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?"

Comments

Legal Threats

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been sent 2 or 3 legal threats from copyright holders and my ISP over the years. I ignored them and nothing ever happened.

Re:Legal Threats

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. Tons of threats, no action.

Re:Legal Threats

[Toam]

I'm generally ignorant to this issue, but I've always wondered how they would be persued...

I've had a few of those come to my household in the past, when I've been living in share houses. The notice would come to the person whos name was on the internet connection, but you might have 4 people using that internet connection, plus if its a wireless connection who is to say that those pesky neighbours haven't cracked your security?

What would the procedure be for them to actually follow up on an allegation of copyright infringement under such circumstances?

Re:Legal Threats

[Baloroth]

(Threaten to) sue you and force you to choose between a settlement or crushing legal fees.

They usually prefer the "threaten" route: less paperwork for them when they extort you. Really, of course, it is about creating fear in the hearts of people so they avoid anything the RIAA and kin dislike, so an actual suite is counter-productive and they usually avoid it unless they have a pretty solid case.

Of course, IANAL.

Re:Legal Threats

[Anonymous Coward]

Not RIAA, but I know at least one guy that was hit with a huge fine ("settlement") over a movie download. A really shitty movie his son downloaded, at that.

I once got a call from my ISP about it, and even got notices at our workplace over it.

Always movie stuff though... never music.

Re:Legal Threats

[Anonymous Coward]

I like you. You can come over to my house and sue my sister.

Re:Legal Threats

[ArsenneLupin]

I was one of the "John Doe's" during the DeCSS episode. Eventually, the school where I had hosted my DeCSS mirror got a letter from the MAFIAA. We had a meeting (including school director, a couple of teachers, etc.), and together we decided to do nothing, and to just ignore it. Nothing ever followed, the site stayed up for years after this, until it fell into obsolescence.

More recently, I posted a video on Facebook to mock the Costa Concordia disaster: a photo of captain Schettino with "Alles im Griff auf dem sinkenden Schiff" ("everything under control on the sinking ship") by Udo Jürgens as the sound track. Predictably the automated system pulled the video, and sent me a take-down notice giving me the option to file a counter notice. Which I did: the video went back online, is still online, and this act never had any consequences.

But maybe it helps that I don't live in the US...

In general, if I get legal threats from abroad I ignore them. If I get legal threats from a local lawyer, I remove the offending item but never respond to or acknowledge the letter, nor pay any fines or whatever additional thing they ask for. So far, I've never got a problem from this approach.

Re:Legal Threats

[gl4ss]

he shouldn't have settled. his son would've been liable only for shown damages(extremely hard to show).

settling is how you admit without a court, it's really skewed and pays only for the trolls salary.

Re:Legal Threats

[Sheepy]

I was John Doe #34.

I was quite worried when we received the email from Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP but they had put all recipients in the CC field so someone quickly set up a mailing list.

I was in the UK and at that time, had never been to the US, so I figured the Californian court wouldn't have jurisdiction.

Re:Legal Threats

[SpinningCone]

settling is what normal people do. The RIAA and the MPAA have people whose 8-5 job it is to rake you over the coals of the legal system. even if you win it will drain you emotionally, physically and financially to fight.

he could loose is job to to absence and poor performance, his family due to stress. then there's the legal bill. likely it would cost nearly as much to fight so why wait?

our current system favors the wealthy and large companies and corporations . your average man must sacrifice their lives to get any justice.

Re:Legal Threats

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Look, guys, you can't take someone else's work and put your name to it like you created it! You can't understand WHY what you did was way out of bounds? How could someone so dumbb ever pass a college entrance exam?

Actually, half the time that's plagiarism, which isn't the same thing as copyright violation. The other half it's not plagiarism because it's done with permission, which still isn't the same thing as copyright violation but is usually also not copyright violation. Plagiarism has to do with credit. Copyright has to do with the right to copy.

For example, judicial opinions are usually written by clerks, but the credit goes to the judges. If that were done without permission, it would be copyright violation. (At least in any other field in the world--judicial opinions may be a special case.) It would also be plagiarism.

One guy I know had his stuff used by a major network. They got his permission to use it, I'm sure he did a blanket rights agreement, and they pretended a bunch of stuff was their work. That was morally plagiarism but legally probably fine.

One article I know was submitted to an academic journal with the same material as another already published article--even the graph. That was plagiarism and copyright violation.

Re:Legal Threats

[IMightB]

Ahh those were the days, when the little people could tell the big people to, basically, go "Shove it up their orifice-of-choice"... and get away with it. The big people didn't like that so much and bought themselves some laws that said being rude to them doesn't fly anymore. They also bought a nice Indoctrination Campaign that has turned "Sharing is Caring" to "Sharing is Thievery".

Sadly, I remember the days when the internet was everything it was everything it was promised to be; a great tool for the people. Now, it has become a tool to control the people and for benefit and profit. Where everything is tracked, monitored and filtered for your own protection.

Dammit! What have they done to our Internet?!?!

They don't need to sue you ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... all they need to do is to claim everything, including birdsongs, belongs to them

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/02/26/2141246/youtube-identifies-birdsong-as-copyrighted-music

well, if you want to be technical...

[bmo]

"We keep hearing different figures quoting the thousands of people who've been sued by RIAA "

The people actually sued by the RIAA for file sharing is actually zero.

nil.

Nobody.

Because they don't own the copyrights. It's the studios that do. These studios are members of the RIAA, but in the US, at least, to have standing to sue, you must have the actual copyright yourself. The press always confuses the RIAA with the studios, because the RIAA has the loudest mouth.

We saw lack of standing with SCO. They kept insisting that they owned the copyrights to SysV, but the plain language of the APA didn't say they do, and in order for copyright to change hands (in that case from Novell to SCO) there has to be a positive statement *in writing on paper* that the copyright is transfered.

