guilty as charged!
But since I'm not commenting on slashdot for the karma, I hide my comment pearls behind the zero (0)point posts;-)
Me I do it all for the karma. Only problem, I don't know how to find the karma, or what to do with it if I do find it. But I'm sure it's valuable, just like the "Achievements".
I would think the ideal solution would be to have a court-appointed (or as you say mutually agreeable) forensics expert to do it. Then you could be fairly sure the person would be impartial and fair. As well as not belonging to a company heavily associated with the Intellectual Property movement...
That's a good idea; but I would think the judge would be treading on more familiar ground by requiring the parties to jointly agree on someone.
this particular case isnt likely but its an illustration of why they'd spend money on a case where they arent likely to see a financial ROI (Return on Investment) in exchange for a legal ROI by favorable precedence. Thankfully with the likes of NYCL and others they havent set very much useful precedence in their favor.
Well let's face it, we've been helped by the fact that the RIAA's legal theories don't hold water.
And I love what you're doing for us; "us" in many senses -- the tech community first since that's mostly the people who frequent this site; Americans in general as you're defending our rights as they're being eroded more rapidly due to corporatism; and Davids everywhere who are treated unjustly by Goliaths can admire your contribution to the struggle. Thanks!
Thank you very much for the html advice and followup explanation. Yes I understand the point you were making now. What threw me off was the reference to "blockquote" rather than "quote". I actually do use the paragraph format sometime when quoting here; sometimes I'm just too lazy.
"Can the expert not present evidence or opinion that is neither one-sided. "
Unfortunately in those cases, the "expert" can not.
That the plaintiffs expert does not know what "exculpatory" evidence means (that is, not one-sided for plaintiffs case here, but good for defendants) can be overlooked. [you don't need to know the lawyerish term "exculpatory" when you are not an expert on lawyer terms of course, but you should be familiar with the concept that evidence should be not one-sided]
The expert of the plaintiffs here unfortunately is NOT qualified to do this stuff.
He has no knowledge about the stuff he talks about (and admitted so in the what to be believed the *only one (1) questioning of him in those over 30000 case).
He keeps no records of what he does.
And according to a real expert on P2P (a european professor that is inventing a p2p client (trippler) and getting millions of funding from the european union for his research, the expert for the Plaintiffs knowledge and modus operandi when it comes to his reports amounts to be "borderline to incompetence".
So no, obviously the demands you want to have can not archived when the plaintiffs are allowed to choose the expert on their own.
I can see you've read Dr. Jacobson's deposition testimony.:)
The expert must check for root kits, back doors, bot nets, and other means by which somebody other than the owner could control the computer. Only amateur thieves would let evidence accumulate on their systems. The pros will use hijacked systems for their P2Ps, so that when the RIAA/MPAA track down IP addresses it leads to a patsy, not the culprit in charge of the operation.
You are of course right. But the RIAA's "expert" has testified that he does not check for any of those. I.e., he's there only to inculcate, not to exculpate.
"Hi Ray, some friendly HTML advice: you can use the tags
and
to surround the paragraphs within the
tags, so they flow like the original.And, to make the tags display rather than act, like in the above, use < for the "less than" and > for the "greater than". (And, in the previous sentence, I used & to make the ampersand, so it wouldn't just show the less than/greater than symbols.:)"
1. The originals are all messed up, because they come from *pdf files. They're full of hard returns that need to be taken out, etc.
2. Also, bear in mind that I'm working in blogger.com. I doubt that taking the time to insert a bunch of <p>'s and </p>'s help me save time.
If neither of the above changes your mind, could you be more specific about what you think I should be doing (bearing in mind that the most important thing is to save time)?
What is the point of an "Expert witness" for the prosecution and for the defense? Is the person an expert or not?... Why can the court/state just not have a list of experts that are verifiably truthful, knowledgeable and willing to testify in court.
Given the ethics they have displayed so far, I wouldn't put planting evidence past the RIAA. They may be lawyers, but they've already ignored court orders and played fast and loose with the laws of evidence.
And gotten *no* punishment at all for their misdeeds. So why should they stop now?
If someone was unilaterally chosen by the RIAA as an expert, I would consider that probable evidence that he has already agreed to come to the conclusion that they want. It may be illegal, but they've already gotten away with rougher stuff, without ANY punishment.
I agree. Like sociopaths everywhere,, they will do anything they can get away with. I just hope I'm there when the judges finally catch up to them.
Well it would be dangerous for someone like me to allow my hatred for them to 'cloud my thinking', since it is part of my professional life to fight this enemy. But I can't see why everyone else can't just kick back, relax, and hate the RIAA as much as it deserves to be hated.
That one caused sinus damage, Ray.
Meanwhile, the guy to whom I was responding didn't even get that I was trying to be funny. I guess appreciation of my sense of humor is an acquired taste, and you've acquired it.
it's dangerous to let one's hatred of their philosophy and tactics cloud one's thinking.
Well it would be dangerous for someone like me to allow my hatred for them to 'cloud my thinking', since it is part of my professional life to fight this enemy. But I can't see why everyone else can't just kick back, relax, and hate the RIAA as much as it deserves to be hated.
If they believe people are illegally a[c]quiring/reproducing/distributing their content in violation of the law, then producing 'marked' versions of their *own* content to better detect those violations seems justified...
What basis do you have for suggesting that their motivation for flooding the internet with their own mp3's in slightly corrupted format is "to better detect... violations"?
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you would have provided a better example of stooping low given time.
Hundreds. The reason I selected that example is that it's the closest to 'planting evidence'.
I can't discuss the legality of the 'entrapment' concept you are discussing because I haven't litigated the issue yet, and I never like to give the RIAA lawyers a free look at my strategic thinking. But I think I can say that the RIAA knows that many, usually most, of the files in their exhibit B 'screenshot' are files which they themselves furnished, so that the numbers of alleged files are padded. If someone bent on infringing the copyright of a sound recording by making an unauthorized download has to obtain 4 copies to find 1 working copy, that means if he has 400 unuathorized downloaded files on his computer he probably only would have had 100, but for the RIAA's own conduct. MediaSentry's president himself testified in the Canadian case, BMG v. Doe, that you would need to play the song files to know if they are infringing song files. The RIAA however will claim that every file on the computer is an infringing file, even though it can't back that up, and knows that it's not in fact true.
I usually take "you can correct me" to mean "if my claim is wrong, please debunk it". I don't think GP was asking you to prove his point so much as he was inviting you to enlighten/overrule him if he was wrong.
I was just kidding around with him; he's been a Slashdot friend for a long time. But seriously, if you imply that NYCL will correct you if you're wrong, that kind of carries with it an implication that if I don't correct him I thought he was right. And I certainly didn't think he was right on that. I usually don't give advice here, but let me give a word of advice: don't ever bet on there being anything even an RIAA lawyer wouldn't do.
Semantics aside, I agree with your suspicion.
Well I'm not saying they would plant evidence; I'm just saying I wouldn't put it past them. I don't know how low they would go. I just know that they make false statements frequently, they act immorally and contrary to law, and the depths of their behavior seems to know no bounds.
And let me take the opportunity to say, I've always enjoyed reading your submissions to Slashdot and your comments as well.
Thank you very much. I've always felt at home at Slashdot, since the first day I discovered this nutty place.
With the RIAA cases, the other side of the coin is that, as long as the cases are handled fairly, they are too expensive for the plaintiffs to pursue. Last time I checked, the pockets of the corporate sponsors behind the RIAA not exactly of limitless depth. Absent the ability to bully people into $5000 out-of-court settlements with an hours' work by a nickel-ante paralegal and a penny-ante "investigator," a fair case with the court costs and attorney's fees will far exceed any civil penalties that the RIAA is likely, on the average, to collect. And absent the threat of an unwinnable case with six-figure damages, the PR battle moves from Pyrrhic to simply pointless.
Excellent post, bzzfzz. Wish I could write like that. I hope you get modded to "+5".
You are exactly right; if proper safeguards had been put in place, and were the Courts vigilant to ensure that the letter of the law was followed by the RIAA lawyers, these cases would have stopped 6 years ago.
They will do everything they can to bend the laws until they crack, but they won't plant evidence. NYCL can correct me....
You must be new here.
You're asking ME to back you up on your claim that the RIAA would not pick a forensics expert who would stoop to such a thing? The same RIAA which has employed MediaSentry to send out millions and millions of slightly corrupted mp3 files, and then sued tens of thousands of people for having those files on their computers?
You must have me confused with someone else.
Every time I think I've found a level to which even the RIAA would not stoop, I wind up being proved wrong.
Nope. Letting the RIAA pick the "forensics expert" does absolutely nothing to ensure that a fair and impartial expert is chosen. I'd think all that would do is make it very easy for the RIAA to set up a forensics lab of their own that could potentially plant evidence on the mirror copy. Then what do you do? They could always claim that your copy, which is minus the planted evidence, was "tampered with". I see no good out of this, but if NewYorkCountyLawyer disagrees, I would welcome an opportunity to be educated out of my error here.
No, while I think the order otherwise "makes sense", I happen to agree with you 100% on your point that the RIAA should not be able to unilaterally pick the forensic examiner. I think that is a mistake on the judge's part. As I pointed out in TFA:
I really don't know how this sealing thing came up, or how it's being applied. As an outside observer with 35 years experience in legal work, it seems incredibly bizarre to me, for a motion for class action certification to be sealed. Likewise, although it happens from time to time, I do not know why the judge met privately with the RIAA's attorneys. I find that kind of thing abhorrent, and feel it should be avoided except in the rarest of circumstances. Not knowing how it was justified, I can't say whether it was justified or not... but I seriously doubt that it was.
Slashdot Mirror
Use the "Quote Parent" button, which adds a "correctly" quoted version of your parent to your post;
That would be good if I were using the "interactive" discussion system, which I'm not.
guilty as charged! But since I'm not commenting on slashdot for the karma, I hide my comment pearls behind the zero (0)point posts ;-)
Me I do it all for the karma. Only problem, I don't know how to find the karma, or what to do with it if I do find it. But I'm sure it's valuable, just like the "Achievements".
I have read it ;-)
but lost my PW :-(
that's why I'm an AC these days ;-)
--
A_F
Boy are you being lazy, Alter_Fritz. Something tells me Slashdot offers a means of password retrieval and/or reset.
I got it, Ray. Sometimes it's fun to play it straight when someone is joking sarcastically. My daughter *hates* when I do that. :-)
I'm with your daughter on this one. As has been observed on Slashdot, I have a defective sarcasm meter. :)
I would think the ideal solution would be to have a court-appointed (or as you say mutually agreeable) forensics expert to do it. Then you could be fairly sure the person would be impartial and fair. As well as not belonging to a company heavily associated with the Intellectual Property movement...
That's a good idea; but I would think the judge would be treading on more familiar ground by requiring the parties to jointly agree on someone.
this particular case isnt likely but its an illustration of why they'd spend money on a case where they arent likely to see a financial ROI (Return on Investment) in exchange for a legal ROI by favorable precedence. Thankfully with the likes of NYCL and others they havent set very much useful precedence in their favor.
Well let's face it, we've been helped by the fact that the RIAA's legal theories don't hold water.
And I love what you're doing for us; "us" in many senses -- the tech community first since that's mostly the people who frequent this site; Americans in general as you're defending our rights as they're being eroded more rapidly due to corporatism; and Davids everywhere who are treated unjustly by Goliaths can admire your contribution to the struggle. Thanks!
Thank you very much for the html advice and followup explanation. Yes I understand the point you were making now. What threw me off was the reference to "blockquote" rather than "quote". I actually do use the paragraph format sometime when quoting here; sometimes I'm just too lazy.
Thank you also very much for your kind words.
