ravital
Just Another Pesky Independent Nh Voter
Premium
join:2001-07-19
Merrimack, NH
| reply to pianotech
Re: Very nice of them!
said by pianotech  :
So nice of the EFF to help people break the law. 
Now then, now then, you know better than that. Here's a more complete quote from the "how not to get sued" link:
"Make sure there are no potentially infringing files in your shared folder. This would ordinarily mean that your shared folder contains only files 1) that are in the public domain, 2) for which you have permission to share, or 3) that are made available under pro-sharing licenses, etc..."
Note that they're not talking about infringing files but "potentially infringing" files, and that could very well include the stuff you bought and own legally. So saying "make sure you have no potentially infringing files on your computer" would have been overboard, as there are some 20 Mb worth of recordings that I own on my computer (and I don't even have a shared folder since I don't use P2P at all).
As to helping people break the law:
Do you implicitly trust the RIAA to only prosecute people with enough solid evidence that they may have infringed, or do you think they will just throw their weight around to intimidate as many people as possible? Looking at "potentially" above and at how American Citizens have been held in jail for months without seeing a lawyer, and without being charged with anything, because they happen to be brownish and have a funny religion, I don't think this is a climate where I can put my trust in the RIAA and accept that if they see what looks like smoke to them, there's got to be a fire. Many, many perfectly innocent people are going to get caught in this subpoena-fest.
Now given that a subpoena, once filed, becomes a matter of public records, and innocent people are not going to travel to every city in which such a subpoena was filed, the EFF steps in and scans your user name for you against a database of PUBLIC records. Not only is there nothing immoral, sinister or illegal in that, it's a great service that they didn't have to offer, and they deserve to be applauded for that.
I went to their page, entered the user names that I use most often, and they all turned out clean. This time. I'm not paranoid, but I don't feel relieved either. |
