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:Odd (Score:0, Insightful)
How do IPs not specify identity? If you're letting somebody else use your net connection to pirate something, you're an accessory to their infringement.
There's another clear lesson here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Odd (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Even if they used it without your knowledge?
That's like saying that if I let my mates take my car and they go commit a crime with it (say a hit and run), I should be punished for it.
I wouldn't be classified as an accessory to their hit-and-run, so why should I be an accessory to their copyright infringement if I let them use my connection?
Re:Odd (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of my neighbours have wireless.
I could crack into them in minutes and download.
Are they supposed to be security experts now?
What about when WPA gets cracked? even the ones with a little knowhow will be open for a time.
If someone breaks into your house and commits mail fraud while you're away are you guilty because your door wasn't strong enough to keep them out?
"accessory to their infringement" is bullshit
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sad but true. just leaving the problem that I can change my mac address and even with username/pass systems pilfering a login/pass from a com girl or arts student in my uni would be childsplay
Re:There's another clear lesson here (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We can hope... (Score:1, Insightful)
A huge settlement won by an ISP's customer for participation in such kangaroo proceedings would go a long way in halting their cooperation with such proceedings. To prevent it backfiring though the right to anonymousity must come to the forefront and be preserved.
spoof::poof (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA could demand some draconian cerberos system, but I doubt that rendering large campus networks unusable will garner them any support from the already annoyed campus IT admins. Anyway, much like the AV companies vs virus-writers, this battle is an entirely defensive one.
It's nice to see something logical leaking out of the judicial system, however.
Re:Odd (Score:5, Insightful)
You bring up something that I think about somewhat often.
On the one hand, the Internet is incredibly useful and provides so much information and entertainment which I believe everyone SHOULD be able to access. It would be a huge loss to society, imo, for people lose this.
On the other hand, computers are complex. Networks are a complex part of computers. Security is a yet more complex part of computer networks. These are things that people spend years learning about and are constantly learning more about, yet here we are encouraging average, untrained people to stick computers which they are basically system administrators for on the largest, most complex, and hardest to secure network in the world? How much sense does that make?
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot Article #921431008 supporting piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, 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, where the poor who are for whatever reason unable to use a p2p service and thus purchase CDs subsidize the entertainment of those who otherwise generally can afford it. Oh no. Pointing out such things is just not cool.
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you be "impeding the investigation" if you took these measures before any such investigation existed? It would be one thing to destroy evidence after being issued a subpoena but I'm not aware of any law that requires IT departments to retain logs of IP assignments.......
Re:Death Knell? (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends how you define "the year of linux on the desktop", doesn't it?
The fastest growing segment of the PC market, netbooks, are split between Windows XP and linux. That, along with reaching mature status on important projects like web browsers, office software, media players, and Instant Messagers, is slowly making linux a viable alternative to Windows, as the netbook market is showing.
Similarly, depends how you define "death knell". I don't think any one of these bad things is going to spell the end of the RIAA crusade against their customers. I do think, however, that the slow build-up of legal ways to avoid being attacked will make their crusade more effort than it's worth. They'll go from being able to sue 3000 people in a single lawsuit to having to focus on a few, then maybe one. At that point, it's not economical to sue potential customers anymore, and they'll just have to figure out ways to make money instead.
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't get carried away (Score:5, Insightful)
If we're required to do blocking and monitoring, the BU defense won't hold, because we'll have the data.
I wonder what kind of ridiculous fine structure or penalties there will be for not logging what you monitor?
How about a well documented disk failure event on the file system containing all the logs? "Sorry, Your Honor, we logged everything, and then the disk failed."
Are we going to be legislated into complete backup strategies? I doubt it.
I think the Senate/Obama stance is that bad business models can be allowed to fail (See GM, Ford, Chryseler). It that holds true, the business model of the RIAA/Big 4, which was a sinking ship before Sep08, will certainly have some scrutiny before legislation. Couple that with overwhelming projections of a poor buying season, and I can't see how the RIAA has much of a leg to stand on here.
