p2pnet.net— The RIAA licks its wounds after losing a bid for unfettered access to the hard drive of an Oregon mother it's victimizing in a p2p file sharing case.
Mar 19, 2006View in Crawl 4
Awesome article! Def deserves a DIGG!! I hate the RIAA as much as the next person, however, this absolutely proves nothing. Let me explain. The RIAA claims the downloading happened well over a year ago. This lady could've easily swapped harddrives with someone else who has a used harddrive that's never touched MP3's. Hand over that harddrive and there's proof that nothing was downloaded, but only on that harddrive. I personally have 5 harddrives, some of them are old ones. Why not just give the forensic guy one that I know is clean? All this thing does is prove that the harddrive she gave them didn't have any downloads on it, not that she never downloaded anything. I believe her personally...but legally this proves NOTHING except that it's not the harddrive the RIAA is claiming she downloaded files onto...there is no possible way to ever PROVE she is innocent. And the RIAA doesn't HAVE TO prove she is innocent...it's not a criminal lawsuit (innocent until proven guilty) it is a civil lawsuit. Example: OJ Simpson was declared "Not Guilty" Legally, but civilly he lost millions of dollars because they didn't have to PROVE "beyond a reasonable doubt" that he did it. Thus he lost the civil lawsuit, and this lady might potentially lose it too because she can't prove she's innocent.There's always hope the judge/jury will side with her though, and there's always hope the RICO lawsuit will win her more money than she loses in the RIAA civil lawsuit!
@sanjayYou have no idea what you're talking about. That's why people developed DBAN (link above, same thread).It takes at least 9 passes to make data completely unrecoverable - up till that point it can still be recovered. Hell, they recommend 38 passes as a failsafe! Professional recovery systems can get data back if you just do it your way.And why, oh why, would you write a C program to write 0s to your hard disk????# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
I thought about this too. seems to me that its an easy way to dodge the RIAA. just offer a wireless connection. then connect to it with your other computer to download whatever you want (use a forged mac address). If the RIAA comes knocking, claim someone must have cracked your WEP and used your connection to download or share stuff. give them the forged mac address and the saved arp tables showing when someone connected and how long they stayed on.i dont think a jury would convict someone who's computer connection was compromised (especially if they took "decent" default steps to protect it-- wep). its like someone breaking into Bob's house, stealing a gun, and then robbing a bank with it. can you blame Bob? maybe they could push the blame to the supplier of the wireless access point for selling products with weak default setups that resulted in Bobs connection getting compromised and used for copyright infringment. but then again, the RIAA is from the 7th gate of hell, so you never know. they might still try to sue Bob. "failure to not get compromised" or some BS.
Actually, some really unscrupulous members of the Nazi party back in WWII did this same exact thing.(hmm...all Nazis are unscrupulous though...)They basically extorted a few "rich" folks back then into paying blackmail in order not to be put on lists of Jew sympathizers.Yeah, basically the same thing. Of course, more parallels between the Nazis of WWII and the RIAA of 2006 can be made, but you get the point.But only one of those two organizations is universally regarded today as "evil incarnate" by some of its own members who were forced/tricked into it.And it isn't the organization that the word "jackboots" became synonomous with.
wow. that is excellent. I heard a while back that the MPAA tried to sue a deceased (for 3 years) 83 year old grandmother who never owned a computer for downloading an illegal copy of "Walk the line". they got pretty pwned there too.I try to pay for my music, but if legal services dont offer it at all, then I think that it is my right to get it off usenet.Then, there is tunebite (www.tunebite.com) that can re-record your DRM and AAC files into straight mp3s.... helpful.
If the RIAA is successful in extorting money from this woman, how would the RIAA get the money? Could she file for bankruptcy (assuming that is even possible now)? Can they dock her pay over her lifetime, get her tax refunds, or take her assets like a house or car? What if she is self employed, how would they get her money? If this happened would it not anger people that a big corporation is taking away a singles mom's house or paycheck? I'm sure the RIAA would brag about this if it happened, but people would probably become enraged at big business.