The judge in the case and Novell eventually got SCO to fuck off, but it took 7 years.

Similarly in these cases, it's not "The RIAA vs Joe Blough," it's "IRS Records vs Jane Sawless" because the RIAA does not own the copyright to "I Stabbed A Monkey" but IRS Records does.

--
BMO

Re:well, if you want to be technical...

[bmo]

>No one has been sued for *downloading* music. You get sued for uploading/distributing/making available.

Please note the actual word I used.

Sharing, as in putting it in your share folder.

Thank you and have a nice day.

--
BMO

Re:well, if you want to be technical...

[cpt kangarooski]

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.

Re:well, if you want to be technical...

[Skarecrow77]

ok, you want a more technically correct analogy?

What makes you think that you can take the book at the bookstore into the back room, xerox the book's pages, and take it home and read those pages for 24 hours before what you just did becomes illegal? why wouldn't it be illegal the second you did it, what does a 24 hour period have to do with it?

answer: nothing.

Re:well, if you want to be technical...

[Skarecrow77]

hearsay and rumor, nothing else. it's the digital equivalent to "I hear you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex"

Re:well, if you want to be technical...

[cpt kangarooski]

Both are illegal, as are a few other things besides. Well, actually, if one looks at the precise language of the statute, while distribution is illegal, uploading doesn't meet the definition of distribution, so it either has to be something else that is illegal (my money would be on some form of secondary liability, where in essence the assistance that the uploader provides the downloader for the downloader's offense makes the uploader liable too) or it is perfectly okay. There's a case underway where someone is finally making that argument, but I doubt that the courts looking at it are ever going to side with pirates merely because of the actual language of the law. Justice could stand to be blinder.

Anyway, you can see a list of the major types of copyright infringement at 17 USC 106 (definitions are helpfully provided at 17 USC 101 -- n.b. that definitions provided in the statute override ordinary dictionary definitions).

And, since all else being equal, they are just forms of the same offense -- infringement -- the remedies are the same for both: Actual damages and profits, and perhaps costs, fees, an injunction, even the destruction of copies and copying equipment (though I don't think I've heard of a court ordering the destruction of anyone's computer in this sort of case -- I wonder why the other side has neglected such a mean tactic). And, if the work is eligible (it usually will be for anything you'd get in copyright trouble for downloading), statutory damages, if the plaintiff so opts. Civil remedies for copyright infringement may be found at 17 USC 502-505. Section 504 is the major bit.

There's no real distinction for civil damages as to whether one acted in a saintly or fiendish fashion with regard to infringement. It won't matter for actual damages and profits. But statutory damages simply must fall within a particular range between a minimum and a maximum in the statute. In practice, if you've gotten to the point where you're being sued in a case like this, the minimum can't be lowered, and the maximum can be relied upon to be raised as high as it'll go. The actual number in that range is picked by the jury, who may do so for entirely inscrutable reasons, and may then be reduced by the judge to as low as the minimum, as the judge sees fit.

Re:well, if you want to be technical...

[Skarecrow77]

well there is this
http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/help/entry.html?cat=24

and this
http://www.pro-music.org/Content/questions/DosAndDonts.php#Q13

and this
http://www.uky.edu/UKIT/security/policy_riaa.htm

and so on... but more over, why in the world would it make any sense to make copyright infringement only kick in after 24 hours? who would write a law like that? nobody would, because nobody has. it's an urban legend, continually circulated, just like all urban legends.

Re:well, if you want to be technical...

[ratboy666]

Downloading is not Copyright Infringement. Downloading is simply downloading. There is no way to determine a priori whether any Internet file transfer has Copyright authorization.

Especially now that Copyright is automatically granted and registration is no longer required.

In order to make Downloading an offense, registration would need to be returned.

And, if (please argue the point) Downloading is indeed illegal, and everything (yes, EVERYTHING) has a Copyright, and the status of a "legal" Download cannot be a priori determined, then it would simply be insanity to use the "internet". Both from a content producer and a content consumer perspective.

There simply cannot be anonimity. Everyone would have to know that I wrote this post, before reading it, in order to determine the a priori Copyright status.

Your thoughts?

Re:well, if you want to be technical...

[NekSnappa]

I call horseshit on this one.

There is no way that simply removing the credits, and anything that identifies who the original producer of a movie was, is enough of a change to classify it as a derivative work. It's not the titles and the cover that are "the work." It's the movie itself.

Therefore the whole thing would just about have to be re-edited to show your friends vision of what could be made using the same bits of footage for it to be derivative of the original. Otherwise it's just the original without giving credit.

Re:well, if you want to be technical...

[Kjella]

Anything you merely display is not a copyright violation, like me reading your copyrighted post in a web browser. Fixing it to a permanent medium like downloading is a violation of the reproduction right, assuming it's not covered by fair use AND the bits you're storing were legally distributed. This should be obvious, the same way you couldn't hook up a bunch of DVD recorders to a legal TV broadcast and sell your own DVDs. Also, all copies of an illegal copy are illegal no matter what. That so many armchair quarterback lawyers here claim otherwise is a good example of why you should not go here for legal advice. Read the Napster case if you don't believe me.

Your attempts at trying to be a smartass would be mauled in court. Even if there's nothing about the door itself that tells you whether you're trespassing or not, the judge would obviously look at the context and if you were walking in doors in my apartment building it's obvious they're not meant for public access while the door to the McDonald's obviously is. That is, if you are on TPB and click a link that appears to point to a pirate copy, nobody will accept that you "a priori" don't actually know if the file contains that until you download it, at best it's a possible defense if you were trolled into clicking something worse than a goatse link.

I have to wonder if any non AC's will respond....

