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Ask Slashdot: Who Has Been Sued By the RIAA?
First time accepted submitter blackfrancis75 writes "We keep hearing different figures quoting the thousands of people who've been sued by RIAA for illegally downloading online music, but I don't know anyone personally to whom it's happened. In fact it seems no-one I know knows anyone to whom it happened. Do you know anyone who was sued for 'piracy', or were you sued yourself? What was your experience?"
It wouldn't surprise me if there's something akin to a non-disclosure agreement in the settlement offer, thus ensuring nobody should give specifics or post under their primary username. That's also likely the reason the submitter hasn't found much information about the experience.
It's mainly because of the technical reason you identified: it's hard to catch people who only download, unless they download from you (or you obtain logs from someone who was uploading).
There is a bit of legal strategy as well, though; even the RIAA has finite legal resources, and it's not as though the few lawsuits (or even the more common settlements, probably) are a profit center for them. Given this, it's more efficient to go for the head of the snake, as it were. That's why they like to sue / pressure people who are behind entire file sharing networks (e.g. Napster, Grokster, MegaUpload) since that could (if it worked) cut off lots of file sharers in one stroke. Suing uploaders is less efficient, but still could prevent at least some downloading from occurring. Suing a downloader is the least efficient thing of all, since it only stops that one person with no beneficial side effects. That isn't to say that it would never happen, but it can't possibly be a high priority.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Christ, dude, come off it. It was an answer to the question at hand. This isn't Wikipedia. There are no "citation needed" tags. The fact that the comment was anonymous has no bearing on its relevance and your attention to it is just bizarre. (I'm posting AC even though I have an account.) Modding up an answer to the titular question is in no way ridiculous.
he shouldn't have settled. his son would've been liable only for shown damages(extremely hard to show).
When giving legal advice that is utterly, 100% incorrect and potentially harmful to the recipient, it's usually a good idea to include a disclaimer about how one is not a lawyer.
Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. This is not legal advice, but is for [my own] amusement only.