Atlantic Records is one of the most common plaintiffs in the RIAA cases. (Here are some in which it is the first named plaintiff: Atlantic v. Andersen(Portland, OR)
Atlantic v. Anderson (Houston, TX)
Atlantic v. Boggs (Corpus Christi, Texas)
Atlantic v. Boyer (Tampa, FL)
Atlantic v. Brennan (New Haven, CT)
Atlantic v. Dangler (Rochester, NY)
Atlantic v. DeMassi (Houston, TX)
Atlantic v. Does 1-14 (Portland, ME)
Atlantic v. Does 1-25(New York, NY)
Atlantic v. Howell (Phoenix, AZ)(pro se)
Atlantic v. Huggins(Brooklyn, NY)
Atlantic v. Lenentine (Portland, ME)
Atlantic v. Myers (Jackson, MS)
Atlantic v. Njuguna (Charleston, SC)
Atlantic v. Raleigh (Missouri)
Atlantic v. Serrano (San Diego, CA)
Atlantic v. Shutovsky (New York, NY)
Atlantic v. Zuleta (Atlanta, GA)...) As far as I'm concerned they should rot in hell.
I defer to the expertise of an attorney, but unless this was a ruling by a court of appeals or above, there is no precedent set. Trial courts render judgments which can be referenced in litigation, but not cited as "precedent" on other legal cases... is this not correct? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's a precedent. It's not 'controlling' or 'binding' but it's a precedent.
I hope so. I was actually pleasantly surprised to discover how much non-RIAA music is out there and how often my favorite radio station plays it. That actually surprised me the most -- the radio station in question is owned by Clear Channel yet I've discovered a lot of good indie music through them. Who would've thought?
Pandora is another good source in my experience, although it seems to take them longer to get new albums up for some reason (licensing issues?)
Yes. And I'm making a collection. I have a list of free links to indie music sources which I call "Liberated Music". And I have advertising links for indie-only music where I and my blog actually get a commission if you buy something.
I check out RIAA Radar and hand over some scratch if I hear a song that I like and discover the artist is signed with an indie label.
I doubt my purchases matter much in the grand scheme of things but I'm going to vote with my wallet anyway.
They matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.
They just don't.
Sure, you can build a system with multiple paths of registration and logging and authentication, but a majority of those processes can be spoofed or socially engineered.
If you came up to me with a subpoena asking who had IP address 192.168.1.X on this day at this time, even if I still had the logs on my DHCP server, it would take a significant amount of forensics (IE, an audit of every laptop my friends or neighbors own) to determine who the culprit was.
Thank you. Now if we could only get the judges to realize this.
I think the problem here is poor definition of "left" vs. "right."
Ask a question pertaining to abortion, and most of the answers here are "anything goes," which sounds left-wing. Ask a question about the economy, and the answers are more "government isn't your sugar daddy," which sounds right-wing.
I think the most common/. viewpoint is best described as "libertarian," which can be summed up as "leave us alone and don't tell us what to do."
I think any attempt to distill a prevailing political orientation on Slashdot is doomed to failure. There is, in truth, a great deal of diversity here.
The only common thread is that each of us is right.
This was (a) a news report about a judge quashing a subpoena, (b) followed by a quotation of an opinion by a commentator. There was no slant in the news, and it provides a link to the actual document. The expression of opinion was clearly denominated as such. I'm under no obligation to come up with a "plan". I have no training as a "planner", I'm a litigation lawyer. Me coming up with a 'plan' would be like asking me to do your plumbing.... I don't think you'd be very happy with the end result.
Isn't every one of these stories tagged as being the death knell for the RIAA? Don't get me wrong, I'm always glad to see the RIAA losing in these types of cases, but 'death knell for the RIAA' is getting to be 'Year for Linux on the Desktop'.
Well look at it this way. If this case stands for the principle that no John Doe information can be divulged unless the ISP can identify the "alleged infringer" to a "reasonable degree of technical certainty", and that principle is followed by other courts.... very few, if any, "alleged infringers", will ever be identified.
I agree with you that a lot of bad stuff started with Reagan. He was adept at convincing people that they didn't need government to protect them from the big corporations. The antitrust laws were weakened, and monopoly has become the norm. Hopefully people are starting to wake up from this decades-long slumber.
Slightly offtopic but you don't happen to have a clone down here in Australia? - The *AA's are going after a small ISP called iiNet in Perth, they hope to test provisions in the recent AU-US free trade agreement that (they claim) makes ISP caching equivalent to copying (I knew the FTA would bite us on the bum).
The AA's have brought in the same counsel that nutered Kazza, APC has an href="http://apcmag.com/why_iinet_will_probably_lose_the_piracy_lawsuit.htm">interesting article in which they debunk iiNet's 3 main arguments as common misconceptions of the law and predict iiNet will lose.
Yeah, I heard about that. Don't worry, there are some really cool internet copyright lawyers down under; I've met some of them. Nobody neutered Kazaa, Kazaa neutered itself. The case was settled.
I don't vaguely support the RIAA or MPAA, I think they are ignorant, short-term thinking assholes who deserve nothing but contempt. I just think that advocating slashing the tires of people who work for the RIAA is juvenile, and dangerous and should not be supported by anyone, let alone a lawyer.
As you know, I have never supported any such thing. So please withdraw the accusation.
Thanks, NYCL for keeping us up-to-date on these important issues.
This is both good and bad, I guess... I don't visit EFF at the depth I used to, because now a lot of the news is coming to me.
Bad girl. You go to EFF too. They have a lot of great info that I don't cover. (Also (a) I don't submit everything to Slashdot and (b) Slashdot's editors don't accept all my stories so there's plenty of stuff going on in my blog that doesn't make it here.).
It doesn't work because you're using slashdot as the soapbox, compared to say NYCL to whom slashdot is but part of his soapbox.
I don't really think of it that way. To my mind, a soapbox is a place you go to persuade people to accept your viewpoint. My only 'soapbox' is the court house. It's the place I go to try to persuade judges and jurors.
My blog isn't really for the purpose of persuading anyone; it's set up for the purpose of assisting (a) defendants and (b) defendants' lawyers (including myself) by collecting information on these cases.
I definitely don't visit Slashdot to persuade.
One reason I come here is that I enjoy it. I find this incredibly rich, diverse, funny, intelligent dialogue (is 'multilogue' a word? if so it's really a 'multilogue') to be stimulating, challenging, educating, and, usually, collegial.
Another reason is to get the specialized information I collect (which is immensely important to the world at large, although most of the world is oblivious to it) out to a wider audience of people who actually want to know about it because they do understand its importance.
Another reason I visit Slashdot is to learn about technical stuff. So often I've found the technically-oriented Slashdotters to be immensely helpful in thinking through the computer issues. As you may recall, I even came to Slashdot to get ideas for the RIAA's expert's deposition, and later to ask the tech community to 'vet' his transcript.
It would be crazy for me to come here to persuade. I don't think I've ever persuaded anyone here of anything. My 'persuasiveness' track record on Slashdot is about as good as my track record at home, which is: I never can win an argument in either of those forums. (Although maybe, for that reason, it is a good place for me to hone my skills.)
You know, Ray, I was cheered to see a Federal class action under RICO against the mafiAA [plexipages.com], but then I began to read the counterclaim, and I realized that all of the complained-of acts are complained of because of the way plaintiff-in-counterclaim wishes to characterize them-- and in my experience, this is the easiest kind of complaint to defeat, since all you have to do is "reframe" the acts to show a colorable alternative interpretation (an arguably applicable statutory basis for the act), and BAM! Now you have to litigate the whole statute or at least whether some too-nebulous combination of deeds falls within or without it, which you ain't going to do in the context of an action by a copyright holder against an alleged infringer without the wealth of Croesus... How can you, as a Plaintiff, meet your burden of proof if there is a halfway reasonable alternative to calling the acts "extortion", for instance? Big Music says well, even if there is some evidence this was in fact extortion, there is an equal weight of evidence we are properly using the statutes, ambiguous and unlitigated as they are... In short, the counterclaim looks good, but is doomed, I think. Charlie Nesson, on the other hand, is doing God's work and doing it well.
Well, my way is not to try and predict these things. One never knows. All I know is
-in my opinion they are meritorious counterclaims, and the facts are exactly as described; and
-in my opinion the RIAA's damages theory is unconstitutional, as I have been saying for 3 years.
So in my view they both ultimately deserve to prevail.
As to what the judges will do, I can only hope for the best.
The only thing that story is missing is a guy in a cheap pinstripe suit and brass knuckles saying "It would be a shame if somethin' bad should happen to your routers. Yeah. A real shame."
Sorry I left that part out; I was pressed for time.
Slashdot Mirror
Can we get a +1 Hero moderation option? NYCL is beyond Informative merged with Insightful into a class all his own.
Thanks Tao. Much appreciated.
Atlantic Records is one of the most common plaintiffs in the RIAA cases. (Here are some in which it is the first named plaintiff: Atlantic v. Andersen(Portland, OR) Atlantic v. Anderson (Houston, TX) Atlantic v. Boggs (Corpus Christi, Texas) Atlantic v. Boyer (Tampa, FL) Atlantic v. Brennan (New Haven, CT) Atlantic v. Dangler (Rochester, NY) Atlantic v. DeMassi (Houston, TX) Atlantic v. Does 1-14 (Portland, ME) Atlantic v. Does 1-25(New York, NY) Atlantic v. Howell (Phoenix, AZ)(pro se) Atlantic v. Huggins(Brooklyn, NY) Atlantic v. Lenentine (Portland, ME) Atlantic v. Myers (Jackson, MS) Atlantic v. Njuguna (Charleston, SC) Atlantic v. Raleigh (Missouri) Atlantic v. Serrano (San Diego, CA) Atlantic v. Shutovsky (New York, NY) Atlantic v. Zuleta (Atlanta, GA)...) As far as I'm concerned they should rot in hell.
Actually the correct permalink to the story is here. Sorry about that.
Here is what the Chronicle of Higher Education has to say about it.
Anyone got a link to what the University wrote to the Court?
Only the judge. It was submitted under seal.
What happened to the rest of the students in the case?
I don't know. Some of them have probably settled already. Some of them are probably being identified to the RIAA lawyers.
I defer to the expertise of an attorney, but unless this was a ruling by a court of appeals or above, there is no precedent set. Trial courts render judgments which can be referenced in litigation, but not cited as "precedent" on other legal cases... is this not correct? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's a precedent. It's not 'controlling' or 'binding' but it's a precedent.
Every little bit helps. And they pay on anything you buy after visiting the site through the link.
I hope so. I was actually pleasantly surprised to discover how much non-RIAA music is out there and how often my favorite radio station plays it. That actually surprised me the most -- the radio station in question is owned by Clear Channel yet I've discovered a lot of good indie music through them. Who would've thought? Pandora is another good source in my experience, although it seems to take them longer to get new albums up for some reason (licensing issues?)
Yes. And I'm making a collection. I have a list of free links to indie music sources which I call "Liberated Music". And I have advertising links for indie-only music where I and my blog actually get a commission if you buy something.
I check out RIAA Radar and hand over some scratch if I hear a song that I like and discover the artist is signed with an indie label. I doubt my purchases matter much in the grand scheme of things but I'm going to vote with my wallet anyway.
They matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.
How do IPs not specify identity?
They just don't. Sure, you can build a system with multiple paths of registration and logging and authentication, but a majority of those processes can be spoofed or socially engineered. If you came up to me with a subpoena asking who had IP address 192.168.1.X on this day at this time, even if I still had the logs on my DHCP server, it would take a significant amount of forensics (IE, an audit of every laptop my friends or neighbors own) to determine who the culprit was.
Thank you. Now if we could only get the judges to realize this.
I think the problem here is poor definition of "left" vs. "right." Ask a question pertaining to abortion, and most of the answers here are "anything goes," which sounds left-wing. Ask a question about the economy, and the answers are more "government isn't your sugar daddy," which sounds right-wing. I think the most common /. viewpoint is best described as "libertarian," which can be summed up as "leave us alone and don't tell us what to do."
I think any attempt to distill a prevailing political orientation on Slashdot is doomed to failure. There is, in truth, a great deal of diversity here.
The only common thread is that each of us is right.
This was (a) a news report about a judge quashing a subpoena, (b) followed by a quotation of an opinion by a commentator. There was no slant in the news, and it provides a link to the actual document. The expression of opinion was clearly denominated as such. I'm under no obligation to come up with a "plan". I have no training as a "planner", I'm a litigation lawyer. Me coming up with a 'plan' would be like asking me to do your plumbing.... I don't think you'd be very happy with the end result.
Why don't you get your facts straight?
Isn't every one of these stories tagged as being the death knell for the RIAA? Don't get me wrong, I'm always glad to see the RIAA losing in these types of cases, but 'death knell for the RIAA' is getting to be 'Year for Linux on the Desktop'.
Well look at it this way. If this case stands for the principle that no John Doe information can be divulged unless the ISP can identify the "alleged infringer" to a "reasonable degree of technical certainty", and that principle is followed by other courts.... very few, if any, "alleged infringers", will ever be identified.
Yeah you're mixing up RICO and antitrust. What you're talking about, Jane, is antitrust violations and copyright abuse.
I agree with you that a lot of bad stuff started with Reagan. He was adept at convincing people that they didn't need government to protect them from the big corporations. The antitrust laws were weakened, and monopoly has become the norm. Hopefully people are starting to wake up from this decades-long slumber.
