Paramount Sues Ohio Man For $100,000 724
ematic writes "A hapless tech-novice finds himself in a US$100,000 lawsuit with Paramount Pictures for allegedly uploading the movie, Coach Carter, to eDonkey. Paramount had the police seize his four computers, but nothing was found. The tech-novice maintains his innocence, and contends that he is a victim of a drive-by upload. According to the ChannelCincinnati story, the victim 'is either a slick film pirate or an unwitting victim of someone who fits that description.'"
The first test of my theory (Score:3, Interesting)
Plausible deniability (Score:4, Interesting)
dupe, dump, deny, and divide.
$100,000? (Score:3, Interesting)
there are thousands of variables that go into the calculated 'loss'.
- would all the downloaders actually buy the dvd?
- would the dvd stay on sale until all those would be customers buy it?
- would the dvd price stay the same?
more importantly, why does the law accept take their word on it?
Happened to a friend (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tech Novice? (Score:2, Interesting)
My dad has 4 computers (2 laptops and 2 desktop) all pretty decent OEM ones (the worst of which would be the laptop with its P4 2.4GHz CPU and Geforce 4 Go)... he also has very little idea of what he's doing with any of them.
I'm rather annoyed with this fact because he now has 1TB in hard drives, of which he's used 10GB of at most. Could you imagine how many linux distros I could fit in 1TB?
Re:Plausible deniability (Score:5, Interesting)
Additionally, courts are aware that defendants may engage in behavior, knowing what the outcome is likely to be. Willful blindness, such as you suggest, is pretty obvious and does not help people get off the hook.
It's possible that you are thinking of the legal system as a mechanism that is not intelligent, and can be gotten around through cleverness. That is not the case. People are involved in the system at every step, and often they are more clever than you, and have a dim view of amateurs trying to manipulate them. Basically, if you would see through such a ploy, or if you think other intelligent people would, you should expect that your opponents in a legal battle would.
Re:Motive? (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a relative that needed to 'wipe' his computer fairly regularly. (no, not for anything illegal.) He had an app that would go through each sector of a hard drive and 0 it out repeatedly. As I understand it, and no I'm not an expert, just formatting a drive won't necessarily clear the data off it. Even if it did 0 out all the data, it would still be recoverable by a professional service. I believe tihs worked by reading some sort of residual that could indicate whether that bit was a 1 or a 0. This app was supposed to be so thorough that even the professional services couldn't read the data. (this was the sort of thing the gov't would use for classified computers.)
I may not have all the details 100% right (... corrections gratefully welcomed!) but the gist of my point is this: If they took his computer, noticed the HD was totally blank even though it looked like it should at least have an OS on it, and they analyzed and found out that something more serious than a basic format had occured, they'd have justifiable reasons to believe that he blanked it intentionally to remove incriminating evidence. To the best of my knowledge, though, they wouldn't be able to prove that he did it as a result of their arrival. Circumstantial at best. Personally, I could see an innocent man OR a guilty man doing the exact same thing.
most likely the guy is lying (Score:5, Interesting)
Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence. The company has filed a federal lawsuit against the Blue Ash man.
But Lee claims that because his wireless connection was unsecured at the time, anyone could have parked near or in front of his home, tapped in and then driven off.
"If I can do anything to make people understand that please, if you're using wireless Internet, have somebody install it that knows what they're doing," he said. "Because if you don't, they could get in trouble just like me."
nice attempt at defence: but it wasn't me, it was someone else who used my unsecured connection.
Who the hell wants to 'share' a movie with others of p2p networks so much that they would go war-driving? I have a very strong feeling that this guy is lying. Of-course this will have to be proven in court, but it is just a gut feeling. In the case he actually did this, he deserves what is coming to him.
Re:Perjury is a Crime (Score:5, Interesting)
Um... ME? I help friends all the time with their computers. In fact I am about to help a friend set up the fourth computer in his house. He has one, and all 3 of his kids have their own computers. Guess what? They are all networked and they use WiFi to do it.
Why am I doing that? Because he and his family are novices when it comes to networking.
As for the clean machine? First thing I do is wipe the drive and reset it up to get rid of all the preloaded crap from the factory. Guess I'm trying to hide something too...
