RIAA Admits ISPs Have Misidentified "John Does" 271
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has sent out a letter to the ISPs telling them to stop making mistakes in identifying subscribers, and offering a 'Pre-Doe settlement option' — with a discount of '$1000 or more' — to their subscribers, if and only if the ISP agrees to preserve its logs for 180 days. Other interesting points in the letter (PDF): the RIAA will be launching a web site for 'early settlements,' www.p2plawsuits.com; the letter asks the ISPs to notify the RIAA if they have previously 'misidentified a subscriber account in response to a subpoena' or become aware of 'technical information... that causes you to question the information that you provided in response to our clients' subpoena'; it notes that ISPs have identified 'John Does' who were not even subscribers of the ISP at the time of the infringement; and it requests that ISPs furnish their underlying log files, not just names and addresses, when responding to RIAA subpoenas."
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a justified analogy to what the RIAA is doing, but I welcome the work they spend trying to button up music "piracy." For one thing, the costs of the RIAA are pushed onto the consumer -- leading to higher prices of the music they're trying to protect, giving consumers more reason to work with alternative distribution mechanisms. This will also hopefully lead to more anonymous forms of file sharing, or even file-piece sharing, where you're only hosting a tiny portion of a specific songfile. At what point would a "pirate" not really be guilty of much if they're only sharing a small portion of a particular songfile, say 0.01%?
ISPs are being financially harmed, too, because they're going to have to keep these logs, and also keep them consistent. DHCP makes things more difficult since it increases the amount of tracking they have to do. What all will they track? Port usage, IP address, data transfer totals and rates, etc? As the ISPs have to spend more for legal aid and log data stores, their costs will go up. I can see a market for third party services off-shore that allow you to transfer all of your data through their proxies for a given price -- especially as bandwidth prices fall as bandwidth becomes a commodity.
Consider this: most of us demand fast (low latency) response to websites we browse. We need less response time for some use -- e-mail, file sharing, software patches. The RIAA is powerful in the US, and its power is growing internationally, but it is impossible for a cartel to control everything -- we even see that in the energy market as alternative forms of energy are a barrier to the oil cartel increasing their costs beyond a certain price point. All the RIAA can do is make their overhead so expensive that artists find reason to pick alternative distribution mechanisms.
I'm noticing that medium-level artists are finding more ways to produce an income without the sale of recorded music. I received an e-mail about David Martin, an artist I never heard of, offering a free T-shirt if you pre-buy his album. That's value added incentive to buy HIS album, rather than bootleg it. Good idea. His downloadable music is right from his site, a great way to get music without worrying about the RIAA. What will the RIAA do when their legal costs outweigh their collections, which then creates a high overhead for their artists in the form of lowered commissions?
Are these "early settlements" financially profitable for the RIAA? Lawyers aren't cheap, and settlement lawyers even less so. Even if you agree to a settlement, they still need collections agents to process the payment and make sure it is done in full.
This form of cartelization can't last forever, not with the Internet changing faster than the law can control. I'm surprised the RICO act doesn't cover an industry where 90% of published music is controlled by one cartel. The law fails us in both cases, as the law always does. If you're in a band that isn't in the top 1% of music sales (the long tail is appropriate here), do you find that you make most of your music from ticket sales, beer sales percentage, and T-shirt/sticker/button sales? Why would you need the RIAA?
When will artists start appearing with logos imprinted on their merchandise that says "0% of the proceeds of this CD/t-shirt/sticker goes to the RIAA cartel"? If you're in a band, maybe that time is now. Maybe it is time for small to medium artists to be the ones to inform the customers that there is NO reason to buy a CD or a download from a distributor affiliated with the RIAA?
I can't wait for the day when the RIAA goes back to what they started doing -- making sure that music sounds good across all playback systems through equalization and consistent sound modification.
Re:The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're making record amounts of money, despite what they tell you. This is about maximizing profit. They aren't dumb, they've run the numbers.
ISPs are being financially harmed, too, because they're going to have to keep these logs
Why should the RIAA care? Besides, in lots of cases, the ISP is going to be owned by the same set of companies that own the members of the RIAA.
'm noticing that medium-level artists are finding more ways to produce an income without the sale of recorded music
It's always been that way. The $$$ for the artist is in touring and merchandise sales, why do you think they'd work 11 months a year, if they can get fat and rich floating in their gold-lined swimming pool? Love of art? Maybe for 1 in a million, for the rest - performing live is their job. Recording an album is marketing.