Slightly offtopic but you don't happen to have a clone down here in Australia? - The *AA's are going after a small ISP called iiNet in Perth, they hope to test provisions in the recent AU-US free trade agreement that (they claim) makes ISP caching equivalent to copying (I knew the FTA would bite us on the bum). The AA's have brought in the same counsel that nutered Kazza, APC has an href="http://apcmag.com/why_iinet_will_probably_lose_the_piracy_lawsuit.htm">interesting article in which they debunk iiNet's 3 main arguments as common misconceptions of the law and predict iiNet will lose.
Yeah, I heard about that. Don't worry, there are some really cool internet copyright lawyers down under; I've met some of them. Nobody neutered Kazaa, Kazaa neutered itself. The case was settled.
I don't vaguely support the RIAA or MPAA, I think they are ignorant, short-term thinking assholes who deserve nothing but contempt. I just think that advocating slashing the tires of people who work for the RIAA is juvenile, and dangerous and should not be supported by anyone, let alone a lawyer.
As you know, I have never supported any such thing. So please withdraw the accusation.
It's neither a 'defense' nor a 'criminal case'. It's a civil RICO counterclaim.
Thanks, NYCL for keeping us up-to-date on these important issues. This is both good and bad, I guess... I don't visit EFF at the depth I used to, because now a lot of the news is coming to me.
Bad girl. You go to EFF too. They have a lot of great info that I don't cover. (Also (a) I don't submit everything to Slashdot and (b) Slashdot's editors don't accept all my stories so there's plenty of stuff going on in my blog that doesn't make it here.).
It doesn't work because you're using slashdot as the soapbox, compared to say NYCL to whom slashdot is but part of his soapbox.
I don't really think of it that way. To my mind, a soapbox is a place you go to persuade people to accept your viewpoint. My only 'soapbox' is the court house. It's the place I go to try to persuade judges and jurors.
My blog isn't really for the purpose of persuading anyone; it's set up for the purpose of assisting (a) defendants and (b) defendants' lawyers (including myself) by collecting information on these cases.
I definitely don't visit Slashdot to persuade.
One reason I come here is that I enjoy it. I find this incredibly rich, diverse, funny, intelligent dialogue (is 'multilogue' a word? if so it's really a 'multilogue') to be stimulating, challenging, educating, and, usually, collegial.
Another reason is to get the specialized information I collect (which is immensely important to the world at large, although most of the world is oblivious to it) out to a wider audience of people who actually want to know about it because they do understand its importance.
Another reason I visit Slashdot is to learn about technical stuff. So often I've found the technically-oriented Slashdotters to be immensely helpful in thinking through the computer issues. As you may recall, I even came to Slashdot to get ideas for the RIAA's expert's deposition, and later to ask the tech community to 'vet' his transcript.
It would be crazy for me to come here to persuade. I don't think I've ever persuaded anyone here of anything. My 'persuasiveness' track record on Slashdot is about as good as my track record at home, which is: I never can win an argument in either of those forums. (Although maybe, for that reason, it is a good place for me to hone my skills.)
You know, Ray, I was cheered to see a Federal class action under RICO against the mafiAA [plexipages.com], but then I began to read the counterclaim, and I realized that all of the complained-of acts are complained of because of the way plaintiff-in-counterclaim wishes to characterize them-- and in my experience, this is the easiest kind of complaint to defeat, since all you have to do is "reframe" the acts to show a colorable alternative interpretation (an arguably applicable statutory basis for the act), and BAM! Now you have to litigate the whole statute or at least whether some too-nebulous combination of deeds falls within or without it, which you ain't going to do in the context of an action by a copyright holder against an alleged infringer without the wealth of Croesus... How can you, as a Plaintiff, meet your burden of proof if there is a halfway reasonable alternative to calling the acts "extortion", for instance? Big Music says well, even if there is some evidence this was in fact extortion, there is an equal weight of evidence we are properly using the statutes, ambiguous and unlitigated as they are... In short, the counterclaim looks good, but is doomed, I think. Charlie Nesson, on the other hand, is doing God's work and doing it well.
Well, my way is not to try and predict these things. One never knows. All I know is
-in my opinion they are meritorious counterclaims, and the facts are exactly as described; and
-in my opinion the RIAA's damages theory is unconstitutional, as I have been saying for 3 years.
So in my view they both ultimately deserve to prevail.
As to what the judges will do, I can only hope for the best.
The only thing that story is missing is a guy in a cheap pinstripe suit and brass knuckles saying "It would be a shame if somethin' bad should happen to your routers. Yeah. A real shame."
Sorry I left that part out; I was pressed for time.
By the way, I didn't really think you work for the RIAA. That was supposed to be a joke, but I'm not very good with humor.