RIAA victim Jammie Thomas gets expert defence
p2pnet news view RIAA | P2P:- RIAA lawyers are the “bottom of the barrel”.
The statement comes from Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman with the news that the RIAA tried to prevent its star victim, Jammie Thomas, from hiring an expert to help her defend herself in a case in which she’s being accused of being a massive online distributor of copyrighted music.
But the RIAA efforts to derail her efforts to present the facts as they really are, as opposed to the Big 4 record label cartel’s version of them, failed, and a highly qualified technical expert is now slated to testify on her behalf.
During the upcoming trial, in which Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA’s will once again try to convince a civil court that the single mother of two is, in fact, a wicked file sharing criminal, Dr Yongdae Kim will be nullifying RIAA ‘technical’ testimony.
The Big 4 have accused approaching 40,000 people of the nonexistent crime of sharing music with each other over the Net, but have only managed to get Thomas before a judge and jury in civil trial, slated to start on March 11.
And even that’s being re-heard, to the chagrin of the RIAA and its owners.
“In Capitol Records v. Thomas, Jammie Thomas’s motion for an extension of the discovery deadline, in order to enable her to designate Assistant Professor Yongdae Kim of the University of Minnesota as her expert witness, has been granted by Magistrate Judge Raymond L. Erickson,” says .
It’ll be fascinating to see RIAA ‘experts’ up against someone who really does know what he’s talking about when it comes to the Net and technology which keeps its wheels turning.
Dr Kim Kim specializes in group and network security.
Beckerman goes on »»»
The Judge ruled that “there can be no doubt that Dr. Kim is expected to provide expert opinion evidence that is important to the Defendant’s case, and that was not readily accessible to her prior to her receipt of a grant from an interested Foundation”.
The RIAA had strenuously opposed the motion.
Professor Kim will testify about the techniques of group and internet security, inclusive of the means by which an internet protocol address can be “hijacked,” or impersonated, by others who are not the owner of that address.
What’s also interesting is that Kim’s appearance is being made possible by a $3,000 grant from the “Expert Witness Defense Fund” administered by the Free Software Foundation, and which Beckerman helped to set up.
“This is most gratifying,” Beckerman told p2pnet.
“This is what the fund was set up to do, to level the playing field just a bit.
I think out of every thousand lawyers, 999 out of 1000 would automatically have consented to such a request.
But the RIAA’s lawyers are the bottom of the barrel.
I hope the public won’t think they are typical of the legal profession, because they are not.
They are the worst of our profession.
They are fearful, because they know that their expert, Dr Jacobson, does not use methods which are reliable, and is willing to say anything, in part because he is basically a business partner of the RIAA, since he indirectly owns a substantial interest in the Audible Magic software which the RIAA, with its litigation/extortion machine, has been pushing on LAN operators. Now a truly independent expert will have a chance to tell the other side of the story.
I am confident that this time around the jury will get a clearer picture, and will be in a better position to reach an informed decision, and not to be taken in by the junk science, technobabble, snow job they were handed the first time around.
Definitely stay tuned.
February 12, 2009, Decision Granting Extension of Expert Discovery Deadline
Jon Newton – p2pnet
February , 2009
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February 13th, 2009 at 11:02 am
‘…junk science, technobabble, snow job….’
it is exactly that.
I hope she motions for internet televised as well. AND a precedent gets set that will crush the extortion campaign.
February 13th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I am surprised that experts are not volunteering. Seriously, do you really need a PhD to be an ‘expert’? All you need is to prove you know the protocols inside and out and are well versed and experienced with networks and security.
I still wonder why so many professors or researchers or other extensively knowledgeable people are not coming to the rescue of those being bullied by the RIAA/MPAA lawyers. Don’t they care about corporation abusing citizens?
February 13th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
More to the point, why aren’t the politicians elected by the same people upon whom the labels depend for their survival, “coming to the rescue of those being bullied by the RIAA/MPAA lawyers”?
“Don’t they care about corporation abusing citizens?”
You know the answer to that. But things are changing. Scumbags can’t hide under their rocks, any more.
February 13th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I think you now get a clearer picture why the RIAA didn’t want this on the internet. The objection stated that it could be changed to say anything was nothing but a bald attempt to snow the judge. Even their own material for a good part of it, that they will depend on to show their side is subject to the same flexible changing. Of course that’s something they would rather not have out in the open, just like the expert witness that we all will expect to give a truthful but a far different light on the idea of how and what the net and computers are capable of.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
hahahah, ‘only we are allowed to distort reality to our needs’ – RIAA Lawyer
February 13th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
” am surprised that experts are not volunteering. Seriously, do you really need a PhD to be an ‘expert’? ”
As am I.
If I could pass the Daubert standards I would volunteer in a heartbeat.
In a way it makes our side look just as mercenary as the RIAA goons, which is
pretty sad.
” Sure Í’ll help you, if you got the cash ”
Yup, even our ’side’wants cash to do the right thing.
I don’t know what to think of that.
Well, I do, but it’s too sad to contemplate.
February 13th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Well, he has written a paper how to attack the KADemlia DHT network more effectively.
So depending on what “side” you are, you can argue that he is with Evil4 or he is with pirates.
I guess if RIAA-RICH would be still in charge he would try to smear this korean guy’s reputation by accusing him that he provides a “road map for would-be infringers” in showing how to increase the cost for anti p2p measures on the emule net.
__
Abstract:
The Kad network, an implementation of the Kademlia DHT protocol, supports the popular eDonkey peer-to-peer file sharing network and has over 1 million concurrent nodes. We describe several attacks that exploit critical design weaknesses in Kad to allow an attacker with modest resources to cause a significant fraction of all searches to fail. We measure the cost and effectiveness of these attacks against a set of 16,000 nodes connected to the operational Kad network. We also measure the cost of previously proposed, generic DHT attacks against the Kad network and find that our attacks are much more cost effective. Finally, we introduce and evaluate simple mechanisms to significantly increase the cost of these attacks.
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kyd/node/150