[mark-t]

I mean, other than to make a metacomment, such as this. At the time I'm posting this, the only posts that are admitting to this are AC.

Post Anonymously

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I am not allowed to talk about it as part of the settlement.

Re:Post Anonymously

[ThePeices]

But since you posted that as an AC, why are you still not talking about it?

Me

[Anonymous Coward]

My wifi is open (but I keep my own activity logs in case the FBI does a kiddy porn raid). The RIAA sent me some nasty letters demanded money. I told them to fuck off. They filed a lawsuit. The judge wouldn't allow my evidence. Apparently, calling a judge a cocksucker is a good way to spend the weekend in jail for contempt of court. Who knew. We're still pretrial (it's dragged on for over a year and a half now).

Re:I have to wonder if any non AC's will respond..

[izomiac]

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.

Can they talk about it?

[Jason Levine]

At one point, I thought that the settlement that the RIAA pushed people to accept included clauses that prevented people from talking about the settlement. The RIAA, however, had no such restrictions. This way, the RIAA could say all they want about the "dirty, rotten pirate" they stopped but the sued individual couldn't provide their side. I'm not sure if this is still true, but could be part of the reason why we don't hear of many people on Slashdot who were sued.

I was sued by the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

It was during 2007 while I was just finishing up my PhD in the States. I got a court summons the same month I defended my thesis. My guess is that I got careless with my music downloads while I was getting lots of music to burn through the hours while working on my thesis. I just ignored it, defended my thesis, and went back home in Europe as I was planning to anyway. Got a few threatening letters forwarded to me for a while after... Ignored those, too, and never really heard anything else after a while.

Sued? No. Threatened? Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't get sued, but when I was in college I got an email from my university's IT department that if I didn't respond before 8:00 am the next day(which was about 16 hours away from when they sent the email) they would cut off my internet. Why? Because they received a letter from one of the MPAA members(I forget which one now, it's been a few years) saying that I was torrenting some random disc of a TV show off some Spanish torrent site. I basically responded to the IT department saying that I couldn't stop seeding the torrent file because I never had it in the first place and requested some more information on the actual complaint they had been sent, I'm not sure how they handled the complaint with the company but I never heard anything else after that.

Re:Sued? No. Threatened? Yes.

[Myopic]

Really? I would have demanded a little more information. That organization in fact slandered you with false accusations, and you could have a tort against them. It would hardly ever come to that, but you could have fun writing letters and disturbing their lawyers for a while.

Re:I have to wonder if any non AC's will respond..

[Anonymous Coward]

That is exactly the issue. Happens all the time, especially in the medical field. You get a payout and are barred from saying anything to anyone. This leaves everyone else in the dark as to how bad things really are.

The closest I've heard of this is

[__aaqvdr516]

The closest I've heard of anything like this was a co-worker who received a letter from his ISP with a cease and desist. The letter listed the infringing files that he downloaded by name. It said something to the effect of "if you do this again you may be disconnected and/or sued". He still downloads things.

probability?

[blueworm]

Yeah I don't know anyone either, probably because thousands of people sued out of over three-hundred-million U.S. citizens doesn't make for a very high probability that you will personally meet someone who has been sued. The original submitter is a joke, and should never have been approved on this site.

Re:probability?

[genocism]

It's called networking. If everyone at Slashdot knows a few hundred people it's a broad sample. See - Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. ...In retrospect, you're probably right. Most people here know two, maybe three people. I yield to your wisdom sir.

Re:probability?

[dredwerker]

Although the six degrees of separation doesn't work in the way that most people think. There is generally a couple of really well connected people in the network. I find this to be true with my friends where most people have a few other friends(less actual close friends) and one person who knows and keeps in contact with say 50ish. He collects friends.

This is what happened in the original experiment with the letters.

"In an experiment in which 160 letters were mailed out, 24 reached the target in his Sharon, Massachusetts home. Of those 24, 16 were given to the target person by the same person Milgram calls "Mr. Jacobs", a clothing merchant. Of those that reached him at his office, more than half came from two other men.[5]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_experiment

I know someone who has

[Anonymous Coward]

I know of someone who was sued by the RIAA, the fines are on the order of the following

1. pay 5k through an automated settlement system
2. try to fight, and get offered a settlement where you pay 125k (this effectively happens the moment you force one of their lawyers to be on the phone for more than 5 minutes)
3. continue to fight and see them try to charge you with the full 250k per infringement that they're allowed to hit you with.

The person I knew had a good case to fight it with, but had no conceivable way of coping with a 125k settlement. (they actually hadn't downloaded any of the songs )

Non-RIAA cases

[feedayeen]

Over the course of downloading several terabytes of materials in several thousand torrents, I've received 2 letters neither of which threatened legal action but were along the lines of, 'we caught you, it's illegal, stop doing it'. One was for a movie I had never downloaded, the other was for a tv series which is available freely on the Internet from their website that I had been downloading.

My response to both is the same. I've never seen the movie I was accused of torrenting and never will and I stopped watching the tv series.

Not sued, but "contacted.

[suso]

I wasn't sued, but I was one of the first to receive a cease and desist letter from them back in 1998. I was a student at Indiana University and ran a server there in my dorm room which hosted one of my friend's website who had copyrighted "top 40" mp3s on it. Other than the university lightly punishing me, nothing really came of it.

Re:Not sued, but "contacted.

[Myopic]

Yeah. A couple years ago I got a cease and desist letter. It was hilarious. I lived in an apartment building and ran an intentionally open wireless network. (I had one private with password, one public with no password. I did this as an anonymous favor to my building mates.) One day I got a letter threatening action if I didn't stop downloading, or whatever, and the specific movie they were complaining about was "I Love You, Man".

Now listen to me. Listen carefully. I would never, ever, not in a million years, be interested in "I Love You, Man". I certainly was downloading other things, but there is no way that I would have ever searched for that movie, let alone spent any effort to pirate it. Never.

So, I just ignored the fucking letter. I didn't close my wireless, I didn't warn my neighbors, and I never got another letter. Fuck them. I wasn't very afraid of a lawsuit (because they are rare), and in the unlikely scenario of being sued, I could be another good example of why an IP address does not identify a human being. It would have been a ton of hassle, and I hate hassle, but I'm also just the right kind of asshole to push back against them, if it ever came to that.

However, if they caught me downloading stuff that I actually did download, well then I'd probably push back a little, and then settle. You do the crime, you pay the dime.

Re:Not sued, but "contacted.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought "I Love You, Man" was pretty good. Thanks for seeding.

Re:Not sued, but "contacted.

[FairAndHateful]

I wasn't sued, but I was one of the first to receive a cease and desist letter from them back in 1998. I was a student at Indiana University...

Holy Shit! I was working for UITS then!

You never would have talked to me about this, and I would have had nothing to do with reporting you, but damn, that makes it feel like a small world.

I was never even lightly punished by the university, but occasionally my manager would tell us "would you stop screwing around on Napster and try to do some work? I'm sitting right next to you for chrissake!"

Re:Not sued, but "contacted.

[Anonymous Coward]

i used to think i would use the open wifi excuse as well until a buddy pointed out the crucial point... if they seized my computer looking for 'i love you man' or whatever other tripe, while they wouldn't find it, they would find a host of other content of dubious ownership. With a good enough lawyer, I may be able to squeak through the loophole for the original charge but i don't believe the rest of of would be drop so easily (despite what I have learned from law and order).

Re:Not sued, but "contacted.

[muindaur]

At most they can file a motion for discovery, and then a motion to compel. The rules vary by state, but you could be held in contempt: worse yet have a default judgement against you.

Source to back it up:

http://www.ohiolegalservices.org/public/legal_problem/courts-hearings/documents-and-papers-from-a-court/motion-to-compel-discovery-and-sanctions/qandact_view

*Disclaimer*

I'm not a lawyer (accounting students must take business law), and this is not legal advice, nor should this be construed as such.

Re:Not sued, but "contacted.

[PsyciatricHelp]

While I don't download music or movies due to paranoia. I do have a large collection. All of which is saved to my server, (debian core with 4 1tb sata drives in a raid 5 and fully Encrypted.) None of the PCs connected to it know its encrypted. Everything runs pretty fast. I average 56MBps transfer rates. and if it is powered off. I have to ssh into it to allow access to the drive again. FYI Random filling 3TB of space takes a really long time.

Re:Not sued, but "contacted.

[rcuhljr]

I received my only cease and desist letter around 06 for downloading a game I already owned. I'd left my NWN2 cds at home when I went back to school and just grabbed a new copy of it and used my cd keys for the install. The annoying part was they sent the letter to my schools IT department, who just told me I was in violation, so I deleted everything questionable only to find out it was the one thing I didn't delete because I legitimately owned. This is probably why I'm such a sucker for steam now and have 200+ games on my account.

Re:Not sued, but "contacted.

[nevermore94]

Same here. My college was sent one of those C & D letters back in 1997 for a a student running an open FTP server that became a rather popular trading place for a while. We had the only dorm room on campus that had a network connection after my roommates and I hacked a pair of ADSL modems into the campus phone system between our room and the computer lab. I was given the letter and asked to shut it down, but they didn't even take away our connection. Our server was built from spare parts including a 486 motherboard and pair of old hard drives literally housed in a pizza box and running Slackware Linux. I found the FTP server to be quite fascinating in what people would upload to share. I discovered new bands that I had never heard of and would have never bought from later if people hadn't uploaded songs from them to it.

I was (sorta)

[shift3]

I was USAF stationed in Germany. I wont lie.... I download a few things from Torrents... 99.9% of that was TV Shows since it was hard to watch 6 hours ahead (AFN is crap)... Right before i left Germany, i got a certified letter in the mail stating (in german) that i download Bens Fold Five or something. Anyone that knows me, knows i listen to metal.. and metal.. and mostly all metal... Also, they said i downloaded it around 8am on a sunday.... Again, anyone that knew me knows i dont even wake up till noon on sundays... The letter stated that i owed 6000 euro to some lawyer in Munchen. Well, since it came to me and not the base legal office, i ignored it... and left country a few months later (my tour was over)... So, i was never sued by the RIAA directly... but i was told i owed money for a song i allegedly downloaded.

Disclaimer: I am not in the AF... I do not represent the AF.... I may or may not have had a few drinks... and i "CBF"ed to capitalize my "i"s or even use correct grammar... Get over it...

Re:I was (sorta)

[Anonymous Coward]

The German system is slightly different... freelance lawyers routinely connect to all the known trackers and dump the IP addresses contained in there. They then filter for German IPs and submit then to a judge in order to receive a subpoena for the ISP. They then go to the ISP to get all the information connected to said IP in said time-frame. The letter you receive normally contains the whole lot, along with an offer: pay about 1000 within 6 weeks or they drag you to court (they get to choose the court, not all landers consider torrents illegal). If you pay and get caught again within 24 months, the penalty jumps to 20K, a third time will require you to sell your house and/or spare organs.

If the certified letter didn't contain a copy of the subpoena and the ISP's legal department answer, the lawyer was possibly just fishing for easy money.

Not a lot

[Charliemopps]

So I used to work in the part of an ISP that dealt with the copyright complaints and law enforcement requests. The large copyright owners (like record companies) were the only ones that really sent us anything. They hired companies that represented them, collected info off of torrent clients, file sharing programs and websites and then sent complaints to us. That I know of, no request ever came for actual customer records. None... ever. While I worked there, no requests ever came, no that worked there could remember it ever happening, and I'm still friends with people that work there and they still tell me they've never had a request. We got law enforcement requests... but even those we're pretty rare. Local police don't really seem all that interested in anything more than emergency requests revolving around hostage situations (typically crazy boyfriends locked himself in girlfriends house with a gun/knife) The FBI would send requests to us, but they were often very elaborate requests having to do with con-artists or embezzlement cases where they were just looking for billing records. Wire-taps are VERY rare.

I'm not sure how many people get sued, but I serviced several million customers and none ever got anything more than a meaningless email from their ISP that likely went to a mailbox they hadn't used in years. I've believed for a while now that the lawsuits you hear about are more likely just scare tactics and there's really not that much legal action taken.

I got warned.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I was living at Bruce Hall at ANU, I woke up one day to find my network connection didn't work. I phoned the campus IT support and they told me they'd disconnected my port for torrenting a crack for the Sims 2 that my partner wanted. Ironically, despite all the less-than-legit stuff I'd torrented in the past, this was for a game she legitimately owned but the CD drive in her machine was broken. Given that we were poor students and unable to afford a new one, I got her a crack for it.

I got it reconnected after I wrote them a thing saying I'd be a good boy. Only time it happened in about four years.

Posting AC to avoid raep.

Want to find people who have settled? Try dorms

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already noticed that most replies of being caught(or allegedly so) said they were in college, and having lived in a town with two universities while frequently going to college parties, I have met people(college students) who claim to have settled out of court with a representative of the music industry. It's difficult to discern truth from fiction story time, however, college campuses would be a good place to look for people who have settled out of court in a way that would have pushed their situation from the public eye(thus keeping them from being included in any kind of statistics), because most campuses have already made deals with the RIAA which allows them to spy on the students through their WANS.

Re:My Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

tl;dr. So did Ike end up getting sued by the RIAA or not?

I was sued!

[Anonymous Coward]

I called the police when I was trying to download some porn and accidentally ended up with some pirated songs instead. It was Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, so they didn't punish me.

my bosses son

[luther349]

my bosses son was sued by the riaa for downloading a bunch of mp3s. she had to foot the bill as well.

Re:I sometimes wonder if I'll get a takedown notic

[pecosdave]

It happened to The Offspring. They got in trouble for putting their music up for free.

(I still can't figure out why they chose to distribute their music in Quicktime format)

Interesting....

[mark-t]

All the posts that I've seen from people who said that they simply ignored threats from the RIAA are stating that nothing ever came of the threats.

Are there any accounts of somebody who tried to ignore it, and found that they could not?

Re:Interesting....

[Kethinov]

*crickets*

It does indeed look like the vast majority of the people on Slashdot who've had these sorts of close calls ignored it and it went away.

I wonder if the pattern works like this:

- 90% of the accused ignore it and it goes away.
- 9% settle out of fear, not knowing they could probably just ignore it and it'll go away.
- 1% are too prideful and deny the accusation, thereby making it easy for the **AA to force a big, showboating trial (e.g. Joel Tenenbaum or Jamie Thomas).

The moral of the story:

1. Odds against a copyright holder ever catching you in the act are insanely low to begin with, especially if you use obscure torrent sites, private trackers, or other means of concealing the file sharing.

2. If you are among the unlucky few who are accused, ignore the accusation as long as possible. Odds are the accuser will move on to easier targets.

Re:People really were sued

[djlowe]

My sister was sued by the RIAA for making files available on Kazaa. She ended up settling with them.

Is this really what Slashdot has devolved to? An AC posts such a statement, without any proof of veracity, and gets modded up to +5 Informative?

My attempts at sarcasm, to point out how ridiculous that is, are being modded down... WTF?

Regards

dj

Re:People really were sued

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:People really were sued

[Anonymous Coward]

My sister was sued by the RIAA for making files available on Kazaa. She ended up settling with them.

Is this really what Slashdot has devolved to? An AC posts such a statement, without any proof of veracity, and gets modded up to +5 Informative?

My attempts at sarcasm, to point out how ridiculous that is, are being modded down... WTF?

Regards

dj

It's *you* who devolved into crude sexual comments about AC's sister. All you are is some crude and disgusting idiot with an obviously strong bias for attention-seeking who goes by the pseudonymous handle "djlowe" and keeps posting repeatedly about the same thing. I'll trust the veracity of an AC's statement over anything you say any day of the week. That's the W behind your WTF. Happy to have helped.

University Letters

[j33px0r]

My students who live on campus will receive disciplinary action for downloading music via torrent or whatever program they are using. They are required to attend a couple sessions on the illegal nature of their activities. The sessions including watching a few videos & sign some papers saying their sorry or some such nonsense. I've had 3 or 4 claim this has happened.

Not RIAA but New Sensations

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of funny this came up, I havent been sued by the RIIA but New Sensations inc has me in their sights.

I was contacted by my ISP that a company New Sensations representing copyright holders of about 7 adult movies I had allegedly downloaded. They listed the titles downloaded and the times. They also included a link for each case for a settlement I could just pay online. The settlement offered is 200$ per title and there are 7 which comes to 1400$.

The thing is I didnt actually download any of those files the internet while being in my name is used by a friend not even in the same house.

