RIAA blackmails Princeton student
p2p news / p2pnet: Two Princeton students are working flat-out to raise $5,000 to ward off an extortion threat levelled at a third, their friend.
Delwin Olivan “stands accused of distributing songs via the file-sharing network i2hub,” says a story in the Daily Princetonian.
“Stands accused”? Just like it was a real crime.
“An RIAA representative phoned Olivan on November 5, and told him to settle the case for $5,000 within 60 days or face far greater claims in court,” says the story.
Or as Sean Gleason and James Hamm put in on a site posted to raise the $5K, “Shunti from the RIAA Settlement Hotline gave Delwin an early morning wakeup call. The news: he has 60 days to give them $5,000.”
RIAA is short for Recording Industry Association of America, the pseudo-trade organization chiefly responsible for implementing the US version of the Big Four’s bizarre international sue ‘em all intimidation campaign.
The Big Four claim p2p file sharing is costing them millions in lost sales, without a shred of evidence to prove it. And while they make these assertions, they’re reporting their revenues are in the rise.
Olivan is said to have used the i2hub, which the RIAA and brother entertainment enforcer the MPAA forced into closure, to share music online,
Now Gleason and Hamm are selling t-shirts to help raise the $5,000 needed to buy the RIAA off.
And while they labour to come up with the blackmail money, a New York woman is getting ready to take on the multi-billion-dollar Big Music cartel by herself, and without legal aid.
Her name is Patricia Santangelo and she was the first person to refuse to cave in to RIAA, just as she’ll be the first of the approximately 17,000 sue ‘em all victims to actually be heard in court.
This will be a landmark case and its resolution will directly affect what happens to Sony BMG, Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and EMI victims yet to come.
p2pnet will be organizing a fund raising site for Santangelo. We’re still working out how we’re going to put it together, but we’ll need help, and lots of it.
So if you’re willing to get involved, please stay tuned.
Also read:-
Daily Princetonian – Students raise funds for roommate sued by RIAA, December 10, 2005
multi-billion-dollar – C1st RIAA trial: victim to defend herself, December 6, 2005
December 11th, 2005 at 6:55 am
“Now Gleason and Hamm are selling t-shirts to help raise the $5,000 needed to buy the RIAA off.”
The RIAA doesn’t care where the victim gets their money. just like a loanshark could care less if you have to steal to get the money. all they want is the money. soooooo……. Why are these people raising money to pay off loansharks?? I wouldn’t contribute to it. Now the fund for Patricia Santiago I will gladly contribute.
December 11th, 2005 at 8:12 am
if I ever get a letter or a phone call from the RIAA… claiming I own them money… I’ll tell them flat out to go fck themselves… they can either drop it, or risk defeat against me in court… =P
December 11th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
Best way to handle it is to get the important stuff off your drive and then use an erasing program to write multiple patterns of 1s and 0s over it. That way they can’t unformat it and find anything. Remake it and then let them prove it. No evidence no case. and they look like idiots.
Of course you could have two computers.
December 11th, 2005 at 4:41 pm
…or an external drive. I do not think they interested in your computer. That would only complicate things for them.
December 11th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
they do not need to look at your pc or hard drives. they hire companies that use bots to scan p2p networks, searching for titles and key words. they are aware of all the different types and styles of name changes and abbreviations and release groups names.
when the bots find a key word, they can display the IP addresses of people connected to that file. then they take a screen shot or some other printout. then they either go to the ISP with the info, or to court to try and force the ISP to hand over the names and addresses of the people.
the only ways i know of avaoiding prying eyes is to use firewalls like peerguardian or others which can import peerguardian lists. this will block the known bots from connection to you and displaying you IP address. it’s important to update the lists several times per day because they’re always changing.
rarely – i’m not even sure if it’s ever been done – do the MPAA and RIAA or courts request that a PC or hard drive be handed over into evidence, unless it’s a bust of an organised piracy group which produces and sells black market copies.
December 11th, 2005 at 10:40 pm
yes but they have been known to get the IP addresses wrong. it’s not 100% sure. when a person claims they didn’t do it and all the industry has is an IP address they need some other kind of proof. Screenshots don’t mean anything. there’s nothing in a screenshot that shows it’s definatly your computer. again I don’t see that as strong enough when you take it to a jury trial.
December 12th, 2005 at 3:04 am
Indeed, this has been the whole problem. The RIAA has been claiming that people are infringing. They have made charges that such is so to courts of law. They have been issuing John Doe warrent requests on the basis of IP numbers to obtain info. They have been sending those identified people letters offering to settle through their agents. None of these type cases have gone to court, yet to hear the RIAA claim it, all are infringers and pirates. Blithely they ignore the idea that any settlement requires that the one settling, admit guilt as part of the package to obtain the settlement. Most are settling due to financial reasons of court costing far more than the settlement amount. Still, the majority of those approached have not responded in any manner.
In other countries such as Canada, the proof offered to show this infringement has been far less than necessary to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone infringed. Yet the courts here in the states take the claim of such at face value and are acting like the RIAA has the cases so sewed up that it appears on the surface to be open and shut type cases on little more than the claims of anyone being an infringer. Already there have been several cases of mistaken identity by ip alone. How in the world can a dead grandmother, with a known aborrhence to computers so much so that she would not allow one in the house, become an infringer after her death?
Others have attempted to make it known to the settlement center, the only contact they have short of court, that they haven’t infringed at all. Some have even offered to send in their computers to verify this. Short of the expensive avenue of court, there exists no place for the innocent to prove innocence. The settlement center has been coached to accept nothing short of the money is coming. No reason, no excuse, no offfer to prove such is not so is acceptable. So where do the innocent turn? Again all of it rests on proof that such is so by the claiment and to date they haven’t been forthcoming with anything that looks like dead certain proof beyond numbers they suspose to be true provided by the underemployed ISPs. ISPs which snowed under by these requests are in a hurry to get info out (right or wrong) so that they can get off the unprofitable searching of logs and back to profitable meaning work. There is a series of most likely places that the information train can take a derail at. So far, no one seems to be paying mind to the idea that any of this info could be wrong.
And that is the problem with all this…