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Federal Judge Rules P2P Users Aren't In a Conspiracy
Fluffeh writes "Judge Holderman ruled against copyright holders who were trying to paint a rather distorted picture. They sue just one Internet user, but use that lawsuit as a pretext to subpoena other defendants who had participated in the same BitTorrent swarm. The plaintiffs in these lawsuits claim that the other users had participated in a "conspiracy" to assist one another in distributing particular copyrighted works. Because the copyright holder's threat is based on the cost of litigation (and risk of public embarrassment — as this is a tactic used increasingly by the pron industry) more so than the damages a defendant would face in the event of a loss, innocent defendants have virtually as much incentive to settle as guilty ones do. That's not how things are supposed to work, and more and more judges are refusing to play along. Coupled with recent rulings in Florida, the copyright holders seem to be finding less and less favor with judges."
I see what you did there.
Innocent of conspiracy. That's pretty important for a lot of reasons, most of which are legal.
Selling drugs is P2P, but so is having sex (see wikipedia for more info fellow reader).
Criminalizing a group of loosely or totally unrelated individuals based on a particular form of sharing content (or speech) is just one step away from a thoughtcrime and is seen in the banning of the web, twitter, or similar by oppressive regimes, and shows a undeniable contempt for those basics terms and concepts that form the acronym P2P.
Person to person communication is inherent to all humans, and sought out even by those who are handicapped to the extreme. It is the basis of science, individual development, society, and anything else that didn't come from instict or perhaps indirect observation. If you live in a society that doesn't allow newpapers, a certain internet sharing site, or any other medium that allows honest expression then you need to run like hell and be glad that you did. This is testing the waters.
I remember when using P2P for legimitate uses during the late 90'- early 2000's being so disgusted that the judges at the time couldn't seem to fathom in their wildest dreams how this new means of exchange could possibly be anything other than 100% destructive "theft" oriented black-market oriented, when in reality a lot of early P2P really was centered around specialized information exchange that had a dynamic nature not offered by the web and only hinted at by services like Hotline and the others. Sure the smart people set up their own FTPs, but for many mediums and industries there was little to no expectation-especially at that time- that the person had the skills to do so. The PC was still not on every desktop, or even remotely required for many non-technologically inclined persons.
This dynamism was of course the same reason Napster and the rest were able to gain such rapid traction- it was so easy, and connective. Before web search got it right, and even still P2P allows personalization and selectivity of content that has never been matched. Those early days of fairly high penetration of modern-like P2P felt like having a personal mailing list but without the management, unlimited hosting, it has integrated search, didn't require much work, and didn't make you wanna move to antarctica in the way you felt after the first attempt to "share" via a dutifully built template based GeoCity's monstrosity.
But despite the damage done to legitimate P2P by the so-called Napster boom of early last decade I refuse to buy the "blame the tool" B.S. leveled at those site who tended toward unlicensed transfers. It was a shit argument than, and time has only proven even more how P2P really is the core of the internet even if it isn't always manifested purely at the protocol level. Love them or hate them, but sites that allow quick person to person communication like Flickr, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and old stalwarts like email and various chat clients represent the biggest reason people are shifting time away from TV and DVD porn. Sure companies have perverted and manipulated this model- Facebook being perhaps the worst- But the spirit of sharing is so central to human communication and by extension the web that literal clusterfucking; as in clustering us by service or protocol, and then sending in the lawyers to fuck us based on that designation is just wrong. There is perhaps no force that threatens free speech more, than being grouped in and implicated by remote extension with an individual based on their theoretical possibility to commit a potential crime.
Federal judges are protected by article III of the Constitution, and cannot be removed from office except by impeachment. Many judges never really retire, either, they just become "senior" judges with reduced case loads. They are nominated for their offices by the president and confirmed by the senate.
They aren't free of corruption (see Justice Thomas, or more specifically, his wife), but the federal judiciary is remarkably free from corporate pressure, and it really is the closest thing the USA has to a bastion of liberty and freedom.
Actually it looks legit. see the ruling file at http://ia600803.us.archive.org/25/items/gov.uscourts.ilnd.265453/gov.uscourts.ilnd.265453.23.0.pdf It's dated Friday...
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Please tell me when its not "fact or fiction" day on the internet?
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Actually, by "innocent", the summary is referring to defendants who have not downloaded the porn - that is, people who are actually innocent of copyright infringement.
The problem is that if the porn companies screwed up and have a bunch of wrong IP addresses in addition to correct ones (that is, people who did download the porn as well as people who didn't), the people at the end of the wrong IP addresses will still get a letter threatening a lawsuit in which they will be publicly accused of downloading "bareback college studs" (or whatever) unless they pay up two thousand dollars. Regardless of whether they're innocent, most people would rather pay up (and keep the whole thing secret) than mount an expensive legal defense.
Most federal judges are not impressed with this "settlement extortion" legal strategy, and aren't letting porn companies (and similar plaintiffs) get away with this on the cheap. What I mean by that is, the porn companies* are getting people's names and addresses, which they need to send the threatening letters and settlement demands, by suing thousands of defendants at the same time. Not only is this very questionable so far as the rules of civil procedure, they also only pay one filing fee even though they're essentially suing thousands of people. The courts would really prefer that the porn companies pay the $350 filing fee for each defendant they sue, because these massive lawsuits generate huge amounts of paper work, and clog up the system to the detriment of other lawsuits that are perhaps actually about obtaining justice rather than extorting settlements.
*there's reason to believe that the porn companies don't really care that much, and these massive lawsuits are instigated by a handful of lawyers who think they've found an easy way to hack the legal system and make a bunch of money. These lawyers do these suits on a contingency basis - that is, the porn companies aren't actually paying the lawyers to file the law suits; instead, they split whatever profits they get from settlements.
The best April Fools stories are those that border between the outrageous and the plausible. I fell for one this year, usually I don't because a friend of mine has his birthday on March 31st but I had a good hangover and forgot. It got me to anger, then to rage, then to "damnit, got me" and was well played. The rest of the day is kind of a waste though. Actually what I found funniest was the reverse April Fools, our version of AP or Reuters called NTB sent out a press message listing the various jokes, except one of those news stories was real. So they had to send out a fairly embarrassing retraction correcting themselves. Then you have all the laughs at other people who did fall for something, not to mention the smugness of not falling for it. Overall lighten up a bit, the world needs one less than serious day a year.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, it is true they aren't exactly known for their accuracy in their accusations... and I believe I saw a report of an online webcam being targeted as well.
I believe the webcam was accused of unfair competition rather than copyright infringement ;-)
Most federal judges are not impressed with this "settlement extortion" legal strategy, and aren't letting porn companies (and similar plaintiffs) get away with this on the cheap.
It's not the legal strategy that judges have a problem with -- it was allowed for years when the RIAA started doing it. It's only after the p0rn industry started using the same strategy that judges viewed it as extortion.
Now if we could just get some really obnoxious patent trolls, maybe we could get some legal bias against patents.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss