shared media. This is their duty and the artists are the legal copyright holders. What I do have a problem with is their methods such as MediaSentry's dirty little tricks like this, and the targeting of young teenagers and grandparents - which sets no real precedent and doesn't send a message to the real pirates except to say "we're a bunch of arseholes so go ahead and pirate some more."
If this switch to DtecNet can usher in an age of ethical copyright enforcement then go for it. Then at least their ego-fuelled air of self-rightousness might provide enough power to pay for the waste of legal fees they keep dumping into this pointless battle.
There is no knowledge that is not power.
Lawsuits are not cheap. As Ray intimated, the RIAA has actually lost money on this litigation campaign. That just the direct effect -- settlements minus legal fees. They were presumably really interested in an indirect effect -- scaring people into not sharing music online. (They were presumably not interested in the indirect effect of making lots of people realize that they're evil jackasses.)
And how does Murdoch figure in all of this? I wonder. Besides being the new owner of the WSJ, he apparently has his fingers in the music industry also.
So the RIAA is already paying a foreign company to spy on Americans internet usage in the USA? Isn't that in violation of some state or federal privacy/computer intrusion legislation?
And if you think the level of competence at the RIAA is better than MediaSentry's, why don't you take a survey of the record company shareholders
I don't know if it's just me getting angrier as I get older, but I find that the level of competence is slipping everywhere and in everything. I only have to look around my office to see around half the people that are less than competent, and it seems that it was eons ago that I got above satisfactory customer service during a transaction of some sort.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Am I the only one who wonders about the legal implications of hiring a firm based in Copenhagen? Do they suppose that that will protect them from the consequences of using investigators who are not licensed in the USA? Or do they plan to poison more torrents and release more spoof files rather than suing people?
The only thing I can think of when I read this is that they plan to cheat the system somehow and I can only wonder what they plan to do next...
> The music company usually retains the copyright
Not exactly, in most cases the artist(s) assign their copyrights to the labels, and this means that soon, starting around 2013, there will be an interesting battle in the Federal courts whether or not the artists can terminate these assignments as stipulated in the 1976 Copyright Act.
But you are missing the upside to greedy ISPs. If you get rid of everyone that actually USES the amount they paid for then they can keep overselling like mad and never need to pay for any infrastructure upgrades. We have heard time and time again that it is these "granny" users that are nothing but profit for the ISPs since they use so little bandwidth compared to what they pay for. So by becoming the *.A.As buttmonkey they can cut off their "costly" users while having a great excuse that will keep 99% of them from saying anything about it in the press.
After all they were just getting rid of those "law breaking filthy thieves" and not just propping up their profit margins by not giving the customer what they paid for. Perfect spin while not actually needing to anything with their profits but stuff them in their pockets. And when you figure in the costs of actually upgrading your aging infrastructure I'm sure losing those BT and other file sharing app users will be negligible when compared to the upgrade, at least in the short term. And as we have seen time and time again in this country corporations have lost the ability to think past the quarterly earnings reports.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You had a good point a year ago. But now ISPs like Comcast are metering services and charging fees to purchase extra gigabytes. If they have customers willing to pay $100 to download 1000 gig per month, the ISPs will be hurting themselves when they let these customers go.
As for dialup:
I have that service for $7 a month, and yes it's a cheap alternative, however the drawback of dialup is that you cannot watch "live" videos at nbc.com or hulu.com, because they don't support speeds slower than ~200 kbit/s. You would have to limit yourself to only bittorrent downloads.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The kind of people the RIAA tends to go after are file share[r]s, people who use a lot of bandwidth.
Actually they do not go after the heavier file sharers, most of whom use BitTorrent, and have been for years. Every single case I've seen has been based on either the Gnutella protocol or the FastTrack protocol. I have never seen a case from the RIAA based on BitTorrent. The kind of people the RIAA has been going after are (a) people who never did any file sharing at all, but have enough money to pay a settlement, and (b) kids who did a modest amount of file sharing. All of which explains why their 'terror' campaign hasn't worked; the people they would like to deter are actually laughing at them.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful