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Peter Brown of the Free Software Foundation speaks with Ray Beckerman, lawyer for defendants in RIAA lawsuits about the impact of the RIAA’s legal strategy on the internet, copyright, DRM and our digital freedoms. He leads the discussion with the reason why only small law firms, or individual lawyers will ever take up the cause of those being sued by the RIAA.
He also dissects a typical RIAA “investigation” that form the basis of their suit against their customers. In essense the RIAA creates an account with a p2p network, finds users with RIAA tunes in their shared folder, and files the report. However, and this is the kicker, there is no proof of wrongdoing. That is, there is no proof that the user did not obtain the song through legal means (purchasing them, or making a back-up copy from a CD they legally own), nor is there proof that other users have ever downloaded the song. In other words, most of the RIAA lawsuits brought against consumers are mere ploys to extort money.
Many users have settled out of court. The few that fight it get into long drawn out court cases where every dirty trick in the book is used by the RIAA Legal Team to make it prohibitively expensive for the defendant to continue fighting the case. Lawyers, such as Ray Beckerman, are working pro bono or for significantly reduced rates on the behalf of the few brave souls willing to stand up and challenge the RIAA. Especially since many of the defendants have never used p2p software before, and until their subpoena arrived in the mail had never even heard of Kazzaa and the like.
If you want to help, you can donate money to the Free Software Foundation.
Keep up with Ray and his fight against the RIAA at his blog: RIAA vs. The People.
Download The MP3 recording of the call
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