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Music Media Privacy The Internet

Can RIAA Lawsuits be Blocked by Routers? 97

Posted by Cliff from the burden-of-evidence dept.
Chris Frank asks: "With the RIAA stepping up its pressure on internet sharers, what is the legal status of people behind apartment routers? With no logging of who is moving what who can the RIAA prosecute when it tracks a shared file back to that specific shared internet account? I would imagine that many Slashdot readers are behind routers that hold all of their internal IPs private to the outside world. Is the bill payer responsible for all of the users of that router? How can a person be held accountable for the actions of others, especially when there is no proof of who did what?"
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Can RIAA Lawsuits be Blocked by Routers? More

Can RIAA Lawsuits be Blocked by Routers?

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  • Short answer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Your_Mom ( 94238 ) <slashdot@i[ ]smir.net ['nni' in gap]> on Thursday September 04, 2003 @10:06PM (#6875509) Homepage
    Read your AUP for your ISP. That should tell you.

  • Their new tactic (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 04, 2003 @10:06PM (#6875510)

    Everytime you download an MP3 the RIAA kills a kitten.

  • ToS (Score:5, Informative)

    by LordLucless ( 582312 ) on Thursday September 04, 2003 @10:06PM (#6875512)
    Most ISPs Terms of Service agree that the payer is responsible for any data sent over the service. Many home ISPs also stipulate that the service is only for the use of the customer, and they cannot resell or give away the service.

    • Re:ToS (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rmohr02 ( 208447 )
      The ToS is a form of contract, and no contract between two parties can modify the rights of third parties. The contract only indemnifies the ISP if the customer violates a law/commits a tort. The ToS may place some blame on the customer who manages the router, but only for being an irresponsible network admin.
      • Maybe this is a bad example, but isn't the driver of the car responsible for the behavior of the passenger? If someone in the back seat decides to urinate out of the window and a cop pulls the car over, the driver might get a fine for allowing such behavior.

        Isn't this so? IANAL.
        • The driver may get fined for allowing it to happen, but the driver will not get charged with public indecency.
        • It's a decent example...

          I think for the RIAA case, it would depend on how extreme the behavior was. If the user (not the owner) of the connection was serving 15GB of MP3s, and collecting 50+ per day, the likelihood of the owner not knowing - assuming they are present - is small.

          You may not go after the owner of the line for the actual act, but if you show that the owner reasonably knew the crime was happening, they may be charged with being an accomplice, or perhaps aiding & abetting.

          Now, for the ran
      • Thank God somebody has some sense here.

        Don't you think that 'rational' should be a mod comment?
    • okay, but let's say I'm a landlord, and I get a T1. Depending on my agreement with my T1 provider (the phone company?) I can be my own ISP. What then?

    • Re:ISP's (Score:2, Interesting)

      by KrazzeeKooter ( 593834 )
      But some very good ISP like Speakeasy.net encourage community networks and broadband sharing. Hence our outbound connection is shared through our neighborhood and building with wifi. We have experienced no bothersome abuse, but could the RIAA sue or hold us reponsible if it can not be known for sure who behind our firewall was sharing or downloading music?

      • Re:ISP's (Score:3, Insightful)

        by elemental23 ( 322479 )
        Of course they can sue you, it was your internet connection that was used. You take responsibility for what happens with your internet connection when you decide to allow the world at-large to use it. The burden of proof would be on you to show that you personally weren't responsible for it.

        Likewise, when someone decides to spam over your open wireless network, Speakeasy will quite likely cancel your service for allowing it to happen, whether you personally were the one spamming or not.
  • ...I know who use DSL routers/firewalls only share it with their family/roommate.

    If I were running a neighborhood wireless LAN, I would make sure that everyone knew the risks of file sharing. Then again, it would be much easier to just make one of your neighbors sign up for the service and pay them IN CASH. :)
    • I tell ya, if the RIAA comes after me, I might have to close down my Wifi. I dont legally have to monitor my neighborhood Wifi, so I dont. Logs are for a police state.

      If my ISP lets me have open Wifi, so I do.
      • Open WiFi sounds really dangerous to me, kind of like running a freenet node. You are providing freedom to yourself and others, but you have no idea what content is being requested/served. When it comes down to the RIAA cracking down on it, unfortunately, you'll be the holder of the account.
  • ... and thus the "NAT defense" was invented.

  • Answer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by omarius ( 52253 ) <omar AT allwrong DOT com> on Thursday September 04, 2003 @10:17PM (#6875565) Homepage Journal

    How can a person be held accountable for the actions of others, especially when there is no proof of who did what?

