RIAA ‘bait & switch’
p2pnet news view P2P | RIAA News:- The American Bar Association now knows more about the Joel Tenenbaum and Brittany Kruger cases than it used to.
Joel Tenebaum — pictured on the right with his father, Arthur and mother, Judie — is the Boston student famously represented by a team of Harvard Law students.
But before the Harvard group took his case up, he was defending himself with the help of his mother, an attorney who specializes in family law.
Not at all coincidentally, Mrs Tenenbaum recently gave a talk to the American Bar Association citing not only her son’s case, but also that of Brittany Kruger, another completely innocent student whose life has been turned inside out by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA.
RIAA – Audio Magic sales reps
Meanwhile, MediaSentry, the shabby ‘private investigation’ company hired, and ultimately fired, by the RIAA, is integral to Britanny’s case.
It was bought by SafeNet Digital Rights Management three years ago for a massive $20,000,000 but sold, a few days ago, to rival MediaDefender for a mere $136,000 in cash and a promise of a further $800,000 in a year.
We say it’s long gone time that a formal in-depth investigation was started into the activities of the RIAA, the people who run it, Media Sentry, and the anguish the two outfits — acting on behalf of Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US) — are causing thousands of innocent American families across the country, with the blessing of the US government.
Randy Kruger, Brittany’s father, wants to see MediaSentry named as the subject in a criminal investigation by Michigan for allegedly operating illegally within the state.
In a p2pnet comment post to the story mentioned earlier, he brings up Doug Jacobson – the RIAA’s inexpert expert – and Audio Magic, an application which almost since day one has had the RIAA and the extortion unit’s boss Mitch ‘The Don’ Bainwol blatantly fronting it.
“The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry,” it states on its home page.
Nowhere does it say it, or its staff (senior or otherwise), are mandated to act as hard-core sales and marketing reps for purely commercial operations.
“You forgot to mention that after the RIAA shake down, the colleges are then presented with Audio Magic a program that is supposed to stop file sharing,” says Randy, observing dryly
“It must work because every university that has invested money in it has been clear of suits. Gee, I wonder how that happens.”
Audible Magic – no silver bullet
Thanks to being deliberately singled out by the RIAA, Audio Magic CopySense has been around almost since the Big 4 record labels started attacking their own customers.
It’s offered by the RIAA as a highly effective, highly efficient file sharing filter, and in 2004, Electronic Frontier Foundation technologist Chris Palmer decided it was time to take a long, hard look at it.
“The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been touting technologies offered by Audible Magic as the cure for peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing on university (and high school!) campuses,” he posted in the first of two critiques.
“The company has also been making the rounds of congressional offices in Washington, DC, talking up its technologies as a silver bullet for P2P infringement,” Chris said.
Actually, it wasn’t Audio Magic that was making the rounds. It was Mitch Bainwol, acting for it.
But, “it is important that universities are not sold expensive, ineffective solutions simply to appease the public relations needs of the RIAA,” said Chris, going on:
“It is also important that policymakers not be misled by the bullish pronouncements of the RIAA and Audible Magic regarding the effectiveness of ‘acoustic filtering’ technologies.
“Information from public sources suggests that Audible Magic’s filtering technology is trivial to defeat. For universities, this means an investment today may well be worthless tomorrow. Policymakers, meanwhile, would do well to examine all filtering technologies closely before putting faith in the promises of vendors. A close look at Audible Magic’s technology suggests that its filtering is no silver bullet.”
However, according to the RIAA and Bainwol, it’s that, and more.
Criminals and thieves
Ohio University was once at the top of Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (s)hit list as the, “recipient of more music sharing complaints than any other university,” p2pnet posted last year, going on it’s now a fully fledged corporate copyright cop, passing on RIAA extortion demands to students and spending thousands of dollars in school funds on dodgy ‘filtering’ technology.
The university ended up splashing more than $75,000 for a device that “scans data crisscrossing its network for copyrighted media”.
“Colleges and universities across the country are turning to special software to wipe out, limit or monitor peer-to-peer file-sharing on their networks,” said The Post, going on, “OU began testing one of these devices last year and spent more than $75,000 to purchase one.”
But $75K wasn’t all OU spent on placating the RIAA.
‘Borderline incompetent …’
Doug Jacobson (right) is an RIAA hired ‘expert’ whose expertise has been repeatedly seriously questioned.
He was described as “borderline incompetent” and his allegations of copyright infringement levelled at a 57-year-old New York home health aide “unproven” by Dr Johan Pouwelse, the internationally acknowledged Dutch expert and visiting scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
More recently, RIAA victim Jammie homas now has in her corner Yongdae Kim, a specialist in group and network security at the University of Minnesota.
His report has just been filed and neither MediaSentry nor Jacobson survive.
