Judge Excludes 3 "John Does" From RIAA Subpoena 225
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In one of the RIAA's 'John Doe' cases targeting Boston University students, after the University wrote to the Court saying that it could not identify three of the John Does 'to a reasonable degree of technical certainty,' Judge Nancy Gertner deemed the University's letter a 'motion to quash,' and granted it, quashing the subpoena as to those defendants. In the very brief docket entry (PDF) containing her decision, she noted that 'compliance with the subpoena as to the IP addresses represented by these Defendants would expose innocent parties to intrusive discovery.' There is an important lesson to be learned from this ruling: if the IT departments of the colleges and universities targeted by the RIAA would be honest, and explain to the Courts the problems with the identification and other technical issues, there is a good chance the subpoenas will be vacated. Certainly, there is now a judicial precedent for that principle. One commentator asks whether this holding 'represents the death knell to some, if not all, of the RIAA's efforts to use American university staff as copyright cops.'"
Re:Universities still need to police their network (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't that what I'm did by paying the obscene "technology fee"? What ELSE is that 1224$ going toward?
Is it hookers? Hookers and blow? You can tell me the truth. I won't be half as mad if you tell me it's hookers and blow.
Re:Odd (Score:0, Informative)
Yes really. It's your internet connection, therefore it's your responsibility. Claiming you're too stupid to use it properly isn't a valid excuse.
I love it. Every article about spam and malware is filled with comments crying about idiot lusers with open wireless connections and unpatched windows machines ruining the interweb. But along comes an RIAA lawsuit story, and the same people cry that they simply can't be responsible for their open wireless connections and unpatched windows machines.
Protip: In most places you would be charged as an accessory in that case. Unless you can prove they stole it. At the very least you could get charged with negligence.
Re:Universities still need to police their network (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to bootleg content, then pay for your own connection.
I have to disagree with your final point; in almost any University environment the students ARE paying for their connections one way or another. The terms under which they can use it, however, are usually a bit more restrictive that your standard ISP.
Re:Universities still need to police their network (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Death Knell? (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't every one of these stories tagged as being the death knell for the RIAA? Don't get me wrong, I'm always glad to see the RIAA losing in these types of cases, but 'death knell for the RIAA' is getting to be 'Year for Linux on the Desktop'.
Well look at it this way. If this case stands for the principle that no John Doe information can be divulged unless the ISP can identify the "alleged infringer" to a "reasonable degree of technical certainty", and that principle is followed by other courts.... very few, if any, "alleged infringers", will ever be identified.
Re:Slashdot Article #921431008 supporting piracy (Score:5, Informative)
I'm still waiting for slashdot article #1 where somebody presents a decent and fair plan that both acknowledges new technologies and the possibilities that they bring AND the rights of the rightsholders to be fairly compensated and to reasonably punish/recover from wrongdoers.
Sorry bud, but it ain't gonna happen. The "rightsholders" are the labels - this is only one of many reforms that need to be made. The recording artists should own copyright; they should NOT be "works for hire".
Copyright lengths need to be brought back down to sane levels. I should NOT have to pay for a Jimi Hendrix download.
Copyrights need to be registered again. Automatic granting of copyright is madness.
Out of print works should not be covered by copyright.
it would be so very socially awkward to point out that virtually all policies slashdot have supported so far amount to in effect a regressive wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy
I don't know where you got the idea that Sony-BMI executives (who actually own the copyrights) are poor and the downloaders are wealthy.
I suggest you read Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture [free-culture.cc]. The following quote is abridged:
The fact is, the labels are on the wrong side of history. Independant (non-RIAA) artists have learned to use the internet to their advantage. The RIAA wants to use copyright law to kill the independant competetion, who use Lessig's "D" as a means of promotion.
It isn't about music lovers "stealing" music -- study after study shows that "pirates" spend more money on music than non-pirates. It's about squashing competetion. The RIAA has radio, the indies have P2P, so the RIAA wants to kill P2P.
Nobody outside the industry who understands the situation is on the RIAA's side.
Re:Odd (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Death Knell? (Score:4, Informative)
BSD (cousin to Linux?)
It's pretty hard to class OS X as related to Linux. OS X is UNIX, with code from AT&T UNIX via 4BSD and later via FreeBSD and code from CMU Mach. It is UNIX(tm), as it has passed certification by The Open Group.
