P2P File Sharing News Comments 2006-10-19 - RIAA
It also appears that the RIAA is adding a requirment to use their new DRM scheme, ‘Digital File Check’, as a standard condition along with the $3500-4500 standard protection payment to the settlement to their ‘extort ‘em all’ program.
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My total known clients for Singapore has always been 1-3, except on the individual 5/31 entry where it was 14. I havn’t seen any major changes in the patterns of singapore Emule clients. Oh well. Not even less currupt totalitarian goverments (that permit any civilian internet use at all) can control file sharing. Since the RIAA was at the helm, only strategic artists and albums were targeted. If it wasn’t ‘on the list’, it don’t matter, as the governments have so many police, judges, and even congresspeople themselves using file sharing to download copyright-illegal (and maybe other forms of illegal too), and legal content too (minority though), that no goverment that doesn’t clamp all internet use has really bothered to enforce copyright on their own accord, But then again, in the USA, I think only murder is prosecuted by the goverment on it’s own accord without ‘victim’ direction (if the ‘victim’ isn’t the government).
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It appears that the RIAA is expanding into Brazil, Mexico, and Poland with their silly and inneffective and often mis-targeted lawsuits. I wonder how accurate ‘uploaders’ are? People who never clean out their incoming folders maybe? If the ‘research’ is from a immobile cabinet in a datacenter with fixed IP addressess, the uploaders won’t be using ip blockers, increasing the probability that the ‘uploader’ is a stupid or lazy person who doesn’t clean out their incoming folder. Maybe the fake servers Nederlands Geslacht and SexyBitch.nl were used for the ED2K lawsuit victims? These servers claim that they are in the Netherlands, have consistent stats, but what gave them away is that their IPs are assigned to the UK. The IPs are 81.3.87.170 - 81.3.87.171 . Connecting to these servers will cause your shares to be published to the RIAA, BPI (RIAA Britain), or IFPI (RIAA I don’t feel like setting up an individual extortion satellite office in this [xxx] country). They were sluggish to be recognized as fake servers because only Emule mods that supported country flags would spot this discrepency easily (UK IP, Netherlands claim). Hey maybe the IFPI RIAA division doesn’t have any pedophiles on their legal staff he he….
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“The RIAA’s initial response to the summary judgment motion, prior to the dismissal, had been to cross-move for discovery, indicating that it did not have enough evidence with which to defeat Mr. Wilke’s summary judgment motion.” — This is all so typical. No evidence. You know what to do if you get a summons but happen to be garnishable! ****************************************
A RIAA admissions that the bulk of their lawsuit targets are on the less computer-literate of the P2P user stock. Emule and Azeurus do not automatically scan your hard drive for content. But many users are unaware that thir incomplete downloads and their incoming files are mandatorily shared combined with the fact that they never organize or move their downloads (worse with Emule than with BitTorrent). Also Kazaa shares its incoming folder by default, but can be disabled (bad for network), but only by completely disabling sharing altogether (even worse for network). I have never used the LimeWire, FrostWire, or BearShare Gnutella clients.
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Some older articles on some of the RIAA’s mis-targeting. A abandoned operational wi-fi router that got hijacked, and apartment tennant turnover (actual intendend defendant moved out)..
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Looks like the the grand LimeWire trial will be between Q4 2007 and Q2 2008.
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Looks like they got fines, but the loophole-lockout wasn’t completely sucessful. IFPI/RIAA is going to continue pushing because if they can bribe the prosecuter better (And making sure Mr. DA isn’t himself leeching away off of Pirate Bay torrents), they could get more than 4 shares (’counts)’) prosecuted to try to get some jail time next time.
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Here is some detailed information on the behind-the scenes of the RIAA’s bulk litigation process. There is a lot of loophole exploitation to turn IP Address / filename pairs into names and addresses. Most lawyers and defendants are too ignorant to avoid default judgement for the ISP subpoena. There is a dire lack of notices to the defendant at this stage. The settlement part doesn’t describe the outsource process or who the contractors (such as ‘Settlement Support Center’) are, but the settlement amount is usually $3750. If you don’t settle they go to court. If you don’t show up, the average default is $750 per Exhibit A song. Exhibit A short-list will probably be no more than a dozen items as they have to have downloaded the entire file from you (if they do sue over archives, is it download a whole part or does it have to be the whole file,possibly fanned out over multiple bot-clients?). Exhibit B is mentioned as a screenshot. For Emule that is a maximum of 60 shares for 1600×1200. If they flip a wuxga screen to 1200×1920, they can probably squeeze 100 in. The word ’song’ is used a lot. Album archives and discoagraphy archives are probably completely overlooked. There is no mention on how agressive the RIAA is with post-judgement garnishment or if they persue those who agree to settle and then never pay, if it is at all possible (settlement may require immediate e-check or credit card payment like law-firm debt collections).
