Posted on 08/14/2006 12:07:24 PM PDT by steve-b
According to the blog Recording Industry vs The People, the RIAA, gracious as ever, will allow the children of the deceased Michigan resident Larry Scantlebury a 60 day grieving period before they proceed to depose them in the case of Warner Brothers v. Scantlebury. Mr Scantlebury passed away on June 20th, 2006. You can read the motion for the 60 day stay here (PDF). Recording Industry vs The People credits Michigan lawyer John Hermann for pointing them to the story. Hermann represents several victims of the EMI, Sony BMG, Warner and Universal sue 'em all marketing campaign.
In an earlier article written by Mr. Hermann, he points out: "The RIAA’s strategy appears flawed in that they once they've identify a person sharing and/or downloading a suspect file, they're only able to determine the IP address and username associated with the peer system registry. This alone isn't enough for them to be able to distinguish if the account holder, or someone else, was using his/her account and was responsible for the activity. Although these facts are easily discernable by the RIAA, they simply don’t care about the underling truth of the matter. Once they identify the activity as being linked to an internet account, they typically argue (without any legal authority) that the account holder is responsible for all activity on the account."
Although written in October of 2005, Mr. Hermann's comments jibes nicely with a recent article at Techdirt in which Mike writes "If you want to win a lawsuit from the RIAA, you're best off opening up your WiFi network to neighbors. It seems like this strategy might actually be working. Earlier this month the inability to prove who actually did the file sharing caused the RIAA to drop a case in Oklahoma and now it looks like the same defense has worked in a California case as well. In both cases, though, as soon as the RIAA realized the person was using this defense, they dropped the case, rather than lose it and set a precedent showing they really don't have the unequivocal evidence they claim they do. The RIAA certainly has the legal right to go after people, even if it simply ends up pissing off their best fans and driving people to spend their money on other forms of entertainment -- but, if they want to do so, they should at least have legitimate evidence. It's good to see that some are finally pointing out how flimsy the evidence really is."
And you think that the encryption algorithm is totally secure?
These guys have former NSA people at their disposal.
Oh no--I never said it would keep you totally safe. Just that it would help. Anthing's better than just leaving it out in the open.
Run it from a virtual machine off of an encrypted external drive. There will be absolutely no trace of it on your system.
These guys are stupid enough to commit criminal computer trespass during their investigations, even stupid enough to sue a dead woman who had never owned a computer.
But I'll give you a hint, don't use Windows encryption since the password can be broken in a few minutes. Unless you use Alt codes in the password, that's beyond current easy breaking.
But as far as I know, it's not illegal to possess or to have possessed at some time in the past, file sharing programs. Only if you use them to share or to receive copyrighted material is there injury.
Besides, like some of the other posts have mentioned, you could put the file sharing program in a VM on this removable disk.
Latest news, the RIAA dropped the suit "out of an abundance of sensitivity" on its part. Yeah, right, we believe them. Apparently the negative press got too bad for even the RIAA to handle, so they're tucking tail and running.
Thanks to the new media, including FR, it took only a few days to humiliate the RIAA into submission once this came to light (not a small task).
As I noted on another thread -- how is it that these guys can keep filing frivolous lawsuits without ever drawing a cease-and-desist order?
Theoretically, there's supposed to be one law for the RIAA and the guy who thinks that the CIA is beaming mind control rays at his head, and yet only the latter ever seems to get told, "sorry, you've wasted enough of the sytem's time with your lawsuits -- go away and never come back".
They have very deep pockets. It allows them to file cases, and it also allows them to shop for judges.
External HD and the Usenet. No file sharing program needed.
So, is having filesharing programs evidenc of a crime? I thought there were legitimate uses for filesharing? There are many musicians who give away files. Are you saying it's still illegal to download them?
Okay, but something has to instruct that hard drive, and that file has to go through a gateway to an IP address. All those things can be found unless you take some serious precautions. Some ISPs will give up IP information to the RIAA on a mere request, without even a court order, because they cannot afford a lawsuit.
Not necessarily, but the RIAA has filed a lawsuit against LimeWire, so it may eventually obtain information on who has downloaded the program. Then they start digging into those IP addresses until they find files being transferred.
I think we'd have to establish a larger pattern first, that is, more people willing to fight and win in the early stages due to a lack of evidence. And the RIAA has it set up so that the average person can't kill it so quickly.
Unfortunately, it takes a LOT to get a court to stop hearing cases from someone, and the RIAA is taking this to so many different jurisdictions that it would take losing hundreds of these for even a majority of the courts to start sanctioning.
But those precautions are easy. Microsoft VirtualPC is free, so you can crank up a virtual machine on that external drive. Use encrypted file system (sorry XP Home users, you don't get it, but there are other free tools available) on that drive with an account with a password that includes at least one alt code character (stops easy cracks). Set your system to wipe the swap file when you shut down, or download a free system cleaning utility as previously mentioned. Then use an anonymous proxy, or for plausible deniability, do it over your wireless router, leaving it at the standard as-shipped configuration, which is open to public use.
Nothing is 100% in computer security except putting your computer through a blast furnace, and this is no exception. However, the time and expense to get through these simple, free defenses is quite prohibitive.
Slight correction: the ISP never has to worry about a lawsuit if it follows the procedures in the DMCA. But a medium-size ISP that gets 10 RIAA subpoenas a month often can't afford the lawyers to challenge them all in order to protect its clients.
I don't know if you are familiar with newsgroups. But there is a lot of stuff besides music on the usenet. And I use a premium news service. Anything is possible, but the resources required to come after me via that route make it a lot easier for RIAA to get the file sharing people.
And back to my original point, there is absolutely no evidence that I have downloaded any copyrighted music files. The usenet doesn't work that way. There is no file sharing software involved with newsgroups.
Good Point...
This nifty tool works just fine:
http://dban.sourceforge.net
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