Not really. Roommates share computers all the time. Students let their friends use their computers all the time. I’ve lent my laptop, which has permission to use the uni’s wi-fi network, to friends so they can do whatever.
My point is that it may be the daughter’s computer, but I’d make the RIAA prove it was the daughter who was actually using it at that moment.
Robin
Getting back to the original letter itself, it was identified by an IP address only, and her name was hand written on it. Someone at the school did that. I have no idea how sys-op files work, how IP addresses are assigned and the like.
Actually, this is pretty common for college IT departments. Every school network I’ve seen (admittedly only a handful) requires some sort of authentication, which then ties each MAC address to a specific individual.
Does your daughter have a roommate or someone else who has access to her computer? You may want to tell her to put a password on it so it can’t be used in her absence.
Robin
The problem is that these log files are not always accurate. The time stamps are often in error by considerable amounts of time. Recent debacles like the switch to new rules for daylight saving time can introduce large errors. Authentication may associate a MAC address with an account name and password, but that doesn’t tell you who was actually using the computer. People leave computers without bothering to log off, and passwords are often intentionally or unintentionally compromised.
In a recent case, a student was mistakenly accused of making a bomb threat, arrested, charged, imprisoned and subjected to much grief, all because of DST related errors in log files, and an administration that was eager to make an example of someone who was “obviously guilty”.
OK, so I can accept that the ISP or University keeps tabs on IPs with date & time stamps, and the IP can be traced to a room or a computer, especially if static. But do they keep records of such detail as downloaded file names? That seems like an awful lot of data to have to store, but without it, who could tell if the traffic is legal or not?
And another thing. Without a subpoena, how can the RIAA find out which IPs are being used, let alone who, when and what file? If I call up my ISP and ask what Mary Jane User is doing online right now, I doubt if they will tell me. Does the RIAA subpoena ALL records from a University? And would a judge or court allow this broad a fishing expedition absent probable cause?
I imagine that the RIAA gets a warrant to get a search made of all internet traffic going through a particular public node, along certain parameters - based on their understanding of how certain file sharing systems work, looking for transfers with names that match copyrighted content that is owned by their member companies.
Each packet over the internet includes its source IP address and destination IP address, so they know the IP address of who’s sending the file and who’s getting it. Looking up these addresses will narrow them down to ISPs or other organizations that reserver their own internet addresses, like big universities. Then, they can go and subpoena them, ‘we have probable cause that this address was getting a copyrighted file, who does the address correspond to?’
That’s the key detail that you’re missing I think - they don’t start their fishing expedition with the local ISPs or as to look at ‘records’ of every little piece of internet activity - as you say, that would be way too much data to be collecting and keeping as a regular thing.
However, they do get warrants for ‘fishing expeditions’ I suspect, based on the results of previous ones or on other evidence they can present that copyright violation is occuring. It’s a bit like the FBI setting up shop in the postal routing station in Topeka, kansas and searching the letters and parcels that passes through. Once they find one that’s contraband, they can figure out who it was being shipped to.
Of course, the silver lining is that this sort of thing being digital, things can be arranged so that of all the traffic being examined, anything that doesn’t match the contraband parameters never sees human eyes and the records are discarded by the searching program.
(pardon my WAG there)
I don’t know about the OP’s daughter, but my uni monitors bandwidth usage. Students whose computers use a lot of bandwidth occasionally get an e-mail from Computer Services telling them to knock it off. In fact, the only people I know who get those e-mails are the people in student media who upload and download their own work. There may be a lot of students downloading illegally, but if they are, they’re not doing a lot of it.
This came up in a discussion with TPTB – the president and the marketing director. They explicitly said that they do not monitor individual usage, but they do keep track of bandwidth usage. We expressed our concern about uploading and downloading our own work, which tend to be HUGE files, and we were told not to worry about it; since there is no copyright issue, we’re perfectly free to do it.
Robin
You may be right, but that sounds like they would be trapping traffic thru a backbone, which would include an incredible amount of data from so many sources and destinations. Sure, intelligent filtering could be used, but do courts really allow such free access to this kind of data (“we want to look at ALL data passing thru Kansas”) without probable cause?
And if they are looking for specific file names, wouldn’t renaming music files defeat that? And wouldn’t they get a lot of false positives?
