RIAA expert’s expertise questioned
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- The credibility of yet another RIAA expert is being challenged.
Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman recently successfully appealed to the online community for help in rebutting so-called expert testimony presented by one Dr Doug Jacobson on behalf of Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
Jacobson’s evidence is being examined by Dr Johan Pouwelse, the Dutch expert in next-generation p2p technology, who’s already impugned the credibility of MediaSentry, a discredited US firm which turns up over and again in Big 4 cases in North America and elsewhere.
Its evidence is, however, frequently more damaging to the labels than to their victims.
Now Beckerman is making the same unusual request of the online community that he’d made earlier, only this time he’s looking for feedback on one Carlos Linares.
With Jacobson effectively sidelined, the RIAA needed a new ‘expert’ and Linares, billed as an RIAA anti-piracy master, may have been selected to fill that vacuum.
However, he isn’t doing too well so far.
“In support of its ex parte, ‘John Doe,’ discovery applications against college students, the RIAA has been using a declaration by its ‘Anti-Piracy’ Vice President Carlos Linares (PDF) to show the judge that it has a good copyright infringement case against the ‘John Does’,” posts NewYorkCountryLawyer, aka Beckerman, on Slashdot, going on:
A Boston University student has challenged the validity of Mr. Linares’s declaration, and the RIAA is fighting back. Would appreciate the Slashdot community’s take on the validity of Mr. Linares’s ’science’.”
The RIAA is also trying to browbeat Oklahoma State University into identifying students so Big four lawyers can subpoena them on trumped up allegations of illegally distributing copyrighted music online.
It tried the same thing on the University of New Mexico, failing miserably, and in the OSU case, Linares tried to show IP addresses are good for identifying victims. But his evidence was shot down in flames as “factually erroneous” and “misleading” by an independent expert, Jason Street.
In the Boston University ex parte ‘John Doe’ case, Arista v. Does 1-21, a student, “moved to vacate the ex parte order granting discovery, and to quash the subpoena issued under it, the RIAA has filed its opposition to the motion,” says Beckerman on RIvTP.
However, two new witnesses are casting further doubt on Lenares’ veracity.
The chairman of Boston University’s Computer Science Department and a second expert, Jesse Stengel, a support systems analyst for the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Arizona, have stepped up to support the Boston University student.
Bestavros says some of Linares’s factual statements were “not possible” while “not true” says Stengel of some of Linares’s contentions.
If you think you can help, contact Beckerman here: rbeckerman @ vanfeliu dot com.
Meanwhile, definitely stay tuned.
Click the mic on the right to hear David Bannister’s p2pnetcast of this story. .
Also See:
successfully appealed - A Lawyer Would Like to Pick Your Brain Once Again, July 2, 2007
Dutch expert in next-generation p2p - Pouwelse: witness in RIAA case, May 14, 2007
Slashdot - Is RIAA’s Linares Affidavit Technically Valid?, July 2, 2007
browbeat Oklahoma State University - RIAA IP address claim ‘erroneous’, August 8, 2007
failing miserably - RIAA ID demand thrown out, June 20, 2007
Boston University - Boston Uni student defies RIAA, June 14, 2007
RIvTP - RIAA Opposes Boston University Student’s Motion to Vacate and to Quash, June 27, 2007
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August 9th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Don’t forget Jayson Street’s expert testimony.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:38 am
So how does the RIAA do it? Do they download a file from someone’s computer and then do a netstat -an (for windows) to see what the IP address on the other end of the connection is? I’m sorry, but combine that with the time and date, the ISP can easily find who was using a particular IP address during a particular time frame.
Now if the ISP made a mistake, that’s another matter.