Re:Slashdot Article #921431008 supporting piracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We can hope... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, gosh, when you spin it that way, who'd let themselves be used?!
Eh, I wasn't spinning, that's how I really see it. My job as an IT person is to make sure that the network is functional for my users. My job isn't to help RIAA build a case that will be used to bankrupt one of my users based on some thin argument like "making available". Not having logs of IP assignments (or keeping those logs for very short periods of time) isn't going to be a huge hindrance to me -- so I choose not to keep them in my shop.
The RIAA and their unlicensed investigative agencies do that
Fixed that for you :)
It's libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem here is poor definition of "left" vs. "right."
Ask a question pertaining to abortion, and most of the answers here are "anything goes," which sounds left-wing. Ask a question about the economy, and the answers are more "government isn't your sugar daddy," which sounds right-wing.
I think the most common /. viewpoint is best described as "libertarian," which can be summed up as "leave us alone and don't tell us what to do."
The (stupid) response to this is ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The sinister "three strike law" pushed by Sarkonazy and his subordinates creates a new category of "crime", that of "not securing properly one's connection", I shit you not. That way you can't use the defense of having been infected by a virus or having your router hax0red, it's your fault, you should have been a master sysadmin.
Nevermind that megacorporations themselves can't be fucked to secure all their systems, you, Joe SixPC, are supposed to one up PCI/DSS or FIPS whatever, or you can't be allowed to the interwebs.
Of course it's a massive pack of FAIL on so many levels, but that's what GWB's BFF has in store for us.
Re:Odd (Score:4, Insightful)
How do IPs not specify identity?
They just don't.
Sure, you can build a system with multiple paths of registration and logging and authentication, but a majority of those processes can be spoofed or socially engineered.
If you came up to me with a subpoena asking who had IP address 192.168.1.X on this day at this time, even if I still had the logs on my DHCP server, it would take a significant amount of forensics (IE, an audit of every laptop my friends or neighbors own) to determine who the culprit was.
Re:Slashdot Article #921431008 supporting piracy (Score:1, Insightful)
For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero--the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector.
He understates the case: for content not sold, this is actually a positive for society in a way that selling a collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector is not.
Consider how many old works have vanished from societal memory entirely or near-entirely, because their original medium (cellulose, paper with acids, ink with a bad lifespan, etc) has withered while they were "stored for safekeeping." Some of these are even technically "within copyright" still. I've seen one estimate that says 10% of the works in the Library of Congress are probably unreadable today, because the paper will have gone too fragile and the ink faded too far due to age.
Consider all the lost, arguably great works that are technically still "under copyright" even though no known copy exists. Early episodes of Doctor Who [wikipedia.org] for one great example.
The fix for this is simple:
(a) make copyright SHORT on par with patent and (b) require copyright to be re-registered on a proper basis (say, every 5 years)
(c) make works enter the commons, say, 5 years after they are "out of print."
(d) Respect the rights of Fair Use (time-shifting, space-shifting, backup) in law and practice.
IF we can make these changes, society benefits because then we do not lose these works. They stand a much greater likelihood of being preserved.
If I simply sell my old 1960s LP's to a collector, they go into a bin and are never heard again. If I record and digitize those 1960s LP's to a lossless format, and then put them out on a torrent, then there are multiple copies of the experience of the music as originally recorded available to the commons, and the chance of its being lost forever is much, much slimmer.
Re:It's libertarian (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem here is poor definition of "left" vs. "right." Ask a question pertaining to abortion, and most of the answers here are "anything goes," which sounds left-wing. Ask a question about the economy, and the answers are more "government isn't your sugar daddy," which sounds right-wing. I think the most common /. viewpoint is best described as "libertarian," which can be summed up as "leave us alone and don't tell us what to do."
