MediaSentry & RIAA Expert Under Attack 273
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Jammie Thomas, the defendant in Duluth, Minnesota, RIAA case Capitol Records v. Thomas, has served her expert witness's report. The 30-page document (PDF), prepared by Prof. Yongdae Kim of the Computer Science Department of the University of Minnesota, attacks the reports and testimony of Prof. Doug Jacobson, the RIAA's expert, and the work of the RIAA's investigator, Safenet (formerly known as MediaSentry). Among other things, Dr. Kim termed MediaSentry's methods 'highly suspect,' debunked Dr. Jacobson's 'the internet is like a post office' analogy, explained in detail how FastTrack works, explored a sampling of the types of attacks to which the defendant's computer may have been subjected, accused Jacobson of making 'numerous misstatements,' and concluded that 'there is not one but numerous possible explanations for the evidence presented during this trial. Throughout the report I demonstrate possibilities not considered by the plaintiff's expert witness in his evaluation of the evidence...' Additionally, he concluded, 'MediaSentry has a strong record of mistakes when claiming that particular IP addresses were the origins of copyright infringement. Their lack of transparency, lack of external review, and evidence of inadequate error checking procedures [put] into question the authenticity and validity of the log files and screenshots they produced.'"
Re:FastTrack (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
Dr Jacobson is not stupid, I've met the man. I graduated with a degree in computer science from Iowa State University in December. I haven't taken a class from him, but again the man is not stupid. He's malicious. He's being paid. In fact I bet he even knows his testimony is full of shit. Again, he's being paid.
More than being paid, he has a major financial interest in the "Audible Magic" software which the RIAA is peddling for him. They go to LAN operators and say "Pay us $76,000 [blogspot.com] and the letters will stop".
Re:Duh? (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, it could certainly store the files. But how's it going to run the P2P software to share them out? These things aren't desktop PCs where you can install any software you want on them, they're embedded systems running out of on-board firmware that can't be updated except by a factory tech (because if the customer could update it they could unlock features they aren't paying for, and we can't have that now can we). Smaller printers like LaserJets are more amenable to being hacked, but they lack the storage. It's like every molecule in the hostess's dress simultaneously jumping 3 feet to the left: theoretically possible, but really reeeeeeally unlikely.
Re:Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
Would a "reasonable man" conclude that those interests are in conflict? If the answer is yes (and it probably is) then why was Dr Jacobson not eliminated as an expert witness straight away by a defense attorney raising an objection in court and mentioning this conflict? Perhaps I am missing something here, but I am sure that NYCL can explain.
That's easy.
The defendant's lawyer did not object.
Also: courtney Love Does The Math (Score:4, Informative)
Another good one to read -> http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html [salon.com]
Re:Why are they attacking him? (Score:2, Informative)
Why aren't the record companies suing Best Buy et. al. for setting the retail prices too high? After all, when I choose to not buy (and not copyright-infringe) due to the too-high prices, isn't that a lost sale? Shouldn't we treat all lost sales the same way, whether they come from copyright infringement or high prices?
[/troll]
Look, the idea that piracy is going to go away once legal music is available on iTMS is idiotic. First of all, every consumer is going to value songs differently. Heck, any particular consumer isn't even going to perceive the same value for all songs. So, to maximize revenue, you need to engage in price discrimination. And one of the consequences is that some songs are going to need to be free before they are purchased. (and downloading infringed songs is not free because there is a risk that you might be sued) Record companies are angry because the excess profit that usually goes along with having a monopoly is being turned into a regular profit that goes along with competing in the market.
Secondly, many infringing downloads lead to later sales. (ref the previous stories on /. that downloaders are also some of the biggest buyers) Apparently, the people who make these infringing downloads somehow get utility from buying the CD after already having the MP3s. Maybe you and I view the world differently, but I view that as not being a lost sale.
Finally, and this is really part of the first point, elementary economic theory holds that people will only buy your product if they are able. If I have zero dollars and infringe on your copyright, you haven't lost a sale because I couldn't have bought it anyway. Obviously, this is different from a tangible good because, if I were to steal a tangible, you wouldn't be able to sell it to the next guy that comes along who is able to buy it. Now you may feel that it is wrong for me to get something for free in this instance, (it's your old chimp tit-for-tat instinct) but you have not lost money.
I'm not saying that copyright infringement is a good thing. Nor am I advocating that people do it. Copyright infringement may increase or decrease the revenue of artists and record companies, but you need to recognize that the argument that 1 download = 1 lost sale is complete bullshit.
Re:Why are they attacking him? (Score:4, Informative)
Ok here is where I have an argument. The conceptual difference between "copyright infringement" and "stealing" is null. So why the obfuscation and insistence that what you are doing is not stealing. Illegal enrichment is illegal enrichment.
Fraud is not theft. Murder is not theft. Rape is not theft. Most things that are illegal are not theft. Calling copyright infringement "theft" is just stupid.
There is also the principle that the law makers know what they are talking about and that when a law says what it says that is intentional. The US law says that theft is taking something away illegally from the rightful owner to deprive him of his property (thus a policeman taking a cigarette lighter away from the rightful owner who wants to light a cigarette at a petrol station with spilled fuel is not committing theft). When the law says "to deprive the rightful owner", they mean it. If the rightful owner is not deprived of anything, it is not theft in US law. For comparison, German law says it is theft to "take something away illegally from the rightful owner to enrich yourself". Immaterial items are excluded for other reasons, but the argument that the owner is not deprived of anything would not count in German law.
Re:Why are they attacking him? (Score:3, Informative)
"lossy" when referring to an audio recording doesn't refer to the fact that the media itself will not degrade, it refers to the fact that the waveform as stored/reproduced does not perfectly record the waveform as originally played. As such, every playback medium that's come out since 8-track tapes has been "lossy", because to some extent they've all been digital representations of the waveform rather than the actual wavefrom. You are literally losing some of the information in the waveform because you have to throw it away as a necessary step in saving the data on a computer. You can make up for it by using a high sample rate (this is why something recorded at 44.1KHz sounds better than something recorded at, say, 8KHz), but you're still throwing data away as part of the recording process.
Depending on the amount of compression being used, you're throwing away even more data. MP3, for example, uses the knowledge that the human ear simply can't hear some frequencies, and that the brain will automatically fill in the holes to even out the sound at lower frequencies in order to discard large portions of the recording as part of the compression algorithm.
You're also incorrect in saying that all analogue formats are necessarily lossy. There are perfectly lossless methods of recording sound that have been around as long as recording has been around. The problem is the media itself degrades in time... there's precious few wax cylinders that are still playable, and it would be very unwise to play one because they're so fragile. There are, however, some early records which have not degraded at all... the vinyl records do degrade in time, but there was a time when they used aluminum to produce records, and those have stood up quite well.
Re:Duh? (Score:3, Informative)
I can tell you this:
Jacobson's financial conflicts of interest would not have been grounds for excluding his testimony, it would merely have gone to his credibility;
there were good grounds for excluding his testimony, namely that the record companies had failed to lay a proper foundation for the admissibility of his expert testimony under the Federal Rules of Evidence and applicable case law.
But what the strategy consideration was, in deciding not to object, that I don't know.