    I'm not sure. Perhaps you should ask the people that crafted the RAVE Act. [drugpolicy.org]

    • I'm pretty sure that through court orders they would be able to track you down through your isp or through some other means. Being truely hidden is very hard and the isp would probably eventually have to give you up

      If they are able to make university students pay tens of thousands of dollars [slashdot.org] in fines they must have some power

      meshach

    • Re:Answer (Score:4, Insightful)

      by afidel ( 530433 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @12:38AM (#6876471)
      I HATE the RAVE act with a supreme passion. I had the owner of a bar that occassionally hold techno events ask me to put away my glowsticks at a Bad Boy Bill concert because the local police had harassed him and insinuated that they would shut him down and try to seize his business. Their justification was that under the RAVE act glowsticks are drug paraphanalia (under Ohio Revised Code only things that can reasonably be construed as aiding in the consumption of controlled substances are considered paraphanalia) and that they could use that as indication of drug activity at the event and shutdown the concert and sieze the establishment. If the guy wasn't so nice about it I would have gone outside flagged down a police officer and asked to be arrested. Then I would have gone to the same neighborhood with my son on holoween and demanded to be arrested again.

      • Re:Answer (Score:3, Informative)

        by icemax ( 565022 )
        The DMCA isn't the only four-letter-acronym'ed law that pisses all over our constitution, as the Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act (RAVE) act demonstrates. More information here emdef.org [emdef.org]
  • .. is the RIAA would sue whoever pays the bills, and that person would look over the router logs and sue who got him sued.

    Sorry, this won't work. The best way I can think of right now to twhart the RIAA is to force people to upload if they're downloading. That way, the RIAA has to provide its own content in order to find ppl doing it.

    Well that's not the greatest way ever, but it would be damned amusing.
  • You're guilty! ;>

  • Apartment Building ISPs (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know of one ISP whose primary business is providing service to apartment buildings. Individuals are kept track of by their MAC addresses. The approach wasn't implemented until it became necessary to do something to throttle the very few who were consuming 99% of the bandwidth with kazaa.
  • More than likely, as has been said many times before, is that the person who's name is on the account would be held accountable for the data downloaded...an even more interesting question is what if more than one person is on that account... My roommate and I both have our names on the ISP account (cable internet). They charge $5 for each additional IP address, but the AUP allows the use of a router running NAT, as long as you're only allowing access within your house/apt/etc... And yet still another com

  • ISP May Drop You, But... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chilltowner ( 647305 ) on Thursday September 04, 2003 @11:16PM (#6875912) Homepage Journal
    I'm not sure if that will get you in hot water with the RIAA. Yes, you may be violating your user agreement with the ISP. Worst case, they drop you. But it still leaves open the question of who was doing the file trading. You may wind up without your broadband connection, but, without proof of who did the downloading, an RIAA suit wouldn't have much to go on.

    In fact, it is possible that everyone behind the router could be file-sharing. As long as the cloud of doubt remains, though (and the router logs remain non-existant), the router owner shouldn't be on the hook for anything beyond violating the terms of service with their provider.

    Of course, IANAL, so ignore all of that and buy all of your music for full price at Best Buy. Rat out your friends. Run Win XP. Choose a starter home. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage...

  • Sure... and use DMCA against RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mTor ( 18585 ) on Thursday September 04, 2003 @11:32PM (#6876045)
    DMCA has provisions that protect ISPs from lawsuits and provide a recourse. You can claim that you own a Wireless router and that you provide free access to anyone in your vicinity. Invoke the DMCA and use the same defense that an ISP would use since you are an ISP.

    DMCA Section 202.512.(a) [loc.gov]

    • That link doesn't work anymore. Appearently the search is only kept for a limited time. It sound's like a good idea though. What terms did you search for on LOC?

      • Re:Sure... and use DMCA against RIAA (Score:4, Informative)

        by mTor ( 18585 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @02:16AM (#6876918)
        Sorry about that link. I wasn't aware that direct LOC links expire. Here is some stuff that should work!

        The original link I wanted to show: Full text of DMCA legislation [loc.gov]

        I also found this: DMCA Summary (i.e. written in plain English) [loc.gov] Look at page 8. Specifically, Title II Section 512. There are provisions there for ISPs. This section was added so that ISPs should not be held liable to what their users are doing. You are required, once you receive a subpoena, to reveal the identity of the person in question. However, this can be impossible if you run a wireless AP and don't log MACs or you can even claim that the person was using a fake MAC. In any case, you have a lot of leeway.

        Anyone hit by the RIAA extortion lawsuit should claim ISP rights!

