dslreports logo
How Oregon is Fighting RIAA
State attorney general questions RIAA's tactics
Oregon’s State Attorney General has been actively involved in fighting the tactics of RIAA in its litigation against students at the University of Oregon. The belief is that the RIAA’s tactics for gathering evidence are questionable at best.
quote:
“"The RIAA has been bringing fake copyright infringement lawsuits, the sole purpose of which is to get the names and addresses of John Does," (said Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer). They then drop the case and try to pressure these individuals into settling based on dubious evidence at best, he said.”
The arguments made by the attorney general include that the RIAA’s tactics have produced information which isn’t sufficient to prove illegal file-sharing as well as that RIAA investigators used illegal tactics to obtain the information used in their lawsuit. Additional details about the pending litigation can be found here.

Most recommended from 47 comments



karlmarx
join:2006-09-18
Moscow, ID

2 recommendations

karlmarx

Member

Finally, an Attorney General that gets it

The simple fact of the matter is that the *AA's are acting like the MAFIAA. They are attempting to EXTORT money from someone without following the law. NO ISP should turn over the information unless they have a WARRANT with evidence. Just looking at an IP address ISN'T enough information to get a warrant. They need to PROVE (by downloading a FULL FILE) from the source before they should be able to get a warrant. That means that if the use a torrent, they damn well better DISABLE every other peer before attempting to download the file. Just because they got PART of a file it doesn't mean the peer had the FULL FILE to serve. Just because they got PART of a file from ANY P2P connection is not proof.

Let the **AA's run their own version of a client, that will attempt to download a COMPLETE file from a client, THEN they will have enough evidence to go before a judge, otherwise they are just using illegal tactics. They only have the POTENTIAL for the file being illegally shared, not the PROOF.

If I'm 'sharing' a file called 'Prince.mp3', what does that mean? Does that mean that the **AA can sue me? Hell no. Unless they get the ENTIRE file from me, and it IS copyrighted, then they don't have a case.