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RIAA: Unpopular but rich and powerful.
Oct. 9th, 2007 01:22 pmEveryone hates the RIAA. It's kind of a basic truth these days, like "the sky is blue" and "grass is green." This article has the RIAA admitting that, yeah, no one likes them and their marks have often been rather pathetic sorts: 12 year old girls, grandmothers, single mothers. But, they say, they have to. If they don't stand up for the rights of their multi-billion dollar corporation, well, who will? They say that it's their job to go to every length to prevent piracy -- or else maybe The Beatles will be suing the RIAA for... breach of contract?
The thing is that their spokesman sums it up quite nicely at the end: "We know someone was using a computer and IP address to distribute songs. We know information like the time they used it but we don't know anything about that person." They don't know who they're suing. They have a handful of ones and zeroes that they think identifies who they're suing, but it doesn't. Especially not now.
Pretty much anyone with a little know-how can make their computer 'look' like it has whatever IP address they want. With a service like Kazaa, though, there has to be some known address (probably something like 76.12.87.42) where the files are sitting at for people to go get them. The RIAA can go get this address and bully an ISP to tell them who it was assigned to at a given time. The RIAA then concludes that at that time that person was sharing files. The trouble is, whatever address they get doesn't *necessarily* refer to one computer as might be assumed. Most of the time people have an internet connection coming into their home, but then they use a router (often wireless but not necessarily) to share that connection between multiple computers. Any one using any of those computers will come up looking like 76.12.87.42 to the ISP (and the RIAA).
Wireless routers are big. Most people don't secure their wireless with encryption and, even when they do, what's out there now (WEP and others) aren't terribly difficult to break if someone's interested. "Wardriving" is a popular method whereby someone with a wireless laptop drives around a neighborhood until they get a connection. Then they park, surf, and leave, and they're virtually untraceable*. They'll still look like 76.12.87.42 to the RIAA.
Nevermind the possibility of DNS poisoning and similar tricks that can 'steal' an IP address without much difficulty. The biggest trouble is that the technical difficulties are not understood nearly at all by judges or the random Joe who's likely to make up a "jury of your peers," so all sorts of confusion and technical nonsense runs rampant in these suits.
The thing is that their spokesman sums it up quite nicely at the end: "We know someone was using a computer and IP address to distribute songs. We know information like the time they used it but we don't know anything about that person." They don't know who they're suing. They have a handful of ones and zeroes that they think identifies who they're suing, but it doesn't. Especially not now.
Pretty much anyone with a little know-how can make their computer 'look' like it has whatever IP address they want. With a service like Kazaa, though, there has to be some known address (probably something like 76.12.87.42) where the files are sitting at for people to go get them. The RIAA can go get this address and bully an ISP to tell them who it was assigned to at a given time. The RIAA then concludes that at that time that person was sharing files. The trouble is, whatever address they get doesn't *necessarily* refer to one computer as might be assumed. Most of the time people have an internet connection coming into their home, but then they use a router (often wireless but not necessarily) to share that connection between multiple computers. Any one using any of those computers will come up looking like 76.12.87.42 to the ISP (and the RIAA).
Wireless routers are big. Most people don't secure their wireless with encryption and, even when they do, what's out there now (WEP and others) aren't terribly difficult to break if someone's interested. "Wardriving" is a popular method whereby someone with a wireless laptop drives around a neighborhood until they get a connection. Then they park, surf, and leave, and they're virtually untraceable*. They'll still look like 76.12.87.42 to the RIAA.
Nevermind the possibility of DNS poisoning and similar tricks that can 'steal' an IP address without much difficulty. The biggest trouble is that the technical difficulties are not understood nearly at all by judges or the random Joe who's likely to make up a "jury of your peers," so all sorts of confusion and technical nonsense runs rampant in these suits.
