RIAA Can't Have Defendant's Son's Desktop 283
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's attempt to get Ms. Lindor's son's desktop computer in UMG v. Lindor has been rejected by the Magistrate Judge. The judge said that the RIAA 'offered little more than speculation to support their request for an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer, based on ... his family relationship to the defendant, the proximity of his house to the defendant's house, and his determined defense of his mother in this case. That is not enough. On the record before me, plaintiffs have provided scant basis to authorize an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer.' Decision by Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy. (pdf)"
Bad Week for the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah!!!
Now back to our normal post. The RIAA is like a bacteria that has multiplied to infect many hosts. However, like a simple bacteria that replicates perfect copies of itself, the RIAA lawsuits are all exact clones. What this means is that, if you can kill one of them, you can kill all of them. Reading the postings just this week on Ray's blog will tell you that the many enemies (a.k.a. innocent defendants who are fighting back) of the RIAA are coordinating and refining their tactics in search of the magic bullet that will kill this plague once and for all. And from the looks of things, they're getting mighty close.
Forgive my ignorance... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forgive my ignorance... (Score:5, Informative)
*Plaintiffs may not have access to the defendant's hard drive; the hard drive must be turned over to a mutually acceptable neutral computer forensics expert; and his report must be done at the RIAA's expense. (SONY v. Arellanes)
they can't [blogspot.com]
RIAA doesn't trust the police to do it right? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm having trouble right at the moment trying to define the difference in a way that makes sense in these cases.
Re:Forgive my ignorance... (Score:5, Informative)
The RIAA action is a civil tort case -- not a criminal case. In civil cases in the US both sides are essentially required to turn over all relevant evidence to each other, and then they argue in court which one has the better evidence for their side (preponderance). This is the same type of case that IBM vs SCO is undergoing, and is two private parties.
In criminal cases, the state is the prosecutor (not plaintiff), and jail time may attach. You need a unanimous jury rather than a majority decision. RIAA cannot initiate a criminal case other than to make a complaint to the local police.
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In civil cases in the US both sides are essentially required to turn over all relevant evidence to each other
What happens if that evidence may prove that I'm guilty of a crime? I.e: They want my computer to inspect for copyright infringement (civil matter), but it's loaded with kiddie porn * (criminal matter)? If I willingly turn it over to them I might as well walk down to the local police station and confess. Seems to violate the spirit of the 5th amendment, if not the actual text.
Likewise, what ha
Re:Forgive my ignorance... (Score:4, Informative)
Now, what am I supposed to believe? (Score:2)
Re:Now, what am I supposed to believe? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Artists funding this action (Score:5, Informative)
Amy Winehouse
Bon Jovi
Charlatans
Counting Crows
Limp Bizkit
Live
Ocean Color Scene
Puddle of Mudd
Sonic Youth
Texas
The Who
By buying anything from these or any other UMG artist, you are helping to fund these lawsuits. Please stop!
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I must be getting old.
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I don't own a TV (the high pitch noises they make annoy me -- sensitive ears
The high-pitched noise is generated by the scan line oscillator. This noise only exist on CRTs, so flat-screen LCDs and plasma screens do not emit these noises. In addition, the noise level varies significantly with the quality of the television set. Some sets emit such a loud noise that even I can hear, and some more expensive sets are so silent that not even my brother (who has sensitive ears) can hear it.
Also note that this noise can only be heard from 50-60 Hz televisions, because higher frequency t
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There's enough good music for me to keep paying Emusic for DRM-free MP3s.
For a complete list... (Score:3, Informative)
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=1 [umusic.com]
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=2 [umusic.com]
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=3 [umusic.com]
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=4 [umusic.com]
http://new.umusic.com/Artists.aspx?Index=5 [umusic.com]
Who knows - there might actually be someone you lot actually like in there
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Amy Winehouse is a singer from the UK
So yeah to many people from the USA, they suck because of NIH syndrome.
The Who!
They probably are overrated now (since Keith Moon popped his clogs) but when I first saw them in 1967 at the London Roundhouse WOW.
Their stage show was brilliant.
Take a listen to "Live at Leeds" recorded 30 years ago last month and you might get some idea about how good they were on stage.
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Amy Winehouse is a singer from the UK
So yeah to many people from the USA, they suck because of NIH syndrome.
I'll forgive a good USA bash (especially in light of recent polls about evolution...) but are you even trying? Have you forgotten how we fawned over and worshipped a quartet of stoned-out brits with goofy haircuts and too-short guitar neckstraps?
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I haven't heard anything from their record label but I would imagine its devoted to searching out yet more deadly dull paul weller alikes.
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That's a sad understatement.
Does that mean it's ok for me to grind babies to make dog food, as long as my employer demands it ? Even if I make a public statement saying that I don't agree with grinding babies into dog food, I'm still making it happen.
Why does the RIAA do police work anyway? (Score:2)
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Re:Why does the RIAA do police work anyway? (Score:5, Informative)
All they had was one expert witness who wrote three statements, all of them questionable on a number of grounds, based on a ten minute examination of a hard drive and additional examination of IP records generated by software that has dubious reliability and a statement from Verizon about an IP address that could easily have been wrong in several different ways.
That's one of the big reasons this case is crumbling and, from all appearances, taking a lot of RIAA cases with it.
The truth is that this was never about good "police" work. It was about intimidation; about identifying people who could be easily intimidated and railroading them with a blizzard of impressive looking paperwork; about using their settlements to intimidate others into not accessing online audio files, even when it was perfectly legal to do so. The intimidation worked (and continues to work to some extent) because the legal costs of fighting this RIAA paperwork were much higher than the price of a settlement.
Congratulations (Score:3, Insightful)
Soo...some ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
In discussions with a real lawyer about all this, my lawyer friend and I came upon the solution...
Should you get The Letter, which has no legal value whatsoever, put a bullet through the drive, do a Jeff Merkey and bash it against a rock, melt it in a Sentry heat treating oven at 2250F (FUN!!). "We're sorry, but the drive no longer exists"
Should you get The Subpoena, it's too late and you're hosed. Bend over and take it or mount a real defense, because if you destroy the drive, it's spoilation of evidence and the court really frowns on that. That's what hosed Jeff Merkey when Novell subpoenaed him.
Timing is everything.
Re:Soo...some ideas (Score:4, Interesting)
What if you have three HDs, where HD #1 is your main drive, HD #2 is a decoy with, say, some old photos on it, and HD #3 is the P2P drive. (I run Linux, so keep up here.) You don't have anything listed in /etc/fstab about the partitions on the P2P drive, you mount that manually when you want to do some filesharing. It includes all the applications and data, so that nothing about filesharing appears on HD #1.
Now if you are asked to provide your HD, you make an image of HD #1. No evidence of filesharing there, assuming they figure out what ext3 is. That might be the end of it. But wait, they bring in an expert who actually understands the filesystem and says whoah! the logs say you were mounting some other partitions that don't appear in fstab. Oh, that's right, I sometimes mount HD #2 to fetch old pictures off it, here's an image of that.
It seems to me you'd really have to have your forensics hat on tight to figure out there was actually a third HD in the mix. Even if you did figure it out, think about how the legal proceedings would have gone: (1) We demand to see your HD, judge okays it, no evidence. (2) We "cracked" your scheme and demand to see HD #2, judge reluctantly okays it, no evidence. (3) This time we really cracked it and demand HD #3, judge says this is getting stupid, go screw yourself.
To follow up even further... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070302
This is why the RIAA wants to go on a fishing expedition. They have no case, and what they have is
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BMO
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Your money are used to sue you or your friends. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you stop paying them they will fold with less collateral damage, and music will be free sooner.
Fundamental problem (Score:3, Insightful)
So the mother is the holder of the Internet account and denies any knowledge. Some folks come along and pretty much say that there is no evidence on that computer. If the holder of the Internet account has no further responsibility, then there is clearly no point to trying any legal action whatsoever - anyone could have used the "account resources" and provide a quite adequate defense.
Obviously what the RIAA would like to have is what any sane individual would want - the account holder is responsible for activity using the account. This is especially true since the true user of the account is invisible.