You know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Future laws... and the guy's full of sh** (Score:2, Interesting)
Guilty until proven innocent where you come from? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article didn't say they were networked. The article said, "Paramount has looked at all four computers in Lee's home, alleging he had one of them cleaned to erase evidence."
And what does cleaned mean, really? The article doesn't clarify. Does cleaned mean he got so sick of Windows running slow from spyware that he reinstalled his operating system, formatting the drive in the process because his friend told him to do so? Do you think that might be possible, mister guilty-until-proven-innocent with your snarky little perjury-is-a-crime comment bullshit?
Do you know how many people have wireless set up because their "Home DSL/Cable Gateway" that the man at bestbuy/circuitcity/compusa sold them on the pretense that "wireless is the future" and "if you get a laptop you can roam your house and always be on the internet." Care to venture a guess at how many stupid consumers get duped into that one? That's right I said stupid consumers, people who don't know how to secure the WAP they just bought "to keep the hackers out of [his] computer."
And before you go on the "why would a computer novice have FOUR computers?" rant, I offer you this: It's 1990, a man gets a computer. It's 1994, the man's computer stops working, he puts it in the closet, he gets another computer. It's 2000, his second computer stops working, he puts it and the first out in the garage and gets a new one. I'm sure you can guess where the fourth computer came from unless you are actually as stupid as your comment would lead me to believe.
Really, I don't know how you got modded insightful at all, because you lend no insight to the conversation, only FUD.
1/1,000,000 chances happen 9/10 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Simplify that list (Score:5, Interesting)
He had his "new" computer, which actually worked.
He had his "old" computer, which worked but was really slow.
He had a much older computer, that was dead. Bad hard drive, flaky memory, and it was only 133Mhz.
And finally, he had another computer, a friend brought over and abandon, that was in unknown operational order, and he didn't care to find out.
It took me three days to talk him into changing the memory in it, which I picked out specifically for that machine. He didn't want to, because he had never opened a computer before. He doesn't deal with installing many softwares, because he doesn't understand how they all work. He uses his mail client, his web browser, and that's about it. Completely not technical, and he "owns" 4 computers.
If his house was raided tomorrow, of course he'd get the same report of having four computers. He doesn't do anything illegal, immoral, or questionable, but that fourth abandon computer may have something on it. How responsible can he be for it? He can't even finger the friend who had it. They were on a first name basis, and the friend moved out of state. "That computer? Oh that was Joe's. He lives in some other state now. I haven't heard from him in a year."
If *MY* house was ever raided, they'd just shit themselves. I have roughly two dozen computers. Most of them are non-working workstations from an old office. Others are old servers, and lots of old parts. I don't throw much of anything away, because I know there will always be something useful. I grabbed a 20Gb drive from the pile, for someone who needed a drive, and didn't have money for a new drive. It was an identical match, and she didn't do much of anything with it other than check Email. It formatted, it didn't click or whine, and they're happy to have a working computer again.
Now, the question would be, would they find anything illegal? Nope. They'd spend weeks searching through the 100+ hard drives until they found the worst thing I have is ISO's of Linux distributions, and possibly they could recover some old web sites from drives that go "click". Maybe the BSA could get me, because I don't have the Windows licenses associated with the old parts.
I know I should destroy the clicking drives, but sometimes they're entertaining to take the top off, and watch the platters spin while I grind them down with a screwdriver. Wheeeeee... The magnets make cool things to stick to light switch screws, and the bearings bounce really well on hard surfaces. Ya, I've made some very unrecoverable drives.
Re:Perjury is a Crime (Score:5, Interesting)
In any case, the guy may still be guilty, but I'm just saying that basic knowledge of some aspects of computing does not necessarily mean that he has ANY knowledge of network security, and he may well consider himself a novice in part because of his lack of knowledge in that area.
Re:Police Priorities? (Score:5, Interesting)
Its right there, the police were wasting time on this case.
its Stupid.
Re:Piece of cake ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Suppose you do have a point, and I don't normally get at people. I really couldn't care less if people misspell long, technical words, but the "lazyspeak" gets to a very irritating point after a while.
I guess I'm not the only one, I was expecting to burn karma on that one. I definitely was not expecting to see it -up-modded, just got to the point something had to be said.
Re:Tech Novice? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it that it is potentially criminal, so they raid on the criminal angle, then it is easier to punish by the civil route so they sue on the civil angle?
all the best,
drew
---
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/111123 [ourmedia.org]
Tings - A CC BY-SA NaNoWriMo 2005 winning novel.
