Cox screws up in porn case
p2p news / p2pnet:- Cox Communications, America’s third-largest cable provider, is being sued by a Wichita couple for invasion of privacy, breach of contract, defamation of character and “outrageous conduct.”
“Brian and Sarah Doom were shocked when police showed up at their Wichita home accusing them of child pornography,” says the Wichita Eagle.
But the police had the wrong house, based on “mistaken information” from Cox, and now the Dooms are demanding unspecified damages, including lawyer fees stemming from their dealings with police and emotional distress.
According to the lawsuit, the two were “aggressively interrogated about the child porn accusations for hours,” says the story. “They kept telling police they were innocent. Police confiscated the couple’s computer.”
The claim of “outrageous conduct” is rarely used and contends a party suffered damages so severe that it would be “regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized society,” adds the Eagle.
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi
See:-
Wichita Eagle – Mistaken child-porn raid leads to lawsuit, September 12, 2005
September 13th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
Which is why these ‘fines’ from the RIAA are unfounded….
September 13th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
//sarcasm mode on
What !!!
Ya mean identifying people by IP addy alone can be WRONG !!!
I gotta go lay down now ….
//sarcasm mode off
A few more of these and maybe the providers that willingly give up user info to appease the “Fat Ones” just may think twice about the wisdom of their efforts.
September 13th, 2005 at 8:12 pm
First of all, you can’t charge someone based on IP addresses… unless you pay more, they change all the time with mose ISPs…
Second, WTF kind of ISP bothers to report people for stuff? If this kind of stuff is gonna happen, its the police that should investigate first, then ask the ISP for the persons identity… THEN before giving it to the police, the ISP MUST alert the costumer. Thats just how it must be!
September 13th, 2005 at 9:47 pm
What these people should have done (and info for anyone else who doesn’t know this) is not be answering their “questions” during an interrogation. Go to any lawyers website and you will see that stated, even highlighted.
By law you have the right to not answer their questions, and by law you have the right to have an attorney present. Which is what anyone should do whether you are guilty or innocent.
The ONLY questions you have to answer to law enforcement are your name and address to identify yourself.
The police are never your friend when this happens. They also like to have one good cop and one play bad cop, to trick you into talking. If they had any proof, they wouldn’t need to be asking you any questions. The whole purpose of the interrogation is to get you to admit to something you didn’t do.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:42 am
Sounds like Cox is about as bright as the RIAA when it comes to getting the wrong info on ISP’s numbers. At least the Doom’s are alive!!!
September 14th, 2005 at 6:51 am
Ultimately, it’s pretty damn difficult to truly prove anything in cases involving evidence that happened to be on a computer’s hard drive. There can be clues that push you towards a person, but even these can be misleading (such as the evidence being under a person’s profile on a Windows XP system). Ultimately, with a piece of evidence on a computer, you have to prove that the person in question is the person who did it.
This means you have to prove they were the one behind the keyboard, or pushing the data from one computer to the other over a network, and on top of that, you’ve got to prove it wasn’t a trojan of some sort, because that’s actually a defense!
However, in this case, they shouldn’t have even made it that far. IP addresses can usually be traced back to an Internet account, but the whole process can be unreliable and it still provides no proof that the account holder is the one who did what they think was done.
And one error at an ISP means that retrieving the potential evidence-carrying equipment will cost a lot of people their jobs from the lawsuits that ensue. This is the danger of acting like IP addresses provide any real evidence. The RIAA would do good to back off while they still can. As many suits as they’ve filed, the countersuits may actually destroy them financially to the point of no return.
September 14th, 2005 at 5:32 pm
In this case the police did ask for the address asssociated not with an IP but with an email address – Cox screwed up by lookiung up the wrong adress.
September 15th, 2005 at 5:31 am
Welcome to the age of electronic identification.
This isn’t the first case, and it won’t be the last.
July 10th, 2006 at 7:34 am
What gets me about this story is that cox cable states in it’s FAQ and online help that “they do not track sites” How would they be able to tell what the heck anyone is looking at or downloading if they weren’t playing Peeping Tommy?