Are these "early settlements" financially profitable for the RIAA? Lawyers aren't cheap, and settlement lawyers even less so. Even if you agree to a settlement, they still need collections agents to process the payment and make sure it is done in full.
Financially profitable? Maybe not in and of themselves, but they're looking at the big picture: say, for every 1 guy we sue/settle with, 10 guys get scared off of kazaa and onto iTunes.
Although, I wouldn't be surprised to find the whole sue cycle to be at least financially self-sustaining.
Remember, lawyers are behind all this - the RIAA is basically nothing but industry lawyers, and they're pretty good at making sure they get paid.
It wouldn't have been going on this long if they didn't feel it was effective.
Re:The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin... (Score:5, Interesting)
"They're making record amounts of money, despite what they tell you. This is about maximizing profit. They aren't dumb, they've run the numbers."
Hey, do you have a cite for that? I've heard that a lot but can't find any evidence. Warner Music made a profit margin of 0.27% and an operating margin of 6.29% last year. Their quarterly revenue growth of NEGATIVE 11% yoy and a quarterly earnings growth of NEGATIVE 74%.
I know, it's because they're not spending their money wisely, people who pirate wouldn't have bought it anyway and it actually helps artists by giving them free exposure, and so on, but is Warner the exception? Are there others in the cartel who are reporting profits in the sense of "record amounts" that I think you mean -- ie. moving in the upward direction?
But I agree with you, that the cost of all of these lawsuits likely isn't much, given the size of the industry, and I don't think it has a real effect on music pricing.
Re:The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin... (Score:4, Interesting)
The RIAA themselves will tell you that sales have never been better, and the industry has never been healthier - if you're an investor.
Warner music losing money doesn't mean that album and song sales can't be going up. They are, but the numbers are weird.
Digital music sales tripled last year, but album sales continued to slowly trickle off. This article [siliconvalley.com] says overall sales are up 19% - including digital music, videos, etc.
The market is different - people are less likely to buy a CD, when they can buy just a song, or with so many portable video devices like video iPods, are buying music related DVDs - live concerts, or video compilations. The market is much more diverse - music listeners don't necessarily buy "albums" as they have conventionally.
At the end of the day, it's all (potential, if they can realize it) profit for RIAA members.
However, when the discussion turns to piracy, they only talk about CD sales. These are of course dwindling - they would be even if there was absolutely no piracy at all. But a huge chunk of the money they "lose" in album sales they make up in digital downloads, or other products.
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Nonsense. Can you say securities violation and/or tax fraud? If the numbers didn't jive, they'd be guilty of market manipulation. If you really believe they're doing that, go ahead and feel free to file a complaint and/or tip here [sec.gov].
Cite? (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA/MPAA does not give a good gosh darn golly gee what the price of a CD is. It does not matter to them how much it costs a local band for studio time. Those numbers are convenient for PR releases and nothing more.
Re:The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin... (Score:4, Informative)
It's like if you grew 10 inches every day, then one day you only grew 9 inches -- that's a 10% drop in your GROWTH, but you didn't get any shorter; quite the contrary, you still got 9 inches taller that day.
New Business Model? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is why there are judges and juries: real people, not algorithms; in the judicial system. So a judge can look at a software system that distributes subsets of a file, and decide the perpetrators are guilty.
Even if, in other circumstances, holding a subset of a file would not be a crime. Or even recognizable as a song file.
Footnote: I am not a fan of the RIAA, their tac
Re:The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin... (Score:5, Insightful)
So Rosa Parks should have stayed in the back of the bus? Some guys dressed up as "Indians" shouldn't have thrown a bunch of tea into Boston harbour?
Civil disobedience has been a core technique in the expression of political dissent for as long as there have been laws and politics. Yes - it's a calculated risk to violate the law to make a political statement, but it's also one of the few ways to be heard at all.
Rosa Parks did not hide what she did (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rosa Parks did not hide what she did (Score:4, Insightful)
The guys who participated in the Boston Tea Party hid their identities and never got caught, but they made damn clear that their action was public knowledge and we still learn about it in history class today.
People don't push for political change that doesn't benifit them. I'm not sure what you're really getting at here. The implication that if it's possible to pay money for something one is ethically obligated to do so... that's absurd.
The hallmark of civil disobedience... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Depends on who's arguing for the change and who they're arguing to. If you can point and say "100% of the X-thousand confirmed cases of this in the past year have gone unprosecuted although there's sufficient evidence to do so - therefore this law is obviously being kept solely for the purposes of abusive enforcement (targetted sele
Re:Rosa Parks did not hide what she did (Score:4, Insightful)
It certainly includes it. The Underground Railroad was civil disobedience, but the people involved did not want anyone to know who they were, and most were never found out.