    • My isp (adelphia) only recently allowed home networks in its TOS. previously if you had 2 computers in your home they wanted you to pay for two accounts. I had a coworker who called the isp(which also provides our cable tv) for some cable service.When the service arrived he spent some time snooping around saying they detected some signal leekage from the house when the service guy saw the wireless router he asked "so your stealing a connection heh?" then he pulled out the TOS and had the guy billed for two

  • Actually... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <john.oyler@ c o m c a st.net> on Friday September 05, 2003 @12:33AM (#6876436) Journal
    A variation of this concept could be used to create a largely anonymous, secure network.

    A - B - C - D

    Assume that you are host B, and you VPN to host C, who happens to be in France (with you in the Canada). Host D also VPNs to the guy in france, but he never tells you who that guy is (he is careful to not even give any hints of that).

    You allow host A to VPN to you, and A is someone you thought you could trust, in the USA. But he is only an RIAA narc. He connects to your network, and discovers that host D runs a large mp3 ftp server. But the narc on host A only knows your own public IP (which might as well be your identity, it will lead to it easily enough). You however, are outside of the jurisdiction of the USA. The RIAA won't be able to sic criminal prosecution on you, and even if they tried, you have a good chance of beating extradition "Your Honor, I only participate in an experimental hobbyist network". Besides which, they don't want you, but rather your computer or ISP's logs. The RIAA is big enough to try to prosecute this in civil court... but how can they force you to reveal the identity of host D, when you don't know it yourself?

    And, the network could be made even larger, so that they might have to hop from host to host, forcing the revelation of the next hop's identity. How much would that cost them, and could host D vanish before they got close? Imagine not a chain of hosts, but a square mesh. Now, instead of just the 2 routes, you have 4 or 6... they can't even tell which of your routes is C, which is G or Z. So, at that point, even your ISP's logs aren't enough, they have to confiscate your computer.

    I think the scheme is rather strong, but I'd happily take suggestions. Anyone(not in the USA) want to help me build it?
    • These networks exists. Invisible IRC and Freenet [troed.se].

      • add waste to it(for smallish, i don't know how you would define small but i'm not saying that we have a network with ~10-20 people, networks way much more better. perfect for sharing between people who known for long from irc & etc, knows how to route between nodes too and you can ask it to saturate your up and downlinks with extra data so it's impossible to prove if you're moving anything even).

        nullsoft doesn't approve it's distribution officially anymore(i guess something to do with the owners, never
        • Yeah I know .. I'm actively working on WASTE actually ;) It doesn't fit the grandparents description of plausable-denial-routing though.
      • You're not thinking grandly enough.

        You think I'm talking IRC and p2p, the other reply thinks I'm talking p2p alone.

        And none of the implementations you mention even do international links, except through random chance. I'm starting to believe that everyone that reads slashdot suffers from a lack of imagination....
        • What? Freenet is a bearer like TCP/IP - and fits the description perfectly. You can then do whatever you want on top of that - how is that not "grandly" enough?

          ... and WTF is "international links"? Freenet is used worldwide.
          • International, in the sense that search warrants would be impeded by jurisdictional obstacles. Freenet might only send traffic to hosts within your own country, it's more or less random. So, when you're investigated, ISP logs could reveal your host communicated with hosts that are easily within reach of the same law enforcement that's after you.

            Duh.

            And IP-over-freenet is the most absurd thing I've ever heard of. My scheme gives you secure/anonymous IP, without the overhead of freenet. You build applicatio
            • I'm sorry - but you really don't know the subject at hand. If you want low-latency - go with IIP. That's why I linked to it. If you want a bearer for other applications, storage etc, go with Freenet. There's absolutely nothing in your rantings here that would call for a third solution.

              Freenet MIGHT only use links within a country - or it won't. It doesn't matter - you still have plausable deniability since you don't know what's passing through, links are saturated, stored content is encrypted etc.

              There's
  • If you're sharing amongst yourselves behind closed doors (or a router, in this case) then then how would the RIAA know? A university's campuswide intranet would be a great place to set up a massive file sharing network. Especially since a number of universities are protective of internal users/data. (beware of the loose-lipped campus, though!) With a little organization amongst students this could be quite successful.

    The problem comes when these files are made available to people outside the intranet... w
  • The RIAA is starting to go after the people who have files available for "sharing". However, making a file available for "sharing" isn't really distributing it, is it? The person who downloaded it has made the copy, not the person who made it available.

    If I had all my (legit) music files on an SMB share and somebody left the port on the firewall open so that SMB was enabled, have I committed a copyright infringement?
    • "downloading" is not the infringement. If I am donwloading, I don't have access to the original. Indeed, the duplication occurs when the uploaders computer writes the bits to the network. (In the same way, a copy is made when a program is loaded for execution).