If only the "end user" (anonymous and unknowable) is liable, then there is no point to any prosecution involving the Internet. I can always claim that it was a son or daughter or a neighbor and they cannot prove otherwise.
Now, this business of going after other potential user's computers to prove that the activity took place on the account would seem pointless. They (obviously) have proof that the account was used. That should be all that is needed to prove - the account holder is responsible. This would seem to be going down the road of the account holder not being responsible. Then it is clearly just a fishing expedition and there is no legal basis for holding anyone at all accountable.
Who the Bad Guys Are (Score:3, Interesting)
-SONY BMG
-Motown
-Interscope
-Arista
-Warner Bros
-UMG
Not really, because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not allowing baseless evidence gathering is the same as not allowing baseless search. But casting a very wide net and calling everyone a thief, and then when asked to produce evidence, claiming that you'd have it if you could go searching for it - this is just simply not the way the American justice system works, for better or worse.
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Is looks more like there is a basic system in place that pretends to be fair, but exceptions are so easily made that groups of people a treated in an unfair way.
Re:Not really, because... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because the rare exception makes for more exciting news than the countless boring reasonably fair cases. It's the same reason why Americans think the rest of the world is constantly having some horrific natural disaster, fighting internal wars, or attending lavish film festivals.
Re:Not really, because... (Score:4, Funny)
How naive!
Answered from my Blackberry at a lavish film festival.
Re:Not really, because... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds exactly like SCO. :)
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I'm happy to see judges standing up to the RIAA strong-arm tactics.
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Which actually could be bad for RIAA.
But we want it to be bad for them through the full picture.
Right?
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:4, Informative)
But this isn't about a crime. It's about a tort. No grand jury involved.
Please learn the difference.
One of the reasons why the RIAA isn't asking for criminal charges is that the evidence they have is so slim that even thinking about filing criminal charges, which require a _much_ higher burden of proof, is idiotic.
The RIAA is on pretty thin ice. Their "expert" claims to be a "software engineer" yet when asked if he's got a PE stamp, he says...well...no. Yet another wannabe expert.
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BMO
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I'm a software engineer, and I don't even know what a PE stamp is.
I have a degree in Computer Science, and I have been a systems programmer designing and writing networking software for over 25 years, can I claim that I'm a software engineer?
So... what is a "PE stamp"?
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
In some locales, you can't legally call yourself an "engineer" unless you have a PE to your name, much like you can't start working as a doctor or lawyer without appropriate paperwork.
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
My former employer, a California aerospace outfit, ran into something like that around 1970 when it opened a good-sized operation in Denver. There was some bit of paperwork with the city and county that involved listing the number of engineers on the payroll, and the local PE association cried foul: local ordinances forbade representing someone as an "engineer" who didn't have a PE license.
We replied that we would be delighted to come into compliance, and would they please send over eight hundred license applications, a copy of the sample test, eight hundred PE Assn membership applications, and when would their next officer election be?
Last we ever heard from them.
rj
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A PE li
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For one, it shows a level of accountability when an engineer stamps a drawing. This is important when dealing with real world structures and systems that the general public's welfare depends on (i.e. life safety). Would you want it less stringent?
Whether it's worth much or not, much less exists right now in the world of
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Well, we only have the examples that lasted 2000 years to go on. The stuff that fell apart after a mere couple hundred years is so long gone as to be forgotten.
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The ability of an individual to recall and apply engineering principals on an examination only proves that an individual can take an examination. Even 8 hours is no where near enough time to do anything in depth. I regularly had single problems for homework that took more th
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
She "may have" had access to your computer. That doesn't mean that she did. Even if she did, that doesn't mean that she used it to commit the alleged offense.
It sounds to me like you just don't get it.
If your mother is accused of a crime, why in the hell should they be able to search your property, at a different house, without probable cause?
If the police can't do it for a murder case, why should the RIAA be able to do it for a civil suit?
LK
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not making sense here. First off, you have to mean if the person they're suing has access and may have used his PC for copyright infringement, should his PC not be investigated? That's the first correction. They've already checked the PC in the house itself, and come up dry. It does not contain the hard drive with any of the infringing files or programs on it.
Secondly, they're not suing the son. So he is not the person they're suing, and they should have no right to anything on his PC just because he's a son who lives 4 miles away and, like any good son should, visits his mother.
Thirdly, if you have your own computer at home, it doesn't make much sense that you'd pack up your computer, drive miles to your Mother's house, and commit copyright infringement there, before packing up your computer once more and driving back home again to use your computer for everything else you normally use it for. Even if you have a notebook computer, do you drive somewhere else to do all your filesharing? That's too much of a reach for even this judge to accept, hence they're not allowed to just look at a non-party's computer hard drive because of a casual relationship between a mother and her son. There is no evidence that the son's computer has ever been in his Mother's house.
It would be like the RIAA saying that, we tracked filesharing to the IP address of your best friend who lives a few miles from you. But because we couldn't find the evidence on his computer, and we know you're friends who often got together at his house, and because you have a computer too, we want to give your computer a digital anal examination as well, hoping we'll find something to incriminate you with. And it's not even like said best friend told the RIAA to get his own butt out of the sling that, "Hey, my best friend always came over with his computer and we downloaded music on it." He would have told them nothing of the sort.
Now do you get it?
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
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I know it is pointless, because the RIAA does not target technophiles that can afford multiple com
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That's a defense that your mom's lawyer can use. Indeed, having an insecure POS computer infected with malware, a wide open wireless router, IP addresses being spoofed, etc, yadda yadda yadda, were all used to pull Dr. Jacobson's deposition into a million little pieces in this case.
In other words, there is _no way_, using the RIAA's methods, to definitively trace music files to the specific computer, not after reading Dr. Jacobson's testimony. Read it. The URL is in one of my earlier pos
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iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 79 -j REJECT
So there, RIAA!
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
A brief history of the case was that the plaintiff (RIAA) demanded that the defendant turn over her computer to their experts for analysis. The defendant objected and would only agree to a third party copying the hard drive and handing the copy over to the plaintiff. The judge ruled in the defendant's favor and the HD was copied. However upon further analysis, it appears that HD had no traces of any filesharing software or the copyrighted songs that the plaintiff claimed were being shared. So the plaintiff went back to the judge saying, "Well, the defendant's son had access to her house, maybe it was his personal computer that the culprit." I suspect that the MediaSentry methods of identifying infringers are error prone and that is the most likely cause of the discrepancy. What the judge has ruled is that besides just speculation, the plaintiffs have offered no compelling evidence to search the computer of the defendant's son who has his own machine in his house and does not live with his mother. Although the decision doesn't mention it, the defendant's son claimed that his files are protected by attorney client privilege (as he is a lawyer and uses his computer for work). There has to be very compelling reasons for the plaintiff to over come that objection.
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like a reasonable judge. Taking the defendant's computer would deprive them of it for a long period of time, whereas taking a copy of it's data only deprives them of it for a short time.
However upon further analysis, it appears that HD had no traces of any filesharing software or the copyrighted songs that the plaintiff claimed were being shared. So the plaintiff went back to the judge saying, "Well, the defendant's son had access to her house, maybe it was his personal computer that the culprit." I suspect that the MediaSentry methods of identifying infringers are error prone and that is the most likely cause of the discrepancy.
Or something as simple as a typo on the part of the plaintiff.
What the judge has ruled is that besides just speculation, the plaintiffs have offered no compelling evidence to search the computer of the defendant's son who has his own machine in his house and does not live with his mother.
To the judge it may look as though the plaintiff is on a "fishing trip".
Although the decision doesn't mention it, the defendant's son claimed that his files are protected by attorney client privilege (as he is a lawyer and uses his computer for work).
Plenty of people may have confidential material on their computers. A lawyer has the advantage that he or she can phrase this in language a judge is likely to understand.
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Informative)
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Unfortunately for that, you need to convince the judge that there's a good reason to think that you'll turn up evidence for the crime you already have a good reason to think has been committed.
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If you applied the RIAA's "logic" that would probably include computers belonging to any relatives of Viacom employees. "Hand over your PC your third cousin, who you never knew existed, married the second cousin of someone who
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IANAL, but this is a civil case. There is no "crime".