It entails breaking the law to bring about change.
And that is unrelated to whether or not you are caught.
Re:Rosa Parks did not hide what she did (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Canada in Guelph Ontario and attend the University of Guelph.
I pirate Software, music, movies and books. And I maintain a share ratio of 1.2 (Which I'm quite particular about). I believe information should be free though labour should not. I donate money to artists I think are worth while, usually web-comic artists and occasionaly local performers.
For me it is not about saving money, before I became a pirate I didn't spend much money on media.
What I did do before I was a pirate was take those little magnetic stickers found on the back of CD's and attach them to my monitor, one for each cd I purchased.
Those stickies cost more than twice what it costs to burn a cd and buy a jewel case and were a constant reminder of what the information age is all about.
Meanwhile items like well designed combustion engines are kept out of the hands of developing countries through I.P. Which I discovered on trips to the third world as a volunteer.
At which point I decided that it was time we seriously considered a reset on information laws to allow the third world to benefit from the works of humanity.
I started ripping music and movies which were not available through local distribution (Largely chinese films which have since become more popular and English electronic music which has also found broader western acceptance since). If you drop by Socis and ask for my Nick you can meet me, feel free to bring the police.
I.P. is still a font of imperialism and until I feel that as a society we have examined it as such I will continue to be a pirate.
Good points (Score:4, Interesting)
I won't disagree with your comments on civil disobedience, as I don't want to get on Thoreau's bad side. However, I do think that one has to believe that what they're doing is fundamentally right for it to be civil disobedience. My opinion (and of course there's no way to back this up) is that most people who break copyright laws do not think it's the right thing to do. They just think it's not that bad. It's no big deal, etc. I imagine it's hard to keep a straight face and claim that it's the right thing to do.
Are copyright laws broken? Absolutely. However, I don't know how anyone can think a two-year rule is unreasonable. (By that I mean at least two-years. I've set it below where I think it makes sense.) I suspect that most downloaded music violates even that simple two-year "rule". Should people be able to copy music they've bought to other devices for their own listening, or even for playing at parties, etc.? Sure. Again, that's not what I think we're talking about here. I hear these excuses trotted out, but I suspect they're just that. Excuses.
You mention that people misconstrue civil disobedience to mean that it has to involve getting arrested or cited. Well, I think people also misconstrue civil disobedience to mean doing the wrong thing because I feel like it and I don't think I'll get caught. That's what it sounds like to my ears, anyways.
Again, I'm not defending the RIAA. I'm just defending Rosa Parks, the Boston Tea Party, and I'm trying to defend civil disobedience (perhaps imperfectly).
Re:Good points (Score:4, Insightful)
- What did Rosa Parks gain for refusing to move? Personally, just a lot of trouble.
- What did the people at the Boston Tea Party gain? Nothing, they threw the tea overboard. If they'd stolen it they'd be nothing but petty thieves.
- What did the people of the Underground Railroad gain? Escaped slaves had nothing, more often than not they needed more help. What's the difference between them and modern day people smugglers? Money, money, money...
- What do Greenpeace and the like get out of distruption various activities they see as hostile to the environment? Mostly getting arrested and such.
- What do people get out of smoking pot in a protest march? Wow, you get to stand around in a crowd.
What do you get out of being a pirate? Plenty music, movies, tv series, games, applications and such for free. Even if you're doing the right thing, it's as if you stole the tea at the Boston Tea Party. The message is lost because you're lining your own pockets at the same time, and greed is a much simpler explaination than idealism, Occam's razor and all.Question (Score:2)
Re:The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin... (Score:5, Interesting)
A *real* protest would be to stop buying/consuming the new stuff altogether, and go out and file-share the 99% of copyright-protected material that has no significant commercial value but is still held hostage by the DMCA and the ever-increasing copyright terms that the entertainment industry keeps buying from Congress. Get sued for sharing a song written by someone who's been dead for 75 years and get the copyright-holder to explain in a public court how prohibiting that distribution is removing the dead author's incentive to produce.
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"So Rosa Parks should have stayed in the back of the bus?"