So I am wondering how I should handle this I could ignore it, but the email has language that seems to state if I dont take the settlements by april 5th they will proceed to sue. I contacted the eff about this but they just reffered me to some lawyers I could contact

Re:Not RIAA but New Sensations

[Anonymous Coward]

different company, but about the same run around here as well. claimed it was one file, which was freely available via streaming just by googling. i was contacted several months (4-6) after the alleged download, via suppoena to my web hosting isp. I could ether pay their settlement of $5000, or goto texas and fight it. lawyer fees plus travel would easily add up to $150K plus, with no real chance of winning. got a negoatiated settlemet for ~$2500, which included an NDA style agreement. Still had to pay lawyer fees of ~$1200 as well, so about 3700 total. the really shitty part? I scoured every hard drive i own for this alleged file, the drives in our hosting environment, and couldnt find it. i'm 110% sure i never downloaded it, but cant afford to prove my innocence. those of us who are wrongly accused have no recource but to pay, or pay big.

talk with a lawyer, it doesnt matter who actually downloaded the file, it doesnt matter if it even happened. your faced with ether paying them, or summary judgement for tons and tons more money. since your name is on the account attached to that IP, your the one on the kill list sadly. If it was your friend make him pay your legal fees and the settlement in your behalf.

Re:Not RIAA but New Sensations

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer - This post is made with the US centric viewpoint of the copyright shakedowns currently sweeping the country. For other countries the rules are different but the scam remains the same.

Copyright Trolls will almost NEVER take someone to court unless that person contacts them and admits fault or knowledge of the event and then refuses to pay the settlement.

AC #1 - You should have gotten a notice from your ISP prior to any contact from a troll that they were seeking your information. For the ISP to randomly forward on a notice seems off in the current troll landscape. It appears from a quick look that your troll might be lying to you. I believe the cases for New Sensations are being handled by Ira Siegel and I think all of those cases have been tossed by the courts. Check fightcopyrighttrolls.com for information on your case. Trolls often like to get the subscriber information and then dismiss the case, then work down the list threatening to sue... but rarely follow through. Sophisticated Jane Doe has much history in this area, and does her best to keep up to date on all of the cases.

AC #2 - Sadly you would not have to have gone to TX to defend the case, unless you were in the jurisdiction of the court which is unlikely. They sued you in the court convenient for them, not where the alleged infringement occurred or where you reside. Federal Rules say they can't force you to court across the country.
Texas suggests your troll was Evan Stone (the bad lawyer not the porn star). He is working his way towards getting disbarred. The lawyer you sought help from screwed you. A summary judgement only occurs if you refuse to answer the summons to appear in court, not if you tell the troll to go to hell.

Actually it does matter who downloaded the file, while some lawyers like to claim that because you pay for the account it is your fault this novel idea has never been tested in court. A good analogy would be someone stole your car and then robbed a bank, you should not be facing charges yourself for robbing the bank.
The "tech" used to identify IP addresses has never been vetted as reliable, and an IP Address =! a person. Most of the copyright troll cases have "experts" from a tracking firm... a majority of them appear to be different names for the same company (an effort to keep all of their cases from getting tossed if 1 fails) Guardaley . Guardaley had their evidence thrown out by a German court and was sued by a partner lawfirm because they covered up their tech is flawed.
They now provide data for a large portion of the US version of the copyright trolls.

You will need to make your own decision, but I highly suggest the trip to http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/ to get more information and education on how these scams work.

I remain...
TAC

Re:Not RIAA but New Sensations

[adenied]

This has been going on for a long time. I have a friend who had some nice three letter domains back in the late 1990s. A largish company decided that the Internet was cool and they wanted them. They had some trademarks that were remotely related to the domain names but my friend (and a simple whois check) had records indicating he had the domains well before they even existed as a company.

They made him a cash offer that was in the low five figures. He wanted to keep the domains. They said take the money or we'll sue you for copyright infringement. He talked to a lawyer and was basically told, look, you actually have a strong case here. You could litigate this and you might actually win. But it's going to end up costing you about what they're offering for the domains and a lot of time. If they're worth that much to you might as well just sell them and be done with it.

At this point my friend took the cash.

Re:People really were sued

[Skarecrow77]

it's always been uploading the file to others that they're pissed off about, not downloading it yourself.

sure they don't want you downloading music illegally, but what they tend to sue people for is offering the file out to others. Which of course just about every peer-to-peer file sharing system does by default. So people confuse one with the other.

I think there's a pretty big difference (at least legally speaking) between leaving your (legal-for-you-to-use) files on an insecure ftp site that somebody might find by accident, and putting your files on a public site and then advertising their existence to people looking to download them.

I'm not saying that they don't both have the potential to end you up in court, but one is going to be far far easier for the prosecution to proceed with than the other.

Re:I sometimes wonder if I'll get a takedown notic

[aitikin]

Interesting scenario. My mentor's friend was going to play a fundraiser at a bar or some other public venue. He's in a record contract and an ASCAP artist. Now this is a little different than posting your songs online for free, but he was told by ASCAP lawyers that the venue would have to pay $XXXX in order to pay for the ASCAP licensing as they would be performing ASCAP songs. Obviously they could not afford this fine, so he came up with the idea that he would only use his own original compositions. The ASCAP lawyers stated that, because he was an ASCAP artist, his songs cannot be performed either without violating their licensing agreements. I don't think he's with ASCAP anymore.

Long story short...probably. Furthermore, ASCAP can make the *AAs look good, but at least the majority of the money ends up in the hands of the artist with ASCAP (or so I've been told by many ASCAP artists).

Re:People really were sued

[Zakabog]

The RIAA once sued my sister...

Mynd you, RIAA lawsuites kan be pretti nasti...

A friend of mine was sued by the RIAA...

[XxtraLarGe]

After he died. It actually made Slashdot.

Re:People really were sued

[smitty97]

We apologize for the fault in the parent post. Those responsible have been sacked.

Re:People really were sued

[NoKaOi]

Well, in the first place: A claim by an AC, about a sister, has no veracity

Right, because if you're not posting as AC, it automatically means you're telling the truth. I'm sure nobody would ever lie when they are logged in. I say this as I sit here on my private jet filled with gorgeous naked women. And, since I have an IQ of 320, you must know that I'm telling the truth about that.