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
It's like going "you can only have 2 of the 3 knives I may of used for that murder".
It's more like, "You can only have the knives that you have a plausible reason to believe may have been used for that murder." Why should they get the defendant's son's knife, just because he lives 4 miles away from the defendant and vigorously asserts the defendant's innocence? They need a reason to search other people's property; they can't just conjure up a hypothesis out of thin air that the property was used to commit the crime, and use that as justification to examine it.
This is all about intimidation. The RIAA doesn't like the son for defending his mother so vigorously, so they're spitefully trying to fish for evidence on his computer, on the off-chance they might be able to drag him into a lawsuit. They have no probable cause to accuse the son of any wrongdoing, or to assert that the mother is committing infringement using his computer rather than her own, and the judge is perfectly correct in denying their motion.
-Mike
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:4, Funny)
She turned me into a newt!
What? Well, I got better!
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I think you are infringing on the RIAA's copyright. Expect them to take your PC soon.
Get it? It takes more than someone's "say so" to go into someone's private property and rummage through their things. The RIAA has to actually show some sort of proof that you've wronged them, not just "oh, we say you did it". Unfortunately (for them) they
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)
Lots of people don't think that far.
Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
That oughta do it.
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Yeah, I'm still waiting to meet one of the "thousands of people" the MPAA claim are put out of work each year by piracy.
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Re:not supporting the RIAA (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the RIAA's new approach to customer service is, shall we say, innovative decisions in earlier cases can have a great effect on later cases. For example, in a previous RIAA story on Slashdot it was reported that when the RIAA draws a blank in discovery against a particular custo^H^H defendant, then they are liable for the defendants legal fees. This could be a serious blow to the RIAA's current shotgun approach.
Likewise, if this current ruling stands it could help establish limits on how far the RIAA can go poking their nose into other people's business. IMO, the RIAA (like SCO) has greatly abused the legal system to pursue their own selfish and greedy ends. It's great news that the legal system is responding and is putting in limits on how far the RIAA can go.
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I don't know how ideology applies to this unless you believe that unrestricted fishing expeditions without any real probably cause make good law. If you believe that, then is is a major blow to your ideology, because the judge just said no, I'm not going to allow you to examine computer unless you can directly link that computer to the alleged violation of intellectual property law.
> It's a mundane legal decision in
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Their policy is to sue people who have paid for an internet access account that they think is linked to a p2p shared files folder.
They know, and don't care, that this will result in many innocent people being sued.
Then if they figure out the defendant didn't do it, they try to use their pending lawsuit against an innocent person as an investigative platform with which to look for others, all the while terrorizing the innocent defendant.
That is exactly what happened here. (The defendant here, in fact, has never even used a computer, believe it or not.).
A ruling like this is important.
The case should have been thrown out a long time ago, but every little bit helps.
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While many people agree with you that April Fool's day on Slashdot is indeed way over the top, it's still no reason for insulting random strangers that did you no harm.
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Here's an idea....
They violate the law and upload spyware that you think is merely a "song that doesn't play"
That's how.
If they truely are getting screenshots, that's how you do it. There isn't any other way than getting trojaned.
Unfortunately, for them, that's quite illegal in all of the 50 states (unauthorized use of a computer, RI General Laws 11-52-1 through 8 and similar in other states) and in the eyes of the court "unclean hands."
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BM
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They don't. The screenshots that that are referring to are screenshots of Media Sentry's computers. They search the various P2P networks and when they "find" a PC that is sharing what they "believe" to be music, they take a screenshot of the P2P search page on their computer. The screenshot gives the name of the file and the ip address of the hosting computer. It may also give a hash for the file, but I am unsure about that. From what I've
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(PS They don't. They get a screenshot of shared files, which could be on one computer or spread out over a whole group of computers called nodes and super nodes.).
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Call me troll but that's because it would seem to me that America has ranked what it considers important: (greater is more important)
the flag > corporation > the one true religion > porn > Terrorism > Communism > piracy > drugs > crime > sports > education > science > false religions > consitutional rights > human rights
Unfortunately the UK seems to be harmonising
And dont ca