The GQ about the RIAA and such got me thinking. I’m guessing it’s probably against the policies of most universities to allow users to connect a wireless access point to their network, so let’s assume that we’re talking about an ISP.
If I connect a wireless router to my DSL modem and someone logs on and uses it to download stuff illegally and the RIAA comes and gives me a letter demanding money, do I have a case in court?
Because the RIAA can only retrieve IP addresses, right? Not the NAT tables that rout traffic to individual computers, I think. But they wouldn’t have any idea that an individual on that network was me, would they?
The only thing that I can think that I’d be doing wrong would possibly violating TOS with my ISP, but I can’t actually imagine that they would prohibit wireless routers. Maybe unprotected wireless routers, but still.
What about if I did have it encrypted, but with WEP encryption which is weak and can be hacked pretty easily now.
Surely this defense must have come up in court. The reason why I’m thinking of this is that in larger cities like New York, there are at any given time, dozens of networks available, and a lot of people don’t know how to secure their networks. There must be people who have been falsely accused, right?
P2P sharing is deadly slow unless you’ve configured inbound NAT rules. If they can show the throughput you were resposnible for was above a certain level, it seems to me that could invite the inference, rebuttable, of course, that you have configured your router to facilitate sharing.
The thing is, the RIAA doesn’t care if they don’t necessarily have a case against you. The last thing they want to do is actually get you to court- their entire goal is to scare you into settling. That’s how they make money. As such, you can have any defense you want- what they’re banking on is that you can’t afford to pay your legal costs long enough to defend yourself.
It’s legalized extortion, and frankly I’m surprised they haven’t been smacked down yet.
Two points here, I don’t think this is true for all P2P networks. I can’t be certain, but I’ve gotten good throughput on other networks like Kazaa and GNUtella without doing it, although Bittorrent is a different story.
However, if the router is open, it wouldn’t be hard for any other person to do such a thing. I know that if I were to use someone’s router for the express purpose of hiding my P2P usage, I’d simply look for an unencrypted one called linksys and netgear. The passwords for those routers are easily researchable.
It’s not quite the same thing, as the following was a rebuked appeal in a criminal case involving child pornography, not a civil matter like the RIAA lawsuits, but it’s the first court decision I know of that’s in any way related to the OP, and it just happened a couple of weeks ago (link):
Interesting story. I feel that if he hadn’t actually had the CDs then he would have had a better case. The evidence was collected after tracking an image on an IM account that wasn’t his. But I can’t see how that matters. They needed to search the house, and the porno was in his room. Now if he had no porno on his PC or in his house, then I think he’d have a better case. The only thing that is strange about it is that it was sent using the account of his roomate.
It’s kind of hard to parse it, and IANAL by any stretch. If they caught it coming from his house, then it seems that the evidence is pretty good to justify a search by the FBI. They found the goldmine of evidence in his room.
Now on appeal, he said that the search was essentially illegal. But I don’t think so. I think if they had found nothing, or had found the porn in his roomate’s room then it would be a much better defense. That’s why the FBI searched though, to get enough evidence to convict. I think they wouldn’t have been satisfied with the evidence of a message from another user’s account on his network alone.
On the one hand it’s always good to lock up your network, but on the other hand, a lot of people don’t know how to do this. There are a couple of networks that are open at the moment where I live. If I wanted to do some bad shit it would be a trivial matter to simply connect and download away. The difference with the RIAA is that it doesn’t seem that they can actually get any searches. Is that true? Can you get a warrant for a search in civil cases? If not then the RIAA can only go with what they have at their disposal.
Just seems like a pretty justifiable defense. Even if you do have it locked, they have no way of proving that it was. It just seems like a lot of people are getting wrongfully targeted by the RIAA and I have a feeling that this is the reason why.