Comment by jackowayed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jackowayed | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that the RIAA can really win any lawsuits based off of this.

1) They have to figure out who the people actually are, either through adept mass-Googling of the usernames or getting IPs that the users log in from.

2) There's only a small portion of the music that they can figure out is illegal from this--stuff they played before it was released. Even though they like trying to charge 10x for such songs in lawsuits, 1 or 2 albums won't be worth much.

3) I don't think that that's sufficient evidence to win a lawsuit (though maybe sufficient evidence for them to bully people into settlements as they often do.) I could have found the track list for an upcoming album and tagged any songs I have with the artist and titles of those songs.

Still, CBS definitely shouldn't have done that.

It sounds like enough to win a lawsuit. The burden of proof is more likely than not. If they have software that tells them the names of the songs that were playing, then that is pretty damning evidence.

Sure, you could have renamed your songs, but who is going to believe that?

I've thought about using last.fm but didn't for this very reason. Wasn't it obvious to everyone that at some point CBS would avail themselves to the information that their subsidiary was collecting?

It doesn't matter. The RIAA doesn't actually have to know who you are before they sue. Normal Situation.

1. RIAA finds your ip address and a song that had the same name as a copyrighted work.

2. RIAA sues hundreds of John Does in the state where the ISP is located.

3. The RIAA subpoenas the account info, gets it (since the defendant doesn't show up to fight it), and drops the lawsuit.

4. The RIAA sends a settlement offer to the John Doe, since they know the name and address. The RIAA sues if there is no settlement.

http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/08/07/the-riaa-vs-jo...

So all the RIAA needs to do is to sue the username in the state CBS is headquartered. RIAA gets your account IP. This is assuming CBS just doesn't give it to them. Now they have the user's ip address, so its just a normal file sharing lawsuit.

And does it matter whether they have sufficient evidence for a lawsuit? As you mentioned it's probably sufficient evidence for a settlement. And nobody wants to hire a lawyer and fight the RIAA over a few grand.

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