"Can the expert not present evidence or opinion that is neither one-sided. " Unfortunately in those cases, the "expert" can not. That the plaintiffs expert does not know what "exculpatory" evidence means (that is, not one-sided for plaintiffs case here, but good for defendants) can be overlooked. [you don't need to know the lawyerish term "exculpatory" when you are not an expert on lawyer terms of course, but you should be familiar with the concept that evidence should be not one-sided] The expert of the plaintiffs here unfortunately is NOT qualified to do this stuff. He has no knowledge about the stuff he talks about (and admitted so in the what to be believed the *only one (1) questioning of him in those over 30000 case). He keeps no records of what he does. And according to a real expert on P2P (a european professor that is inventing a p2p client (trippler) and getting millions of funding from the european union for his research, the expert for the Plaintiffs knowledge and modus operandi when it comes to his reports amounts to be "borderline to incompetence". So no, obviously the demands you want to have can not archived when the plaintiffs are allowed to choose the expert on their own.
I can see you've read Dr. Jacobson's deposition testimony. :)
The expert must check for root kits, back doors, bot nets, and other means by which somebody other than the owner could control the computer. Only amateur thieves would let evidence accumulate on their systems. The pros will use hijacked systems for their P2Ps, so that when the RIAA/MPAA track down IP addresses it leads to a patsy, not the culprit in charge of the operation.
You are of course right. But the RIAA's "expert" has testified that he does not check for any of those. I.e., he's there only to inculcate, not to exculpate.
and
to surround the paragraphs within theWhat is the point of an "Expert witness" for the prosecution and for the defense? Is the person an expert or not? ... Why can the court/state just not have a list of experts that are verifiably truthful, knowledgeable and willing to testify in court.
Interesting suggestion.
Given the ethics they have displayed so far, I wouldn't put planting evidence past the RIAA. They may be lawyers, but they've already ignored court orders and played fast and loose with the laws of evidence. And gotten *no* punishment at all for their misdeeds. So why should they stop now? If someone was unilaterally chosen by the RIAA as an expert, I would consider that probable evidence that he has already agreed to come to the conclusion that they want. It may be illegal, but they've already gotten away with rougher stuff, without ANY punishment.
I agree. Like sociopaths everywhere,, they will do anything they can get away with. I just hope I'm there when the judges finally catch up to them.
Well it would be dangerous for someone like me to allow my hatred for them to 'cloud my thinking', since it is part of my professional life to fight this enemy. But I can't see why everyone else can't just kick back, relax, and hate the RIAA as much as it deserves to be hated.
That one caused sinus damage, Ray.
Meanwhile, the guy to whom I was responding didn't even get that I was trying to be funny. I guess appreciation of my sense of humor is an acquired taste, and you've acquired it.
I'm so, so sorry.
No, it was MediaSentry.
Read the deposition (pdf) if you don't believe me.
Interestingly, MediaDefender just bought MediaSentry from SafeNet.
Here is the testimony of MediaSentry's president in BMG v. Doe.
I have no love for the **AA, but
I can't help but smile each time I see that
it's dangerous to let one's hatred of their philosophy and tactics cloud one's thinking.
Well it would be dangerous for someone like me to allow my hatred for them to 'cloud my thinking', since it is part of my professional life to fight this enemy. But I can't see why everyone else can't just kick back, relax, and hate the RIAA as much as it deserves to be hated.
If they believe people are illegally a[c]quiring/reproducing/distributing their content in violation of the law, then producing 'marked' versions of their *own* content to better detect those violations seems justified...
What basis do you have for suggesting that their motivation for flooding the internet with their own mp3's in slightly corrupted format is "to better detect ... violations"?
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you would have provided a better example of stooping low given time.
Hundreds. The reason I selected that example is that it's the closest to 'planting evidence'.
I can't discuss the legality of the 'entrapment' concept you are discussing because I haven't litigated the issue yet, and I never like to give the RIAA lawyers a free look at my strategic thinking. But I think I can say that the RIAA knows that many, usually most, of the files in their exhibit B 'screenshot' are files which they themselves furnished, so that the numbers of alleged files are padded. If someone bent on infringing the copyright of a sound recording by making an unauthorized download has to obtain 4 copies to find 1 working copy, that means if he has 400 unuathorized downloaded files on his computer he probably only would have had 100, but for the RIAA's own conduct. MediaSentry's president himself testified in the Canadian case, BMG v. Doe, that you would need to play the song files to know if they are infringing song files. The RIAA however will claim that every file on the computer is an infringing file, even though it can't back that up, and knows that it's not in fact true.
