As the RIAA keeps suing 1,000's of people based on suspect IP addresses, it is not surprising for them to get the wrong person's details in the odd case. However, according to legal experts, apparently the RIAA is getting hundreds of user's details wrong and they are given no choice besides facing the bullies, as the legal experts call the RIAA. Suspect users either face paying a hefty settlement or more serious legal action in Court.
Even when a mother tried testifying in court about her innocence and that it was the child's fault, the RIAA tried suing her children in an attempt to force something out of the family. Another lady who is disabled has been targeted and this person does not know how to download music let alone recognise the P2P screen name. The RIAA is seeking over $1 million in damages from her.
Since the RIAA lawsuit campaign began in September 2003, over 14,800 people have been filed lawsuits upon and so far over 3,300 (~22%) have settled. A New York based attorney recons that 1,000's of these people who have been sued are innocent, however the RIAA offers no sympathy for those wrongly targeted and in fact refuses to listen to people who try to show their innocence. Those who talk to the settlement support centre are threatened with criminal prosecution, their credit being ruined and their names being published.
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Attorneys representing some of the 14,000 people targeted for illegal music trading say their clients are being bullied into settling as the cheapest way to get out of trouble. Collection agencies posing as "settlement centers" are harassing their clients to pay thousands of dollars for claims about which they know nothing, they say. Last week a judge in Michigan dismissed a file-sharing case against Candy Chan, a mother who testified in court that the user name identified in the suit belonged to one of her children. In the court report (.pdf), Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff wrote: "Chan opposed the motion and asserted that the plaintiffs used a 'shotgun' approach to pursue this action, threatening to sue all of Chan's children and engaging in abusive behavior to attempt to utilize the court as a collection agency." Judge Zatkoff dismissed the case and forbade record companies from suing Chan or her children again. The full, rather lengthy article can be read here. |
As the RIAA is totally dependent on IP addresses to find out who to sue, there are several ways they could end up suing the wrong person. Some IP addresses are assigned to home users dynamically, for example an IP may belong to one person one moment and then another person a short while later. If the RIAA provides the IP's and recorded times to ISPs with customers across time-zones, then chances are the IP address may have been used on the suspect's PC at that time locally to the RIAA, but the IP may have been assigned to someone else according to the logs at the ISP for that same time (but different timezone) at the ISP.
Other possibilities include leaving wireless routers and access points unsecured. While this is a bad enough threat as it is for fraudsters to tap in and try and steal information, it is also possible for neighbours to use it as a free broadband connection, not realising the risk they are putting the owners at by using file sharing software over their Internet connection.
Source: Wired News