Re:Yeah right, in your dreams (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not so far fetched, actually. Around here, Cox Cable would come out and install a home network package for you, with cable modem and multiport firewall/router. I didn't read TFA, but 4 computers could easily be one each for him, his wife, and 2 kids. Or one or more might be virus-ridden junk that were "upgraded" rather than being wiped. The one that was wiped could have been taken back to the store for reinstallation.
Computers have approached commodity status these days - you can get a reasonable PC for around $300 and non-tech-savvy folks wouldn't necessarily know that they get dog slow when loaded with viruses and spyware. They'd assume that, just like a fridge or TV or cooker, the PC is wearing out...
Re:Plausible deniability (Score:5, Interesting)
Paramont Bin Laden (Score:3, Interesting)
He believes that he has the authority to do anything to these 'criminals', including the most extreme and gruesome murder and maiming.
But there are just too many Americans around, and Osama is just one man. So he randomly selects 'criminals' to be 'punished' in the horrible ways imaginable.
Paramount is a wealthy corporation that believes that all of the Westerners and most of all young Americans are 'criminals'. They bought the laws from politicians to ensure the legal details were in order from their perspective. They believe that all of these criminals should be punished. But they aren't Arabs, so instead of blowing people up, they just take everything that a person has ever owned and get a legal warrant to take from the person everything that they will own in the future. All for their 'crimes'.
But there are too many young Americans, and Paramount is only one legal person. So they randomly select people to be punished in the most spectacular fashion. Criminals are punished: all is in order in the world.
Osama is a terrorist; hunted by all civilized people on earth and protected by the uncivilized.
Paramount is a respected corporation owned by General Electric.
But they both operate in exactly the same fashion!
Limts--they do it for Doctors! (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Motive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Motive? (Score:3, Interesting)
With software, yes. With a big magnet about 5 seconds.
Dead Man Switch
Three-phase 30amp degaussing coil rigged around non-metallic drive enclosure, connected to relay and microswitch attached to non-accidentally-accessible desk underside. In event of catastrophic law enforcement condition, broil at 1.8 teslas for 15 seconds, season to taste and serve.
Re:Tech Novice? What's screwed up about this is (Score:2, Interesting)
Police Priorities? - PARTY PATROL (Score:2, Interesting)
Then, we get an email from the Dean of Students, that said in part.
This letter is to inform you that a Party Patrol, consisting of
officers from the Richmond Police Department Third Precinct, the
VCU Police Department and the Virginia Department of Alcohol
Beverage Control, has been formed. The Party Patrol will patrol
areas of the Fan on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights during
the month of December. The goal of the Party Patrol is to reduce
the disorderly nature of parties that occur in that area.
The Patrol will have the ability to arrest individuals who are
publicly intoxicated, who provide alcohol to minors, or who are
underage drinkers. Additionally, information on the owner of the
residences where the parties are being held will be provided to
neighbors so that warrants can be obtained.
People call the police and they are "busy" and have to "prioritize the call volume." Those kids having a good time must be a threat to society. Police go where the money is.
The Police State has arrived! (Score:2, Interesting)
Achra, last week I had my computers (and disks) seized by police officers with a warrant for the house I am renting a room in. I denied a consensual search and we all waited an extra 2.5 hours for them to have the judge expand the warrant to include my rented room.
They were looking for child porn that supposedly my landlord possesed. They found nothing, but took everyone's computers and disks (and cameras, and scanners, and accessories). Turns out my landlord has an ex-girlfriend with one very vengeful and unstable mother. Well, that's his story, and I'm believing it for now.
All the cops told me that four months was a standard turn around for seized items. The fact that I use those computers to make a living didn't seem to make the slightest difference. Did you ever have any luck expediting a return; by calling, calling the right person, etc.?
Would you recommend the computer shop diagnostic routine again?
Thanks for sharing that story, and any advice.
-d
Re:The Police State has arrived! (Score:2, Interesting)
I may love Canada from the bottom of my heart, but I wish we had your free speech protections and the respect for the individual that I've seen many times from American culture.
Computers are seized and not returned in this country, just as in yours. You need a lot of money to protect your rights, and even then you usually have to let it go, as a rich friend of mine found out a few years back. It's a disturbing trend.