Among many other things, “Dr. Jacobson’s expert witness and supplemental reports contain multiple factual errors and mis-statements of fact regarding the technologies relevant tothis case, and show evidence of faulty logic in making conclusions,” say its conclusions.
“Dr. Jacobson not only does not consider any alternative explanations for the log data provided by MediaSentry other than what is alleged by the plaintiff, but also fails to definitively bridge the gap between the evidence presented by MediaSentry and the identity of the computer used in the alleged infringement.”
And yet in addition to blowing 75 grand on unproven technology promoted by the RIAA, Ohio University was, and may still be, also paying Jacobson’s company $16,000 a year in ‘maintenance’.
“So,” says Brittany’s father, Randy, in his Reader’s Write, “first comes the MediaSentry secret & private investigations”.
He goes on »»»
The university is then contacted by HRO asking that it forward “Dear Sir or Madam- we have discovered your IP address” extortion letters to its students.
This uses the university staff to do the dirty work.
For those students who did not settle, next comes the “John Doe – ex Parte lawsuit phase”, (the University is then again forced to use its money and resources to identify those student by name that MediaSentry “has discovered”).
This forces the University into bed with the RIAA. After the “Doe” lawsuit phase and the courts force the university to roll over, and release the names of it’s students, (those names that match up to MediaSentry’s guess work) , the phone calls and threats of lawsuits start.
By now, Morgan S [Swartzlander - extortion centre 'officer'] is making the calls from the Settlement Center, and Donald [Kelso] is sending the HRO letters.
While this is going on, the university is contacted about “anti file sharing” software called Audio Magic. It comes with the promise of ending the “file-sharing problem”.
This is “Expert Witness” Doug Jacobson’s baby. He gets a kick back from the sale of Audio Magic.
Not to be left out, the RIAA once again slithers into the picture, with… (Until its demise) the RIAA approved “Ruckus” program, or some similar RIAA sponsored program DRM laden music program.
These programs are also sold to the University to “minimize the problem”.
Through this whole process, Federal and State money that should be used by the University to beef up its academics or lower the cost to the students gets funneled back into the greedy paws of the RIAA.
Out from under the rocks and crevices in Washington DC, “entertainment” lobbyist buy Congress to promote legislation that would require that any Universities that receives Federal Money be required to have programs in place to combat “Piracy” or loose their aid.
In the Organized Crime world, words like “money laundering”, “extortion”,” fraud”, “bait & switch”, “bribe”, “kick back”, and “corruption”, as well as a host of other descriptions would flow.
Sad to say, the term ‘business as usual’ applies … and the tax-payers foot the bill.
Just follow the bouncing ball.
We will.
“Oh,” Randy adds in another comment post, “and I forgot to mention the Government contracts that SafeNet/MediaSentry picked up without bid.
“I wonder if they were given a good referance by Bradley Buckles, the former director of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), who was hired to head up the RIAA Anti-Piracy Unit?”
Stay tuned.
April, 2009
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April 10th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
A scam that lays 5 golden eggs then a golden egg every year… (egg) valued at 16,000 USD!
Gotto admire the brains that came up with this con though, it takes a special type of lowlife scumbag to think of something like this, and a larger pool of scumbags to implement it.
April 10th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
“Gotto admire the brains that came up with this con…”
Too bad (for them!) the brains never stop to think about the math, though.
They can only take so much money for their rediculous salaries, the legal campiagns, and the propaganda machine, before the take adds to their ever-accumulating losses (now that fewer people are buying the actual products), and sinks the whole scheme.
I, for one, will be there to do a “Scrooge Dance” on their collective grave when that inevitably happens!
April 10th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
This is fucking disgusting, you know? There really is an US and a THEM.
April 10th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
“There really is an US and a THEM.”
And after all,
We’re only ordinary men…
(Sorry, ya got Pink Floyd goin’ through my brain now.)
[Stan]
“…you BASTARDS!”
: )
April 12th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
first you have the government ,a free functioning entity elected by the peoples ! then you have the government,freely bought by the movie and record companies!still going full tilt at trying to destroy american lives and famlies!everyone knows sales are down all over the world cause there product is mostly pure unadulterated crap,so who wants it?? the sadest part of all this is that the supposed “land of the free and home of the brave”is now full of people who are willing to stand by and watch families destroyed and children and young adults turned into criminals !all this to satisfiy the gred of those who think it’s not fair they shouldn’t be allowed to make more $$ on top of the millions they already have ! fortunately we here in the great white north are still relatively free of that crap.but be very vigilant Canada,because we have the same slippery slime here just not as well known yet !! but they will try again to infect us with there sick thoughts and ideas on “freedom and copywrite! so be very wary. my my , that was a lil longer than i planned ! but i say,be well all,be wary!!