Closed AccountMar 20, 2006
*koshak Did you RTFA? A forensics expert went through the computer and found no evidence of any pirating....
tidejweMar 20, 2006
Awesome article! Def deserves a DIGG!! I hate the RIAA as much as the next person, however, this absolutely proves nothing. Let me explain. The RIAA claims the downloading happened well over a year ago. This lady could've easily swapped harddrives with someone else who has a used harddrive that's never touched MP3's. Hand over that harddrive and there's proof that nothing was downloaded, but only on that harddrive. I personally have 5 harddrives, some of them are old ones. Why not just give the forensic guy one that I know is clean? All this thing does is prove that the harddrive she gave them didn't have any downloads on it, not that she never downloaded anything. I believe her personally...but legally this proves NOTHING except that it's not the harddrive the RIAA is claiming she downloaded files onto...there is no possible way to ever PROVE she is innocent. And the RIAA doesn't HAVE TO prove she is innocent...it's not a criminal lawsuit (innocent until proven guilty) it is a civil lawsuit. Example: OJ Simpson was declared "Not Guilty" Legally, but civilly he lost millions of dollars because they didn't have to PROVE "beyond a reasonable doubt" that he did it. Thus he lost the civil lawsuit, and this lady might potentially lose it too because she can't prove she's innocent.There's always hope the judge/jury will side with her though, and there's always hope the RICO lawsuit will win her more money than she loses in the RIAA civil lawsuit!
Closed AccountMar 20, 2006
@sanjayYou have no idea what you're talking about. That's why people developed DBAN (link above, same thread).It takes at least 9 passes to make data completely unrecoverable - up till that point it can still be recovered. Hell, they recommend 38 passes as a failsafe! Professional recovery systems can get data back if you just do it your way.And why, oh why, would you write a C program to write 0s to your hard disk????# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
tuxidomasxMar 20, 2006
I thought about this too. seems to me that its an easy way to dodge the RIAA. just offer a wireless connection. then connect to it with your other computer to download whatever you want (use a forged mac address). If the RIAA comes knocking, claim someone must have cracked your WEP and used your connection to download or share stuff. give them the forged mac address and the saved arp tables showing when someone connected and how long they stayed on.i dont think a jury would convict someone who's computer connection was compromised (especially if they took "decent" default steps to protect it-- wep). its like someone breaking into Bob's house, stealing a gun, and then robbing a bank with it. can you blame Bob? maybe they could push the blame to the supplier of the wireless access point for selling products with weak default setups that resulted in Bobs connection getting compromised and used for copyright infringment. but then again, the RIAA is from the 7th gate of hell, so you never know. they might still try to sue Bob. "failure to not get compromised" or some BS.
iballMar 21, 2006
Actually, some really unscrupulous members of the Nazi party back in WWII did this same exact thing.(hmm...all Nazis are unscrupulous though...)They basically extorted a few "rich" folks back then into paying blackmail in order not to be put on lists of Jew sympathizers.Yeah, basically the same thing. Of course, more parallels between the Nazis of WWII and the RIAA of 2006 can be made, but you get the point.But only one of those two organizations is universally regarded today as "evil incarnate" by some of its own members who were forced/tricked into it.And it isn't the organization that the word "jackboots" became synonomous with.
andrew522Mar 22, 2006
wow. that is excellent. I heard a while back that the MPAA tried to sue a deceased (for 3 years) 83 year old grandmother who never owned a computer for downloading an illegal copy of "Walk the line". they got pretty pwned there too.I try to pay for my music, but if legal services dont offer it at all, then I think that it is my right to get it off usenet.Then, there is tunebite (www.tunebite.com) that can re-record your DRM and AAC files into straight mp3s.... helpful.
zykoMar 31, 2006
If the RIAA is successful in extorting money from this woman, how would the RIAA get the money? Could she file for bankruptcy (assuming that is even possible now)? Can they dock her pay over her lifetime, get her tax refunds, or take her assets like a house or car? What if she is self employed, how would they get her money? If this happened would it not anger people that a big corporation is taking away a singles mom's house or paycheck? I'm sure the RIAA would brag about this if it happened, but people would probably become enraged at big business.