I usually take "you can correct me" to mean "if my claim is wrong, please debunk it". I don't think GP was asking you to prove his point so much as he was inviting you to enlighten/overrule him if he was wrong.
I was just kidding around with him; he's been a Slashdot friend for a long time. But seriously, if you imply that NYCL will correct you if you're wrong, that kind of carries with it an implication that if I don't correct him I thought he was right. And I certainly didn't think he was right on that. I usually don't give advice here, but let me give a word of advice: don't ever bet on there being anything even an RIAA lawyer wouldn't do.
Semantics aside, I agree with your suspicion.
Well I'm not saying they would plant evidence; I'm just saying I wouldn't put it past them. I don't know how low they would go. I just know that they make false statements frequently, they act immorally and contrary to law, and the depths of their behavior seems to know no bounds.
And let me take the opportunity to say, I've always enjoyed reading your submissions to Slashdot and your comments as well.
Thank you very much. I've always felt at home at Slashdot, since the first day I discovered this nutty place.
Does the order preclude the defense from picking their own forensic examiner, and leaving it up to the court (jury?) to decide which one to believe?
No it does not. It relates solely to the methodology of the hard drive mirror image inspection.
I am curious how the court responded to Defendant's Opposition to Plaintiffs' Motion to Dismiss Counterclaims
I believe that is scheduled for oral argument on June 5th.
With the RIAA cases, the other side of the coin is that, as long as the cases are handled fairly, they are too expensive for the plaintiffs to pursue. Last time I checked, the pockets of the corporate sponsors behind the RIAA not exactly of limitless depth. Absent the ability to bully people into $5000 out-of-court settlements with an hours' work by a nickel-ante paralegal and a penny-ante "investigator," a fair case with the court costs and attorney's fees will far exceed any civil penalties that the RIAA is likely, on the average, to collect. And absent the threat of an unwinnable case with six-figure damages, the PR battle moves from Pyrrhic to simply pointless.
Excellent post, bzzfzz. Wish I could write like that. I hope you get modded to "+5".
You are exactly right; if proper safeguards had been put in place, and were the Courts vigilant to ensure that the letter of the law was followed by the RIAA lawyers, these cases would have stopped 6 years ago.
They will do everything they can to bend the laws until they crack, but they won't plant evidence. NYCL can correct me....
You must be new here.
You're asking ME to back you up on your claim that the RIAA would not pick a forensics expert who would stoop to such a thing? The same RIAA which has employed MediaSentry to send out millions and millions of slightly corrupted mp3 files, and then sued tens of thousands of people for having those files on their computers?
You must have me confused with someone else.
Every time I think I've found a level to which even the RIAA would not stoop, I wind up being proved wrong.
This makes way too much sense.
Nope. Letting the RIAA pick the "forensics expert" does absolutely nothing to ensure that a fair and impartial expert is chosen. I'd think all that would do is make it very easy for the RIAA to set up a forensics lab of their own that could potentially plant evidence on the mirror copy. Then what do you do? They could always claim that your copy, which is minus the planted evidence, was "tampered with". I see no good out of this, but if NewYorkCountyLawyer disagrees, I would welcome an opportunity to be educated out of my error here.
No, while I think the order otherwise "makes sense", I happen to agree with you 100% on your point that the RIAA should not be able to unilaterally pick the forensic examiner. I think that is a mistake on the judge's part. As I pointed out in TFA:
Unlike the protective order (pdf) in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Arellanes, this protective order permits the RIAA to unilaterally select whatever expert it chooses, rather than an independent, mutually agreeable, expert.
I think that is unfortunate. I'm hoping the judge comes to recognize that oversight.
I really don't know how this sealing thing came up, or how it's being applied. As an outside observer with 35 years experience in legal work, it seems incredibly bizarre to me, for a motion for class action certification to be sealed. Likewise, although it happens from time to time, I do not know why the judge met privately with the RIAA's attorneys. I find that kind of thing abhorrent, and feel it should be avoided except in the rarest of circumstances. Not knowing how it was justified, I can't say whether it was justified or not... but I seriously doubt that it was.
All I can tell you is that the more information we have from past cases, the more material we have with which to bury the RIAA.