I think any attempt to distill a prevailing political orientation on Slashdot is doomed to failure. There is, in truth, a great deal of diversity here.
The only common thread is that each of us is right.
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:3, Insightful)
I am in no way condoning the actions of the RIAA, but until the failed business model they were assigned to protect is gone, they have the right to try to stop the alleged unfettered sharing of copyrighted materials.
Fixed that for you.
Just like a trace that can be put on a landline phone, and the identity of the phone subscriber found,
This is the same stupid justification that the RIAA uses in all its John Doe suits. The phone subscriber may not be the one using the phone.
the RIAA has an obligation to its client to find out who is causing the client to lose revenue
Shouldn't the 'client'(artists) also be receiving their share of money collected? Don't the RIAA have an obligation to work within the law to find the ones responsible beyond reasonable doubt instead of going after anyone with only the flimsiest of evidence and then expecting others to do all the work for them?
and changing one's MAC or IP address may seem like a cool way to beat it, but the law may not be on your side at this time.
Changing your MAC or IP is not illegal. In a world where governments are trying to record everything we do, anything that makes it harder for people to track you is a good thing.
Re:Slashdot Article #921431008 supporting piracy (Score:4, Insightful)
AND the rights of the rightsholders to be fairly compensated and to reasonably punish/recover from wrongdoers*.
In the US, where the article takes place, there is no right for writers/artists/developers to be "fairly" compensated**. None whatsoever. In fact, it is quite the opposite: it is our right to share culture freely. The purpose of copyright, as described by the US constitution, is meant to serve the public by encouraging the growth of the public domain. The public temporarily waives their natural rights to freely share their culture in order to encourage writers/artists/developers to write/sing/develop. Before the digital age, this was a right individual people couldn't even exercise in the first place, so they were getting a real bargain out of it.
The problem is that the temporary part is gone. Copyright terms are way too long, longer than human lifetimes. We really should be legally allowed to freely share everything from (at least) the 80's and before. All these works should be in the public domain by now. This is why you might see this slant on /., because copyright is way out of balance and unconstitutional. It needs to serve the public again. I bet you will find that many, if not most, works on P2P networks would be legal to share if we had reasonable copyright terms.
* As a side note, you said "wrongdoers" to describe people breaking laws. Please don't mix up right/wrong with legal/illegal. These are completely unrelated.
** In other countries authors may actually have rights that don't exist in the US. For example, in the UK there are a set of non-transferable "moral rights" for authors. Since I live in the US I don't have to worry much about this, though.
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:3, Insightful)
I check out RIAA Radar [riaaradar.com] and hand over some scratch if I hear a song that I like and discover the artist is signed with an indie label. I doubt my purchases matter much in the grand scheme of things but I'm going to vote with my wallet anyway.
They matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.
Re:Universities still need to police their network (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply putting up the money doesn't mean you have the right to impact other peoples use of the same infrastructure they're paying for. Downloaders aren't the only ones using the network.
I agree that when you pay for something like an iPhone it's yours to do with as you please. A uni, however, is offering you a service for a fee. They're free to dictate terms on the use of that service. Don't like the terms, goto a different uni.
Re:Odd (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you "audit" to find out what a MAC address was temporarily set to?
DHCP logs only get you from IP to MAC, they don't tell you anything about what that MAC is being used by.
Re:Odd (Score:3, Insightful)
An IP specifies identity just like a home address does. Sure, the house may belong to me, and you have reasonable suspicion that it's me in there, but it could theoretically be ANYONE in the house. My mom, my wife, a neighbor, a burglar, whoever. That's why an address existing is not enough to positively identify me as the person who, say, crank called.
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Shh! stop giving them ideas!!!
Also that sounds expensive... and hell to deal with 10K students who can barely use a mouse trying to understand why they need to remember those passwords and why it wtopped working after they deleted those files etc....
