Oklahoma Security Expert Attacks RIAA Claims 280
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A group of Oklahoma University students has made a motion to vacate the ex parte order the RIAA had obtained compelling the university to turn over their names and addresses. In support of their motion was the expert witness declaration (PDF) of a computer security and forensics expert who essentially attacked the entire premise of the RIAA's lawsuit, characterizing the declaration upon which the RIAA based its motion as 'factually erroneous' and 'misleading.' Among other things he pointed out that 'An individual cannot be uniquely identified by an IP address,' and that 'Many computers can be connected to the Internet with identical IP addresses as long as they remain behind control points.' The students are represented by the same Oklahoma lawyer who recently obtained a award for $68,000-plus in attorneys fees against the RIAA in Capitol v. Foster."
Sad thing is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come on (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sad thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
I delight in seeing young people use the system to fight for their freedoms.
Re:Oh come on (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A little oversimplified... (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read the same brief I did? Because your quotes don't match with what is in the PDF file.
Here's what I see in the PDF: "An example of the dangers of open networks is the case of Walter Nowakoski. Nowakoski connected to unsecured home networks and used the bandwidth via unencrypted wireless networks to download child pornography. This is an example of criminals using networks of others to commit crimes so that the innocent are victims twice - once for the theft of their own network resource and then when they are wrongly accused for the illegal activity."
Not to be picky, but if you're going to comment on the man's grammar, at least have the courtesy to quote him correctly. He conjugates the verb correctly, saying "... are examples of malicious codes..."
Re:Heard in an RIAA conference room ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't hold out any hopes that the MAFIAA will listen or even care. The aim here is to establish legal precedent in a court of law that says the MAFIAA, when they use spurious technical evidence to try to extort thousands of dollars from people, doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. It doesn't matter whether they agree or not. All that matters is that judges know the truth and that truth gets added to the patchwork quilt of established law that is legal precedence.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Winning argument in a Minnesota court? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh come on (Score:4, Insightful)
why hasn't a judge censured the RIAA for this? (Score:3, Insightful)
The law is not really in the RIAA's favor here.
The RIAA has shown a history of fradulent law suits.
Why aren't people countersuing for malicious prosecution?
Re:Lawyers and technology don't mix well.. (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Where did you get the idea all universities have tons of IPs? Some do, some don't. Also, a class B might seem like a lot, but if you've got 50,000 students, 20,000 departmental computers and servers, and you dole the IPs out in subnets to different departments (so they aren't 100% utilized) you start feeling the crunch more than you might think. Where I work we've got two class Bs (as we were in on the Internet game fairly early) and network operations has already begun working on renumbering the network to try and reclaim unused IPs. We haven't had to implement NAT on any campus level (though there are tons of little ones that random people run) but it is not something out of the question. Take a larger university with less IP space, you'd have little choice.
2) NAT has other uses such as cloaking the activities of individual computers. You'll see places use NAT just for that, they don't want individual activity being traced based on IP. So they get a many-to-many NAT set up. You have say a couple hundred routable IPs with a couple thousand non-routable IPs behind them. The router picks out which public IP you get randomly, or round-robin, or whatever. Thus it ends up being impossible to figure out what is happening.
3) Who says the university runs the NAT? You telling me you don't think students stick routers in their dorms? You telling me that you don't think they do that, and turn on unsecured WiFi (especially since many universities have extremely poor or non existent WiFi)? I know for a fact they do, because we always have problems with this on our campus.
Re:Oh come on (Score:3, Insightful)
the driver (the guilty party) can't be identified
It's reasonable to assume that, since it's YOUR car, YOU are the driver.
Just like, if YOUR specially autographed baseball bat was used to beat someone to death, it's reasonable for the cops to assume YOU did it. It's YOUR bat.
If you have evidence to the contrary (like you know who was really driving the car, or you lent your bat to a friend), then you can present it.
You can't accuse anyone of doing something illegal and prosecute them unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual is guilty.
Firstly, YES, you can. The whole point of 'prosecuting' some one is to have the trial to DETERMINE if they are guilty or not. There are plenty of people who are prosecuted and found 'Not Guilty'.
Secondly, Traffic Fines (speeding, running red lights) are not treated as 'crimes' per se. They are often counted as 'Administrative fees' and such, in order to get around legal loopholes, such as "the accused has a right to face their accuser in court".
Do I agree with this? No. But that's the way it is.
Re:Sad thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)