Rosa Parks sat in front of the bus, which was her legal right to do even at that time. A caucasian person got on the bus, and typically an African American would get up from their seat and give it to the caucasian person. Rosa Parks remained in her seat. The bus driver demanded that she move to the back of the bus, something she refused to do. It was a law that passengers listen to the instructions of the bus driver and this was th
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If the laws of the universe were such that they could have had infinite free copies of the tea, you can be damn sure they would have. In fact, if it were possible to make an unlimited amount of tea for free, anyone who was denied tea on the basis that they hadn't paid would be really pissed off.
In complete agreement (Score:2)
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It's a justified analogy to what the RIAA is doing, but I welcome the work they spend trying to button up music "piracy." For one thing, the costs of the RIAA are pushed onto the consumer -- leading to higher prices of the music they're trying to protect, giving consumers more reason to work with alternative distribution mechanisms. This will also hopefully lead to more anonymous forms of file sharing, or even file-piece sharing, where you're only hosting a tiny portion of a specific songfile. At what point would a "pirate" not really be guilty of much if they're only sharing a small portion of a particular songfile, say 0.01%?
All the great heap paradox [wikipedia.org]. I'd say that the method by which to put the parts back together or the part map would be the pirate file.
Pirate! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ugh... (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't wait for the day when the RIAA goes back to what they started doing
You will be waiting forever then.
When will artists start
1. Is a starving artist is going to bite pretty much the only hand that has the potential (note phrase carefully) of feeding them? The economics of being an independent artist are depressing.
2. There are bands doing this. I have a feeling you want the music to show up at Walmart/Worst Buy. RIAA members control retail outside of a handful of in
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I actually think he's at least partially right and has a very interesting perspective.
Why? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a complete truth that the typical American is too lazy to fight for their rights let alone change their buying habits when a company acts badly.
Yes I AM an American.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Theres enough dissent about that to support both your counter argument and the GP's. Not a good example.
tm
Well (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Mod Parent Down (Score:2)
We all have the tools to stop this. I can think of two right now: voting and legislation;
Go ahead, get involved in politics if you are so angry. We have a system. Learn it and use it. Other small groups have done so to great effect. Prohibition is one example. No gun-toting rants necessary. Not one.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
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I think they are about to (Score:2)
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So.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes yes yes -- cue the ad nauseum replies about open access points, friends, or compromised machines. Those are all defenses that may or may not be more or less successful in a suit. What they're talking about here is faulty data provided by the ISP and it seems to me that the RIAA can't be blamed for that, but the ISP sure can.
It makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Let us help the living hell out of you. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now let's look at it another way, and say I'm in a related business. Let's make me a writer, musician, or other professional independent artist, self-publishing my own work out of my basement for burger money. I'm slightly suspicious that all of you people are illegally trading my copyrighted work, and depriving me of my burgers. I want to investigate this. Can I have the underlying logs from all of your ISPs as well, or is the shitload of money a requirement?
Re:It makes sense--I don't agree (Score:2)
I don't agree with your logic here at all. Making suits more expensive makes you be more selective about whom you pursue. This makes them very much less expensive because they are now -- or will be under this -- able to send you settlement demands directly without having to file in court. They can't lose on these, be awarded court costs when they do lose, or wo
So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Revised business plan (Score:4, Insightful)
Sue customers
Blame ISP's for suing wrong customer and try to make them do your job
?????
PROFIT!!!!
Welcome to www.p2plawsuits.com (Score:5, Funny)
By reading this text you acknowledge your interest which implicates your guilt.
Your ISP has been notified of your crimes - expect a bill.
Love,
RIAA
Extortion? (Score:5, Interesting)
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you're not innocent until proven guilty (Score:3, Informative)
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However, it is not illegal to threaten to sue someone for compensation, if they refuse to settle the matter out of court.
www.p2plawsuits.com (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:www.p2plawsuits.com (Score:5, Funny)
Just an idea, and IANAL
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Ha! That's funny... WHOIS (Score:3, Informative)
Registrant:
RIAA
14 8th Street NE
Washington, District of Columbia 20002
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http
Door to door searches (Score:3, Insightful)
Geesh..
Meanwhile... (Score:4, Funny)
Ars coverage (Score:3, Informative)
Hahah parked domain ads (Score:5, Interesting)
On top of that, two separate ads for "The Beacon Review" [thebeaconreview.com] and "The Download Guide" [downloadguideonline.org], which were amusing to compare side-by-side.
Counter-sue individually (Score:4, Interesting)
Why doesn't each and every person who has settled their case with RIAA counter-sue, providing this letter as evidence that they have been co-erced into their agreement with evidence that has now proven by RIAAs own admission to be suspect. Sue for damage to reputation, hardship caused by the settlement etc. Sue individually, not as a class action. Even if the cases weren't won, I'd imagine the number would keep the RIAA legal team tied in a knot for some time. Use the same frivolous tactic back against them.