Re:It's obvious that what we need is... (Score:4, Insightful)
The latter is far more likely than the former to have the desired effect. It seems to me that downloading whatever you want has been proven repeatedly to be used by the RIAA to justify their tactics.
Oh, I wasn't downloading whatever I want to make a point to RIAA. I was downloading whatever I want because it was free. I think most people would acknowledge on some level that it's wrong to do that -- what I would dispute is that the person who engages in file-sharing deserves to be punished more harshly than the person who shoplifts a CD.
If somebody got a $222,000 fine for shoplifting a $20 CD I'm fairly certain that it would cause public outrage and probably be ruled unconstitutional. Funny RIAA uses the civil system to accomplish what the criminal system would acknowledge as being completely disproportional to the "crime" that was committed......
Personally, I hope they all burn in hell.
Re:Death Knell? (Score:3, Insightful)
There isn't any music 'they can face'.
For copyright to exist, it required a minimal level of effort required to violate copyright, especially at the 'mass production' level.
That no longer exist. Ergo, copyright no longer works. I'm not saying that as a moral judgment, I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing, I'm not saying whether I like it or not, I have no idea what that will do to the production of creative works.
Copyright was always aimed more at commercial interests than anyone else, because for the longest time only commercial interests could copy things, or at least could copy them at a high enough quality to effect things, or a high enough volume.
And then came the internet, where commercial interests are not needed to copy music or TV or movies or books or anything. Perfectly. Forever. Copyright was never designed to stop anything like that.
'Copyright no longer works' is just a value-neutral statement of fact. I did not make this true, do not blame me.
Now, the music's industry thrashing around attempting to face this fact could, indeed, cause damage, and thus I'm in favor of altering the laws to recognize this new fact and limit the damage they can do. Not because I feel this new fact is 'morally superior' or anything, but because I feel it is true.
Re:Slashdot Article #921431008 supporting piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea behind copyright is that anyone producing a work owns the rights to it.
No, it isn't. The idea behind copyright is to motivate creators to create (see: US Constitution).
Registration is not necessary.
Read Lessig's book. If is necessary - if I can't find a work's copyright holder, how can I get use to it?
And would be impractical anyway.
Funny, I had no problem registering domains, why should registering a copyright be any harder?
Registering copyright is a nice extra option to make it easier to defend it if necessary.
If you're not going to defend it, why do you need a copyright?
Why should I always have to continue to publish and (in effect) distribute a work that I own?
Because the very reason for copyright's existance is, as explained in the Constitution [cornell.edu], "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
You should have no right to attempt to withdraw a work. You have no legal right to under the US Constitution.
The last point however is getting tough for digital files: maybe I can re-sell that MP3 but how is it the original reproduction? Nothing physical is present.
I don't believe bits should be copyrightable. That MP3 as well as the CD it comes from is just a long number, and I don't believe anyone should own any numbers. Numbers should be free; ALL of them.
Don't buy (or download/copy) music. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's as simple as that.
Buy used CDs and DVDs. Preferably from local independently owned shops.
The ONLY new DVDs I've purchased in the last year or so have been the FUTURAMA movies, because I want MORE FUTURAMA! And the best way for that to happen is to show Fox that it's to their financial advantage to make more FUTURAMA.
However, other than those purchases, every DVD and CD I've bought for the past few years has been previously owned.
I get the movies and music I want, and the MAFIAAs get not one penny of my money in return.
When I get my newly purchased used discs home, CDs get ripped to iTunes, DVDs get ripped & stripped via MacTheRipper. Discs then get filed away for safekeeping, and my digital copies are used in their place.
If you MUST download music and video, USENET is a much safer alternative. The alt.binaries hierarchies have just as much digital new content as BitTorrent, and the popular/most used newsgroups have dedicated users who will, if asked politely, take requests for content reuploads.
Via NZB, downloads are as simple as one or two mouseclicks and are usually faster than BitTorrent.
Oh, and they are almost completely untraceable. Making life for the MAFIAAs all the more miserable.