George Washington student fights the RIAA
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- “I think that because … we do have clear and persuasive evidence that the individual did engage in illegal music trafficking, then people are willing to settle because they realize the liability, they realize they did do this, and they want to get it off their plate,” .”
That’s RIAA mouthperson Clara Duckworth with another of her manifestly insincere, painfully unconvincing, explanations as to why the Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG hit organisation is going after students, ruining their ability to concentrate on their studies and seriously interfering with normal school administrative functions.
The quote comes in a post in the George Washington University student newspaper, the GW Hatchet featuring ‘Sherry,’ and exposing yet another example of a US school putting the interests of the purely commercial corporate music industry before those of its students.
Sherry, not her real name, is a full-time college student with two jobs who’s decided she’s not willing to let the RIAA hang her out of dry.
Instead, she’s fighting back.
Sherry said she downloaded eight songs and in late-October, learned the RIAA was targeting her for copyright infringement, says the Hatchet, going on:
Now her case has become the crux of a legal battle being monitored by experts across the country. The RIAA has subpoenaed the University to learn the names of the 19 anonymous GW students targeted in the suit – using their IP addresses.
Four of those students have agreed to outside settlements, according to court documents. Sherry is fighting the industry’s methods alone in federal court. What has become a drawn out legal battle began, she said, when GW’s legal team informed her of the suit.
“No one really gave me information, which was very discouraging,” she said. “The general counsel told me who was suing me, but they couldn’t give me any legal advice. They told me to call the hotline the RIAA had set up.”
When she called the hotline, they said she needed her IP address to asses the damages being sought – something she did not have. She was encouraged to settle out of court for about $4,000, or risk paying more after a trial.
“I’m furious about it,” she said. “I do buy CDs when I go to concerts, and I do support the artists. It’s very discouraging. I’m a college student. I already work two jobs and take classes, and buying music sucks because it’s expensive. Music should be something everyone can enjoy.”
Students, “don’t have time or the effort or enough money to seek counsel and to endure the very very huge expense it takes to defend a case in federal court,” the story has Stephen Roberston, Sherry’s attorney, saying.
“I can tell you that this has been a huge burden and a financial drain on our firm, but we’re not always in this for the money.”
He added his client, and his firm, continue to fight and lose money against the industry because of the principle.
“You have to want to fight the fight for reasons of principle, which I know is one of the motivating forces for my client,” he said. “She knows this is just wrong. She thinks this whole approach is wrong.”
Also See:-
painfully unconvincing – RIAA with Don Reisinger: read, weep, January 15, 2008
GW Hatchet – Has AT&T Lost Its Mind?, January 16, 2008
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January 17th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
With the first rounds that actually went to court, it is being found that the RIAA is more bluff than fact. When it comes right down to presenting evidence, they have been woefully short. Expert testimony turns out to be anything but expert.
So the big hope is that people will cave in and just pay up rather than go through the courts to prove their innocence or the fact that it well could have been others because of the lack of good data. It’s almost like the RIAA threw a dart at the list and used that for picking out victims.
I will give them credit for being the worse PR effort the cartels could ever have come up with. I don’t want anything to do with buying music and stopped when sue’em all came to be as a boycott. Now it looks like anyone considering buying music could be a possible lawsuit victim depending on how the cartels want to interpret or twist the laws in their favor today or next week when the wind blows the other way. They are managing to turn a whole generation off to buying music. It bodes ill for their future when those students become income earners in their own right. You can hear the far off death knell tolling if you listen carefully.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
But, if I am not mistaken, she already admitted to downloading music, and if that music was copyrighted by the cartels, her ass is hung out to dry. She admitted “guilt,” and therefore the fight becomes that of how much she “owes.”
Download even one song “owned” by the cartels is still copyright infringement in the eyes of the court system. What the Constitution says about too harsh of a penalty does not matter since the courts long ago refuse to uphold the Constitution. What I would have done is buy a wireless router (with cash and out of town) and set it up so that it had open access. That way, there would be plausible deniability.
January 17th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
“music trafficking” it sound like “drug Trafficking”
I never heard this before! It just came out or something?
Clara Duckwork What an old bitch! I she a dealer?
January 17th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Sorry I mean DuctWork!
January 17th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Do not pay Do not pay and do not pay!
They ask for 200K or 10 gillions dollars it chould not change anything!
YOU DON”T HAVE AND YOU SHOULD NOT GIVE THEM EVEN A PENNY!
Worst case senario Bk chapter 7 if needed! Not a big deal!
January 17th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
“RIAA-Richard” was one of those that made that word up.
He used it among other instances in an oral argument before the smart “Ipod judge” Karras and was shut down by the judge for trying the drug annalogy with the judge stating something along the line “the government does not hold the copyrights in drugs. I mean there are conspiracy theories… but we don’t want to go into that now”*
Duckworth is just an evil intellectual property thief that stole this traffficking idea from others! SUE HER!!
* http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/02/elektra-v-barker-making-available-oral.html
January 18th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Yes, she shouldn’t have admitted that she downloaded the songs, however the charge is unauthorizzed distribution. As far as I know, nobody has ever been sued for simply DOWNLOADING. It’s just that when you download with P2P software, you automatically upload those same files and that’s what gets you in trouble. Right now, in another trial, the defendant and the EFF are attempting to get the “making available” argument thrown out. If they succeed, it would mean that the RIAA doesn’t have a leg to stand on, since they can’t prove that anyone (other than themselves) ever downloaded anything from anyone. Of course they’re trying to buy new laws that would criminalize “attempted infringement”, but until that happens, the RIAA would basically be powerless to sue anyone.
Hypothetically, I think if it was me, I’d backup everything that I wanted to keep to DVD, then I’d erase it all from my HD. I’d also uninstall every P2P application and burning software, delete the browser history, cookies, saved passwords to any iffy sites, bookmarks to such sites, the recently opened file list in every media player, clean the registry and delete the backups, and anything else that references copyrighted files or P2P apps/sites. Then I’d run a free space wiping program to overwrite all the currently unused space on my HD. Finally, I’d then fill up all the free space by installing games (of which I have quite a few). Lastly, I’d swap out my CD and DVD burners for CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives and take every CD and DVD that I’ve ever burned and ask a friend to hang onto them for me. The only piece of evidence that they’d have would be an IP address and they’d look pretty stupid dragging someone into court with nothing else to go on. If they did, I’d countersue them for harassment.
Of course, the above is just a hypothetical situation, since I always respect copyrights and I would never encourage anyone to break the law or tamper with evidence, even if it’s to avoid having your life destroyed by a greedy, soulless corporation.
January 18th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Most areas in towns (UK esp.) are switching to telecoms supplied phone and internet routers.
What many don’t realise is that with the standard protection of these wifi boxes, someone can hack in and use your internet access in minutes using tools such as aircrack-ng on a live linux distro etc.
My area has many flats nearby..
I just installed a very modest 5dBi boost aerial and can actually see (and connect or attempt connect) around 8 different access points!!! Some might even live close enough to an institution (pub, coffee shop etc.) that has wifi access installed for its customers. Cough…
To compound matters, some people do not even change (or know how to) the default user name and password (admin admin) to access all the router settings. On the BT default supplied boxes, this is a very serious flaw, meaning any ‘hacker’ close by can use your internet, completely deny you access to your network or the advanced settings, set up particular blocks or a DMZ and with a small stretch of technical capabilities, USE YOUR PHONE SERVICES TO CALL PREMIUM SERVICES (or whatever) without the box even showing an intrusion attempt in its log. The range is further than most realise (up to hundreds of feet, even through windows/walls, depending on equipment)
With this default roll out of BT security for the home, I don’t think those who know about the current mess and users ignorance could ever be charged with doing anything on the internet without a great deal of uncertainty. I’m sure it is the same all across Europe, the far east, Africa, Australia, America etc.
And anyway.
The rule whenever you are dragged to a hearing is to deny everything, even if you are guilty as sin, no matter the charges, UNLESS you are offered a good deal of leniency for pleading guilty. This stands for these RIAA accusations too.
January 18th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Even if they win, you don’t *have* to pay. Let them try to make you. By Mahound, people are dense!
January 18th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Rekrul, it sounds good in theory. Unfortunately, an investigation would show that you destroyed evidence. Much better to download the new version of TrueCrypt (open source) when it comes out, or PGP Disk or another similar program, and encrypt your entire system. Also, buy a cheap wireless router, hook it up to your connection, firewall the crap out of it, and offer free wireless to the neighbors.
I’m not a lawyer, but based on my limited understanding of the law, this should go a long way towards making the RIAA’s job that much more difficult in proving your guilt. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they won’t assume it anyway.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
“Rekrul, it sounds good in theory. Unfortunately, an investigation would show that you destroyed evidence.”
Are you sure about that? While it IS true that hard drive platters retain some faint magnetic traces of previous data that has been overwritten, I’m not aware of any consumer level hard drive in use today that can read those traces. Everything I’ve read has indicated that to read those traces requires that the drive be dis-assembled and the platters placed in a machine that costs more than most people make in their lifetime. Beyond the cost associated with doing this, I doubt that the RIAA/MPAA are going to tear apart the hard drive of a potentially innocent victim.
Everything I’ve read indicates that the standard procedure is to make an image copy of the drive. This means that the drive itself is responsible for reading the data off its platters. Since a hard drive can only read whatever data is currently recorded in each sector and not what was overwritten, the question becomes whether or not any incriminating data would be missed by wiping the free space and overwriting it by installing games and such.
Besides the obvious (audio/video files, P2P apps, etc) you would also need to erase the registry backups, the swap file, IE’s index.dat files, etc. Once that’s done, wiping the free space on the drive will overwrite the space previously used by these files. A good program will use random data for each sector, making it look like part of an unknown file. Then, installing other programs such as games will overwrite the random data with data belonging to the games. I even have a collection of save files for various games that can be used to make it appear as if the games have been played.
What have I missed?
January 18th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
In theory you are correct. However, Windows leaves so many little clews in so many places as to what has previously been on the system, and when things were installed and sometimes when they were removed. I personally wouldn’t feel confident that I could think of and erase all the evidence. I would probably miss something. But, I suppose it depends on how well you know Windows inside and out. I should have said “an investigation could show that you destroyed evidence, depending on how good you were at getting rid of it.”
Anyway, its probably a moot point, as neither you nor I are likely to receive a complaint from the RIAA. Still, it doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:20 am
I’m not really an expert on Windows, and it should be noted that I’m using Windows 98, which is much simpler than 2K/NT/XP/Vista, which can have data hidden under various users. However, I know that the main places where you will find information about what has been installed on the system are the registry, the “C:\Windows\Application Data\”, “C:\Program Files\” and the “My Documents” directory. Later versions of Windows are worse in this respect since data can be hidden under different users and other things can be buried several layers deep in the Documents directory. This is one of the reasons, I always re-direct downloads to a directory of my choosing. Also, the automatically created registry backups should be deleted and once you have a clean copy of the registry, Windows will automatically back it up, once per day upon rebooting.
I’d also like to mention that using Explorer is, in my opinion, an absolutely HORRIBLE way to “explore” your system. Windows hides a *LOT* of things from the user and using Explorer always feels to me, like trying to navigate a maze with blinders on. I prefer a good two-pane file manager like Total Commander. Another tip; Instead of using RegEdit’s slow and cumbersome search, export the entire registry to a file, then view it with the viewer/editor of your choice. You can’t directly edit the registry that way, but searching for the name of the P2P program you uninstalled to see if any mention of it was left behind will be about 50x faster and then you can use that as a reference in RegEdit.
Also, I decided to see what drive erasing programs I could find and I found this one;
http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/
It’s free and will overwrite the free space on drives. It says it will even blank out the left over directory entries of previously deleted files. The first site is the original author’s, the second is from the new maintainer.
January 19th, 2008 at 4:04 am
Just wanted to let you know that I read your response. I entered a longer one earlier, but now it’s gone. I guess the site doesn’t like this line of discussion.
January 19th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
And now it’s back…