      So, YES, you are liable -- you made the music available. You CAN'T make music files available on an SMB share (since you are copying, or facilitating).

      Ratboy.
      • The key is "writes the bits to the network."

        I copy my material to my own physical disk array. I can do that. Apparently though, if I then open CIFS or NFS access to that disk array, I've infringed on the copyright. It seems strange and counterintuitive that copying files from my media to my other media is allowed, and giving access to my media is allowed, but putting the two together isn't. I don't think the courts are going to see this as cut and dried in either direction.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Now, if you unintentionally leave open an SMB share, does anyone have a right to access it? Not really. Slashdot's army of Internet libertarians will probably disagree, but an SMB share is not, by itself, an invitation, any more than an unlocked door is an invitation - the intent behind leaving the port open is ultimately what would determine whether the share was public, or private with poor security.

        This seems all the more true as long as people are being prosecuted for "hacking" offenses that reall

  • I've wondered the same thing but with wireless routers instead. With WEP as insecure as it is, even if I set the router up to be as secure as possible, who's to say someone in my apartment building hasn't cracked my WEP and is using my broadband connection to download mp3's?
  • >> How can a person be held accountable for the actions of others, especially when there is no proof of who did what?"

    Wrong question. The courts would ask:

    "Why should a person not be held responsible for knowingly operating a facility by which he knowingly allowed users to engage in illegal acts?"

    If you had reason to believe your users were illegal copying files, and you took no action to stop them, then you, it seems to me, can be held accountable.
  • Could the person paying for the internet account and offering the routing capabilities not simply argue that he's as much a common carrier as the ISP's? In that case, he'd be asked to hand over the logs of who transferred what etc. Oh, logs you say? Never keep em, uses too much disk space.

    IANAL however so I may be way off base here.

  • tax (Score:2)

    by Parsec ( 1702 )
    Perhaps this will result in a router tax, similar to the CD-R tax [neil.eton.ca]... because, everyone knows, CD-Rs are only used to burn illegally copied music.

  • I Didn't Do It (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Goo.cc ( 687626 ) * on Friday September 05, 2003 @03:47PM (#6882287)
    Showing that a particular computer downloaded or shared copyrighted material is easy but proving who used that computer to do so is another thing entirely, especially in light of the fact that insecure computers can be taken over by others.

    Also, many home computers on the Internet have a single account and are shared by multiple people. Say three people all use the same PC and when sued, all three say they didn't know about the problem. What then?

  • Sounds like SPEWS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @04:50PM (#6882837) Journal
    If I leave a relay that I am responsible for open, but don't actually do the spamming, why should I be held responsible? I didn't spam anyone, why are you blocking me?

    Oh, collateral damage is acceptable and good?

    If I leave a network that I am responsible for open for content sharing, but don't actually share anything personally, why should I be held responsible? I didn't share anything, why are you suing me?

    Oh, collateral damage is acceptable and good?

    Damn, some people want it both ways. Seems to me, if you back SPEWS you should back the RIAA in this case. Conversely, if you don't believe in this kind of accountability, you shouldn't be backing SPEWS. Same damn thing, except the RIAA might actually let you negotiate.

    • If I leave a relay that I am responsible for open, but don't actually do the spamming, why should I be held responsible? I didn't spam anyone, why are you blocking me?

      The difference is night and day. There are basically no parallels.

      When the RIAA takes collective action, it is using the legal system and coercive power of the the state. Furthermore, it is reaching beyond its own organizational boundaries to exert force on other parties.

      When I block SMTP connections based on a blacklist, I am doing so

      • The RIAA is not taking collective action, #1. It is suing a bunch of individuals. Unless the RIAA's targets all have a single hive mind (and are not just like-minded), SPEWS targets the collective infinitely worse than the RIAA.

        It is using the civil legal system alone. This is not reaching beyond its boundaries #2. Everyday you wake up you are both subject to, and protected by this, assuming you live in the US of course. That is also a personal choice, living in the US that is, just like being on the
    • Responsible: You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

  • I accidentally leech on someone's accidental WiFi (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have no idea who accidentally put up a WiFi in our neighborhood, but whoever did it left his router's wireless network named as "default."

    Thus frequently when I turn on my powerbook's airport, my notebook automatically connects to this mysterious neighborhood WiFi. I have to look and make a few extra mouse clicks if I want to reconnect to my own network, (which is NOT also called "default.") This accidental neighborhood WiFi is not always active, so I don't always remember to check for an accidental co
  • I would imagine the same rules taht apply to ISP's would apply to the router owner. That is, ISP's can be held blameless for the actions of their users IF they keep proper logs and audits. If you don't know who is doing what behind your router, you can PROBABLY be held responsible for it.

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