Re:People really were sued

[Glug]

It's *you* who devolved into crude sexual comments about AC's sister. All you are is some crude and disgusting idiot with an obviously strong bias for attention-seeking who goes by the pseudonymous handle "djlowe" and keeps posting repeatedly about the same thing. I'll trust the veracity of an AC's statement over anything you say any day of the week. That's the W behind your WTF. Happy to have helped.

Well, in the first place: A claim by an AC, about a sister, has no veracity: I can just as easily state this: My sister is a fucking slut. This, despite the fact that I have no sister. See how that works? In addition, despite the fact that I have a pseudonymous handle "djlowe"? I've been here for a VERY long time, under that handle: I'd tend to think that that has more weight than all of you AC's :)

It's *you* who devolved into crude sexual comments about AC's sister

That was intentional - to point out the fact that there's NO way for any of us to know whether or not the AC's sister even exists. Can you prove that she does? Can you disprove that she didn't give me the clap? Or that she was a bad lay?

I'll trust the veracity of an AC's statement over anything you say any day of the week

Says the next AC *grin* Why doesn't that surprise me? Tell you what - when you grow a pair, you come and post non-AC. Regards, dj

Okay, here I am. Again, I'll trust the veracity of something an AC says, who has nothing to gain or lose, over an immature attention-seeking poster any day of the week. Now you know for a fact that it's true.

Re:i was

[Skarecrow77]

Every private site/tracker I've ever gone to the trouble of getting access to has so little content as to be pointless. They've got a few hundred torrents listed and they're all crap. every last one one of em. even if one of them were good, you've got like 5 people seeding anything. if you're lucky.

Perhaps I'm just not leet enough to get access to the super secret mega underground pirate bay equivalent.

Re:People really were sued

[Skarecrow77]

for a woman presumably born while Thomas Jefferson was president, her embrace of digital media is admirable.

Re:People really were sued

[Trahloc]

The question was does anyone know anyone who was sued. Not can anyone prove without a shadow of a doubt that they know someone who was sued, we'll need you to pee in this cup as well please. If someone wants to be a douche and lie, so be it, but an A/C claiming to know someone is a valid, if unverifiable, response.

Re:I have to wonder if any non AC's will respond..

[causality]

Why would one spend thousands in legal fees? I mean, if somebody is willing to pay somebody to keep their mouth shut about something, then they are already clearly at a disadvantaged point anyways. I mean, if you don't have any proof of what you're supposed to keep quite about, then there's not any sense in them offering you a payout anyways, since it would be your word against theirs. And as long as you had such proof, you could trivially present it in court yourself... no legal fees involved whatsoever.

If you think American courtrooms are a place where everyone is truly equal in the eyes of impartial law, honest guys always win, where you have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong, and having the facts on your side means you will certainly prevail without tremendous cost and heartache to yourself ... well ... perhaps one day in a more enlightened future we'll have something like that, but we definitely don't have it now.

And the thing about having someone at a disadvantage is to understand it is rarely absolute. Sun Tzu talks about never allowing your forces to completely surround a disadvantaged enemy and cut off all possible avenues of escape because desperate men will fight very hard, causing you grave losses (and making them that desperate is not something you need to do to have victory, just something you might do for your own short-sighted gratification). It's just a metaphor for the value of wisely used restraint.

You may have the advantage over a company of an embarassing incident that would make them look bad for about a week or two until the next scandal at the next company. They may pay you to go away and keep it to yourself because the bad PR and expense of playing hardball isn't worth their while. But if you want to press the matter, you'll find yourself against an immortal nonhuman organization with very deep pockets that can tie up years of your life and many thousands of your dollars. Oh, and you still might lose.

The settlement system works because most people are simply not that dedicated and rarely feel like they have a good reason to be. It's quite enticing to them when they receive an offer to take a decent sum of money they can have right now.

Re:People really were sued

[shentino]

Not to mention that someone potentially on the RIAA's legal radar may well have a good reason to remain anonymous.

I was named in a slander lawsuit...

[fearofcarpet]

I ran a TOR exit node on my laptop at work (at a university laboratory). After only about two weeks, the IT guy came downstairs with an official looking letter saying that my IP address had been named in a slander lawsuit. Apparently some business guy was trying to tarnish the name of some other business guy, and he was using TOR to do it. He had written a bunch of nasty stuff to blogs and send some angry emails or something. Anyway, the letter insisted that I appear in court in Los Angeles (I lived in Boston), but we sorted it out by explaining how TOR works--lucky for me, too, because there allegations of CP in the lawsuit.

Re:People really were sued

[Chysn]

No evidence, nothing.

What evidence would you deem sufficient for claiming that one's sister had been sued by the RIAA?

I'm being sued...

[RubberMallet]

I'm in the middle of a lawsuit now.

I received a letter from a scummy law firm in another city. They blitzed the city I live in... more than 10,000 letter sent out apparently. They had "proof" in the form of an IP address that was apparently assigned to my account at my ISP and a P2P log showing that someone at that IP apparently downloaded a movie made by the production company they were representing. I've never heard of the movie. I go look it up on IMDB... it appears to be some terrible low quality, low budget SciFi that no one watched... ever. I certainly had never heard of it, and I never downloaded it.

The law firm was demanding money. If I didn't pay up the "I'm guilty" fee, then they said I'd be taken to court and sued for 10's of thousands. I called a lawyer who is well known for defending this sort of crap. He looked at the letter I received, immediately recognized it, and said.. IU know these guys, let me add you to the big pile of people I'm representing on this same threat and I'll make it go away. That was over 2 years ago...

I have had two letters from him informing me what's going on. Basically he said that this rogue law firm was full of crap, that there was now a Class Action suit open against them and they had a fixed period to reply... the law firm never said a word, so now the second letter said that it's going to court with more than 1000 people being represented... but it could take years for it to reach an end. Basically he said.. don't worry about it, it'll be tied up in the courts for years and it's not cost me a cent.