Linux is a clone of UNIX, shares no code with UNIX (except a few small bits taken from BSD, mostly headers), and is not certified as UNIX(tm).
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:3, Informative)
So you assign RSA tokens to the University children, errr, students. When they hook up to the University Network they are given access to a locked down VLAN with a host specific subnet and access only to the RSA login page. This prevents the users from setting a bypass proxy on an multihomed PC.
The student has to enter their userid, password, pin, and RSA Token. Once this is done then the MAC address is given a short lease on the real student network. The software updates the Cisco CAM tables so that my MAC address is only allowed on the port I am plugged into (OR AP) and the ACL's are adjusted so that my IP address is similarly restricted.
Now you have an associate of a MAC address, IP address, and Student information. You have automatic tracking. I can't simply change my IP address or MAC address because the Cisco switch has this locked down.
Every so many hours I have to re-authenticate, as appropriate per University.
This is NAC. It is doable today. All the RIAA/MPAA needs to do is to bribe *their* representatives in congress to make a law requiring this. Of course, they'll to do this under the guise of protecting the children from terrorist via a 3rd party. Everyone want's to protect the kids.
(Cynicism, if not apparent.)
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:3, Informative)
I hope so. I was actually pleasantly surprised to discover how much non-RIAA music is out there and how often my favorite radio station plays it. That actually surprised me the most -- the radio station in question is owned by Clear Channel yet I've discovered a lot of good indie music through them. Who would've thought? Pandora is another good source in my experience, although it seems to take them longer to get new albums up for some reason (licensing issues?)
Yes. And I'm making a collection. I have a list of free links to indie music sources which I call "Liberated Music [blogspot.com]". And I have advertising links for indie-only music [blogspot.com] where I and my blog actually get a commission if you buy something.
Re:We can hope... (Score:3, Informative)
After all, ISPs have always been protected as carriers
That's one huge stick that can be used against American ISPs who get too aggressive in their traffic monitoring: the "safe harbor" clause of the DMCA [cornell.edu].:
If an ISP attempts to block specific content, then they violate clause #2. If they pull copies of content out of the pipes for further investigation, then they violate clause #3. If they modify the content in any way, then they violate clause #5. In any of those cases, they are no longer indemnified against claims of contributory copyright violation. In a nutshell, if they mess with it, they're responsible for it.
I'm not a lawyer. However, I noticed that a large local non-profit organization had a very intrusive clickthrough agreement for their free WAP service (I was bored and read it). I pointed the above out to the organization's lawyer who read it and said my interpretation was substantially correct, and who then recommended that they remove all pretense of monitoring and filtering from their service.
Re:NewYorkCountryLawyer - precedent??? (Score:4, Informative)
I defer to the expertise of an attorney, but unless this was a ruling by a court of appeals or above, there is no precedent set. Trial courts render judgments which can be referenced in litigation, but not cited as "precedent" on other legal cases... is this not correct? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's a precedent. It's not 'controlling' or 'binding' but it's a precedent.
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:3, Informative)
Multiple thousand dollar fines is /extremely/ disproportionate to the act performed - all the more so because they have no proof of damages; no real proof that anything happened (at least on the information we've had in cases so far); nor any proof of amount of distribution that was actually done.
That being said, there is a difference between shoplifting a CD for yourself, and making copies of that CD and giving them away on a NYC streetcorner. I don't think it's unreasonable to have financial penalties beyond what shoplifting merits. The major stumbling block there is that it should require definitive /proof/ - something that is literally impossible to get given the current architecture of the Internet.
And one is a civil matter, while the other is a criminal matter. Everyone seems to forget that here. Downloading (or otherwise acquiring) music (whether through legal or illegal means) and then distributing that music en-masse for profit or in a fashion that hurts the profits of the copyright holders (where it can be successfully argued some form of benefit is gained by the person doing it) is a criminal matter (that may also include a civil component).
Currently, file sharing/P2P/etc is seen as a civil matter.
The lines between the two are blurry, and the RIAA and MPAA are already trying to get rid of that line so either class of entity can be charged civilly and criminally.
Re:Chronicle of Higher Education (Score:5, Informative)