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If the accused had doubt in the evide
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Yes you can. A person can appeal based on a confession that was 'coerced'. Showing someone overwhelming faked evidence against them and offering to let them off easy is coercion. People do get off from crimes they previously confessed to. It has
They want the log files? (Score:2)
Isn't that some kind of breach of privacy for all the other users listed in the log files?
On the flip side, I'm waiting to see one of the spambot systems start churning out e-mails that copy the text of the "Dear Customer" letter at the end of the RIAA's missive... wouldn't it be funny if all the spam filters became trained to mark such mail as spam? (read the actual letter here [ilrweb.com])
If your name is really John Doe? (Score:5, Funny)
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Better discount.... (Score:3, Funny)
Hackers would love a site like that. (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't wait to hear about the hilarious exploits of various hackers having their way with those servers.
When Lawyers Attack! (Score:2)
Dear Sir or Madam:
It has come to the RIAA's attention that our requests for subscriber information has not been........ blah blah blah.
Please correct this matter at once.
Best regards,
RIAA Legal Hack
SECOND LETTER TO ISP's
Dear Sir or Madam:
It has come to our attention that our requests for subscriber information has not been corrected... blah blah blah...
Be prepared for further strongly worded documents sent via Next Day Delivery!
Best regards,
RIAA Legal Hack.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
In it's unadulterated form. (Score:2)
Not even this will make the effort worth it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if the ISPs were required to keep logs, the logs will show nothing. This is the exact opposite of what the *AA and governments actually want. It is possible to make it incredibly difficult for them to track who does what. The FBI will find it even more difficult to find purveyors of child pornography. Don't think that I support child pornographers, but I certainly won't sacrifice my rights to privacy in order to catch them, or rather make catching them possibly easier for the police.
With all the post 9/11 rhetoric, I'm certain that any would be terrorists are already encrypting their communications. Its really not difficult to do. There are tons of ways currently to hide or encrypt data communications that make it impossible for the FBI/governments to efficiently make sense of it. That means that the ONLY reason for tracking and logging is to control honest citizenry. George, you were right.
The *AA can log all they want to, and try to sue anyone they want. In the same fashion that DRM is worked around, darknets will appear and ruin all the lawyer's fun. They are fighting a losing battle on all fronts. Eventually they will either capitulate and sell it cheaper and without DRM, or they will go out of business because more artists start selling their art without using the *AA.
What we have to ask ourselves is WHY do we continue to elect politicians that support this type of active spying on the citizenry?
Cooperation=liability (Score:3, Insightful)
Standards and burdens (Score:3, Informative)
Contrary to the RIAA's apparent claim, it is NOT a legal requirement for ISP's to collect information to which they can swear on a stack of bibles is true to track all customer activity. Even if the RIAA subpoenas them. They are obligated to provide what information they have. It's the RIAA that's turning around and swearing before a court of law that what they have is true, without verifying it.
Basically, the RIAA has discovered it's overstated the evidence that they have before them, and have potentially committed perjury or at least violated procedural rules. So now they want to say it's all the ISP's fault, apparently for not collecting information they're not obligated to collect, and which RIAA has used in court as "proof" without knowing what it entails.
maybe the riaa should keep suing people (Score:2)
the riaa knows it will get paid, and every once in awhile, some random joe you hardly know becomes bankrupt and homeless. if it's you, well the rest of will try to remember you fondly for providing a copy of "meet the fokkers". just stop tryin
All the ISP's Fault (Score:5, Interesting)
This is nothing more than an attempted end-run around the courts. Having proven that they are willing to go to court in a few thousand cases (out of a few million, and rising, number of filesharers), the RIAA wants to dispense with the courts altogether. Before they couldn't get their message to you that they knew who you were, and were gonna get you if you didn't fork over thousands of $$$s first, without a court subpoena. And a few million [Who is] John Doe lawsuits weren't going to fly there. Now they claim their victims are crying out for this solution, and it is a "favor" for the ISP's to offer it. And oh, if you RTFLetter, they don't want the ISP help desk employees directing any of these victims to other web-sites any longer. Sites that might tell them what their actual rights truly are, or where lawyers can be found. That's verboten.
