Defendants in RIAA P2P lawsuits should NOT settle!
Peer to peer related lawsuits are continuing to be filed by RIAA against pretty much anyone it stumbles upon. A defendant in such a lawsuit usually receives an offer to settle as RIAA counts on defendant's fear of paying even more pushing them to choose settlement as the lesser of two financial troubles. Many have already fallen to this fear being afraid to challenge RIAA, but as it turns out, RIAA can easily be challenged because there is a good deal of evidence that goes in favor the defendant and contrary to RIAA's interests.
As quoted by p2pnet, Anders Bylund said in a recent Motley Fool article:
Even if the Internet service provider keeps very detailed access logs, it’s nearly impossible to prove that a certain IP address was used by a particular person at any given time.
Liam Jewell, in an article titled "RIAA wrongly accuse you? Here’s how you fight them." further explains:
So if you get a subpoena in your mailbox but you weren’t the one who downloaded the infringing copyright, what are your options? Well believe it or not, you have a lot of them. When they subpoena you, they have grabbed your dynamic IP address, contacted your ISP -for colleges this is usually their IT dept.- and then some days later the ISP finds whoever currently has that IP address and charges you with the action. For starters you should know that a dynamic IP address is just that, dynamic. It constantly has the ability to change. In fact, right here at Plymouth State University, it could change once every 24 hours! Or even more if you are moving around to different buildings or using the wireless. So someone else could have downloaded files, and now that you have their IP address you get charged! I know, doesn’t seem very legal does it? The RIAA knows this and yet they continue to sue as a SCARE TACTIC, not because they actually have a chance to win with a judge who knows the basics about internet protocols.
He also expressed that "many people who have fought the RIAA in court have won" and that "NOBODY has ever actually been successfully convicted of file sharing by the RIAA" following with a fitting question: "So why then are Universities continuing to allow them to victimize students?"
Indeed, when all of this is considered, settlement is in fact not the lesser of two financial troubles and by no means the lesser of two evils in general. It is exactly what RIAA wants defendants to do in order for them to win because it is the only way they can win.
Therefore, p2pnet and other sites are increasingly pleading everyone who has been sued by RIAA (and actually asked p2pnet readers for help to NOT settle, and I wholeheartedly agree! This way RIAA will acceleratingly be losing their foothold in these lawsuits and find them at the very least too costly to continue pursuing, not to mention other potential even worse implications this could have for them.
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