My friend did. Settled for “promised not to do it anymore”.
This may not matter at all. File sharing software does not require a user sitting in front of the keyboard. Things like feature films might require hours if not days for a transfer to complete, and may begin sourcing the aquired material at any time after, or even during the time it is aquired. Additionally, if the source of the material becomes unavailable, many P2P applications will keep looking for an alternate source(s) and resume a download when possible.*
If the university’s network is set up to require a manual log-on every X hours, then the fact that she was out of town might be useful to her case.
*kept intentionally vaugue to avoid the ire of the mods.
Whether or not your daughter is innocent is really irrelevant. The RIAA has no intention to pursue this to an actual legal conclusion. What they will do is tie you up in massive legal fees during ‘discovery’, hoping at some point you get fed up and roll over. If not, they’ll attempt to drop the case without prejudice (meaning you can’t counter-sue for legal fees) before it goes to trial, after burning up maybe 100K of your money. It’s the threat of big legal fees that they are using as their cudgel to shake people down for the 3K, not the threat of losing the lawsuit and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The RIAA recently got slapped by a judge for this tactic. He refused to let them drop the case without prejudice, meaning they’d either have to drop it with prejudice and pay the defendent’s legal fees, or take it to a full trial and get spanked for having almost no evidence.
I would contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org). They have lawyers who can advise you.
Yes. Then the lawyer will charge you $3500.00 to let you out of the $3000.00 judgment.
Why is the default stance in these RIAA matters always “fight the big bad Goliath”? The RIAA may be using underhanded tactics and preying on the weak, but David isn’t exactly innocent in this case. Come on, it’s not like the college kids don’t know they’re violating copyright. They pirated music and they were caught. Yes, there are probably a million technological excuses you can use to add doubt to the RIAA’s case, but why are we encouraging this when the kids deliberately pirated to begin with (probably assuming they’d never get caught)?
It’s like teaching shoplifters it’s OK to avoid security guards and cops just because the cops are better-armed.
Or is your daughter really one of the few people who never download music illegally?
It seems like they are mainly going after college students. Essentially all of them, like my daughter has no money. Are there any resources available to those who have no money and are involved in a civil suit? She goes to school in Boston. Do law schools have student organizations that will work a civil case just for the practice?
I’m wondering, have you got a cite for your first point? I’ve wondered about it before, but have never found anything concrete. If ISPs don’t keep a record of to whom a given IP address at any given time, they really wouldn’t have any sort of record of anything, would they?
It seems like a huge potential liability issue for them to not keep records of such things.
-Joe
I don’t think it’s a liability issue if they maintain their common carrier status.
Sorry, I don’t have anything more substantial than what I hear from nerds on slashdot and friends who work in the telecom industry. So your cite is “this guy on the internet” My google-fu is weak.
well, part of the issue is do you really think it likely a random person (and there is proof these are fairly random, since the RIAA has even sued people without computers – think about that!) downloaded $3000 worth of music? They are asking for amounts well outside legal limits, as the lawsuits have shown.
It’s like shoplifting a candy bar and being made to pay thousands of dollars. There are suitable limits, after all. Or do you really feel guilt means any penalty they can name is fair? Because the law actually has limits on this.
If your daughter can prove she wasnt’ there, get your brother in law to file suit, and get them not to be let off with prejudice – that way they will have to pay your legal fees as well.
Do go to the websites already listed–there are templates there for lawyers. A strongly worded letter from your BIL may even be enough.
Open Letter to Universities Whose Students Have Been Targeted by the RIAA
RIAA v. the Students: An FAQ for “Pre-Lawsuit” Letter Targets
Model Letter for Lawyers Representing Defendants in RIAA Cases
That letter is a thing of beauty. 
It doesn’t really matter if she was there. The OP stated that she was accused of “file sharing on her computer.” She could have dropped some music into her shared folder and it was available for anyone on the campus network to download. It doesn’t matter if she was at an athletic event if her computer was turned on.
Sony contacted me for sharing a CD on Napster circa the year 2000 and cut off my internet access. They made me sign a letter and promise to never share or download illegal music again and delete all of my current music. I faxed it in and my internet was turned on. Everything was okay after that. They threatened a lawsuit if I didn’t comply, but that was it.
My university threatened to do the same your daughter’s is doing, but they never went through with it. Good luck.