So this becomes a quick, cheap route to shake out those willing to settle at the first whiff of danger, and a great time and money saving opportunity for the RIAA. Anybody think that this won't just increase the number of threats they make? Like to maybe everybody Media Sentry and their still questionably secret methods can point a finger at (and we know which finger they're pointing). The record companies are certainly trying to find a way to collect their due from everyone in the entire country who they believe has infringed their copyrights, under their own expansive and untested definition of what constitutes infringement!
All this on the same day a report has come out saying that filesharing, at least back in the 2002 timeframe when the record industry claimed they were being "devastated" by P2P users, say that the effect of P2P filesharing was "statistically insignificant" in causing the drop in CD sales.
So where do I find ISP's who don't keep logs?
But what really pisses me off about this is the continual recording industry refrain of: "We doing it for the (starving) artists." What I hear is that the record companies are trying to reduce the royalty payments from digital sales -- sales that occur at virtually no cost at all to the record companies themselves -- to the artists themselves.
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Why does this sound so familiar to me? (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA: "Yes, we're sure, these are the people stealing our intellectual property!"
(time passes...)
George W. Bush: "Oops, sorry. It wasn't my fault! I didn't know the reports were wrong!"
The RIAA: "Oops, sorry. It wasn't our fault! The ISPs were wrong in identifying people!"
Properly validated data (Score:3, Interesting)
After all, this is what top of the range direct mail houses do to ensure that their clients do not send the same letter to the same household under two different names, or that the new Porsche brochure is addressed to the father and not the 15-year-old son, so an equal standard should obviously apply to cases where a lawsuit might be involved. They could reasonably argue that a judge in a court does not have access to the necessary technical skills to make a proper judgement on correct identification, so it would be improper to release data that could not be fairly assessed by a court.
Assuming one dollar per record, the ISPs could be entirely funded by the "music industry" in short order.
Misidentification happens rarely (Score:3, Interesting)
1.) The time is off on the RAS, radius server, or other networking gear during the timeframe the RIAA asks records to be preserved for.
2.) The admin is having a bad day and messes up the time zone shift from RIAA's request to UTC or whatever time zone the records are kept in.
3.) (Rarely anymore...) The request from RIAA fails to indicate an IP or time or some other piece of information to clearly identify what account / user was responsible is being targeted.
Requests from the MPAA, FBI, and local law enforcement can be even worse. Many were still giving timeframes of HOURS, when you could point to 10-30 or more possible infringers.
Anyway, this sort of recordkeeping is trivial for any ISP - just plunk the accounting information in a database and (depending on the size of the ISP) you know who had what IP address where up to a year ago with a simple query in a matter of seconds.
Before this post becomes flamebait, let me just say that the best course of action I found was to simply relay the notice to the customer if that's what the requester wanted, as the ISP itself has no quarrel with RIAA or the customer. ISPs simply provide a series of tubes - what comes out of your straw is your own business.
Oh yeah, and ISPs don't like getting sued. So they follow the law.
But misidentification happens rarely. Good admins do their best because they know what's at stake for a customer.
You need actual EVIDENCE to sue someone? (Score:2)
When did the RIAA become a law enforcement entity? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the RIAA is pushing forward with civil suits, what gives them the legal right to subpoena information from other entities?
There's already been cases that have thrown out ISP responsibility for copyright infringement cases, so they don't have that *handle* to hold onto with ISPs anymore.
I'd say, make the RIAA file charges with a REAL law enforcement agency and wait for trial.
If they choose to make civil cases, make them come up with the identities on their own - they should not have the right to force ISPs to hand over any information whatsoever.
Why do they think they have a right in (and seem to have gotten away with) asking for this information so far?
Why isn't the RIAA paying for the log retention? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me get this straight.... (Score:4, Funny)
Wait... Does this mean I'm clear of future lawsuits?
How about they just be more up front and sell a $250 "Get out of lawsuit free" card. Then you buy that, download all you want, if/when they sue you, you hand them the card, and it's done? Or is that too close to the "we know you're a criminal" iPod tax?
We could have drive thru courts!
RIAA should be forced to retain music purchase log (Score:3, Funny)
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You want either a proxy or a tunnel, both of which exist.
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I personally like JAP, though it only does WWW. The servers are in Germany, go to google.com and you get "Google Deutschland". It's the easiest of the three. Tor makes you set up something like Privoxy, not sure about I2P. For JAP, just start it (it's in Java and runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows) and point your browser's proxy settings to localhost:4001.
Tor has the advantage of letting you route anything through it. If you use it, don't be an asshole by using it for Bittorren