Re:People really were sued

[Anonymous Coward]

We apologise again for the fault in the parent post. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked

Re:One of my neighbors, sort of....

[DamnStupidElf]

I hope a revocation of computer privileges for the offender, or some other disciplinary action on their part, followed.

Sadly, no, it looks like the RIAA and other MAFIAA members still have an online presence.

libraries lend for free ... was (Re:well, if you w

[kholburn]

My local public library has CDs, DVDs, audio books, ebooks and of course dead tree books and magazines all available to borrow for free.

I often borrow books and read them for free, borrow DVDs and watch them for free.

Libraries have always been pirate havens.

Re:People really were sued

[Maritz]

I'd tend to think that that has more weight than all of you AC's :)

None of it has any weight. No-one cares. It's a message board on the internet. If you start demanding proof for everything people say you're going to be mightily disappointed.

Dude please

[shiftless]

I took offense at the fact that it was modded to +5 Informative,

Please get a life

Re:People really were sued

[gl4ss]

so the old school way of using hacked/insecure ftp's to download/share is actually _safer_? at most you're going to be hit with unauthorized use of computer systems and in many cases it was debatable if you knew it was unauthorized I guess. much smaller fines than what the RIAA mob is trying to extort from people!

anyone else remember downloading shit off from them? ftp://random.ip/../../../../etc/look/here/rzr/ ? that's how I found my first mp3, two princes by spin doctors, had to g.. more probably altavista to find winplay3 to play it..

Re:People really were sued

[Tastecicles]

We apologise for the epic failure of the parent post to understand the Python reference. Those responsible have had their Geek cards revoked.

Re:People really were sued

[Anonymous Coward]

I can vouch; I'm the RIAA and I sued his sister.

Re:I sometimes wonder if I'll get a takedown notic

[Tastecicles]

show me a non-iPod media player that plays Quicktime??

Epic fail.

Re:People really were sued

[Captain Hook]

Opening credits to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

The credits were run in English with Swedish Translations. After a while the Swedish Translator got bored and starting writing various off-topic comments including "A Moose Once bit my sister"

Holy Grail Opening Sequence

Re:People really were sued

[Stoopiduk]

Must be a matter of taste, I'd ban any video with a Creed track on it in every country ;-)

Re:People really were sued

[DuckDodgers]

My brother was sued for pirating a movie. He settled out of court with the film company, and one of the terms of the agreement was that he not even disclose that it happened (so it was a violation of those terms for him to tell me about it). I wouldn't be surprised if hundreds or thousands of others had similar settlements.

Of course I can't provide evidence and it would be absurd to take something written in a Slashdot comment on faith.

Not legal advice

[Theaetetus]

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.

Re:Not legal advice

[L4t3r4lu5]

Disclaimer: I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. This is not legal advice, but is for [my own] amusement only.

If I find this post amusing too, am I infringing on your intellectual property rights? Can you claim prior art to finding your post amusing?

Any reply given will be taken as opinion only, will not construe legal advice, and will not be subject to attorney-client privilege ;)

Re:Not legal advice

[JD-1027]

When getting your legal advice from Slashdot comments, it is usually a good idea to not get your legal advice from Slashdot comments.

Re:Correction

[b4dc0d3r]

They were pissed about the downloading, but all they could make stick legally was the uploading (you do not have the right to make copies if you were not granted that right).

I used to have a reference to a decision which explicitly said downloading is illegal, but I can't find it now to see if it has been overturned or the law updated to say that explicitly. A lot of people think only the uploading is illegal, but that is no longer the case (take with a grain of salt as I lost my citation). As Skarecrow77 said, uploading is far easier to prosecute so they will go that route if possible.

The "making available" theory is nuanced. You can leave files open on an FTP server, and no crime has been committed. If your stash is discovered and a transfer takes place (usually to someone like MediaSentry which validates the content and records the IP address), you have uploaded a copy without authorization. "Making available" has generally been tossed out, but you can bet that if it is discovered by someone who does not want you to make it available, they will initiate a transfer and you're hosed. In legal theory, you're safe. In reality, assume you are not. Advertising it makes no difference, just makes it easier to find.

And as for your CDs, you have a license to listen to the physical copy. When someone takes them from you, even if you left them on the street corner, you lose both the license and the physical item. You are not making a copy, and you are not making an unauthorized distribution. Unauthorized by you, but the copyright holder does not care so no violation. Please do not confuse digital goods with tangible objects, there is very little overlap legally between them. The legal system is still arguing about whether digital goods can actually be stolen. Occasionally, a story like that pops up, but it is usually settled on a case by case basis, I'm not aware of any solid decision or law about virtual goods.

That is why we have the "copyright violation isn't stealing" argument pop up. While you are taking something without paying for it, the entire collection of IP laws were specifically set aside for instances where copying is involved. If copyright were the same as stealing, you could be accused of both at the same time. A very simple argument made by the simplest of lawyers would get one or the other charge thrown out, because they are mutually exclusive. There is no correlation between physical objects and copyright. (Unless you want to be pedantic and say that you are giving away or selling physical books or discs that you copied from an original, which is very clearly not stealing except in the moral sense, and very clearly copyright infringement).

Re:Friend got a letter re: a Wii game iso torrente

[dredwerker]

They will take your wife and sell her into slavery. But you knew that, right?

I sold her already. You do know we are in a recession.

Re:People really were sued

[Digital Vomit]

A claim by an AC, about a sister, has no veracity: I can just as easily state this: My sister is a fucking slut. This, despite the fact that I have no sister. See how that works?

Disowning your sister will not make her change her slutty ways.