Prof. Johan Pouwelse To Take On RIAA Expert 184
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Marie Lindor has retained an expert witness of her own to fight the RIAA, and to debunk the testimony and reports of the RIAA's 'expert' Dr. Doug Jacobson, whose reliability has been challenged by Ms. Lindor in her Brooklyn federal court case, UMG v. Lindor. Ms. Lindor's expert is none other than Prof. Johan Pouwelse, Chairman of the Parallel and Distributed Systems Group of Delft University of Technology. It was Prof. Pouwelse's scathing analysis of the RIAA's MediaSentry 'investigations' (PDF) in a case in the Netherlands that caused the courts in that country to direct the ISPs there not to turn over their subscribers' information (PDF), thus nipping in the bud the RIAA's intended litigation juggernaut in that country."
The RIAA will be getting all the help it needs, (Score:5, Informative)
1. Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright.
2. Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software.
3. Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations.
4. Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention regulations.
5. Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes.
and my favorite,
6. Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9719339-7.html [com.com]
Let's stop deluding oureslves, shall we? (Score:5, Informative)
I stopped reading there. While everyone can agree that it's wrong for the RIAA to prosecute people who do not have the means to commit copyright infringement, let's not forget that it's still against the law when it does happen. Slashdot is, in general, a technical and smart crowd, let's not pull the wool over our own eyes. It just makes us look foolish.
Re:+1 My Cousin Vinnie (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The RIAA will be getting all the help it needs, (Score:5, Informative)
They'll be able to seize your PC like a they would a drug lord's vehicles and property. You have to be kidding me. In addition, what is a PC "intended to be used in any manner" to commit a copyright crime? How about anything running Linux with libdvdcss loaded on it! Ya know, so you can play those DVDs you legitimately purchased on equipment you own? Except that doing so is a violation of the DMCA?
Re:Let's stop deluding oureslves, shall we? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a perfectly valid statement to be making, the RIAA is pushing through all of the laws based on beeelionnns of $ stolen, stolen I tell you. They base the damages they are seeking on it. And yet, every peer reviewed study says it increases sales for the independent musicians - the members of the RIAA won't share detailed sales information so it's not possible to determine specifics. However, IIRC - one study found that sales jumped after every college break during which file sharing jumped.
Also check out Eric Flint's comments @ Baen books free library from back in 2002 reguarding his sales figures when he releases a book on the free elibrary. From the same collection of essays, I suggest you read the one reguarding copyright as presented in 1841 in England - pay special attention to the last paragraphs, the man is just frighteningly accurate.
Now, yes, it's illegal - not sure if it should be as the current scope of copyright law does not appear to strike a balance between the rights of society & the rights of the content producers. In that sense it needs some serious revamping. The DMCA is just bad - any law that garantees your right to fair use, but denies you access to the tools to exercise that right is bad.
So perhaps you should go back & read the whole artical & educate yourself about the whole argument not just 'stealing is wrong' - in a very real & moral sense, copyright steals from society, which is why Benjamin Franklin objected to it. The laws reguarding copyright are supposed to balance the need to compensate creative people with the rights of society at large to make use of what has been created. They do not currently balance anything.
Re:Jury of peers (Score:5, Informative)
If you have been following the case, the defendant is trying to have the RIAA's expert testimony excluded so it never reaches a jury. Her argument is that unlike other expert testimony, the RIAA's expert Dr. Jacobson has used unproved, unpublished methods and relied upon unknown data to make his conclusions. That would make his testimony entirely of his personal and not professional opinion. Personal opinion testimony is not allowed to be introduced as expert testimony. Also the data provided to him by Media Sentry has never been vetted to be accurate so even if his testimony could be allowed, the basis of his testimony would be in doubt. To counter the RIAA, the defendant is presenting another expert witness who has in the past successfully refuted the RIAA.
Without the expert witness, the RIAA really has not much of a case left. Their case would boil down to someone shared their copyrighted files. They can't prove if it was their files. They can't prove it was the defendant. This would set a precedent for all cases to follow like the awarding of attorney's fees might be a precedent.
Re:Assumptions (Score:5, Informative)
Many, many news events can't be summarized in one news article. A little background reading is not asking all that much, IMHO.
Re:The RIAA will be getting all the help it needs, (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The RIAA will be getting all the help it needs, (Score:2, Informative)
A couple of monts later.... (Score:5, Informative)
And a couple of months later Brein (the dutch
(in dutch btw).
Re:A couple of monts later.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The RIAA will be getting all the help it needs, (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Jury of peers (Score:5, Informative)
They way I read the motion, I would say it was heavily in favor of the defendant. In the deposition of Dr. Jacobson, he admitted that the methods he used were:
In response, the RIAA says that "this methodology amounts to no more than applying settled principles to the undisputed data . . . used by reasonable experts in Dr. Jacobson's field . . . is the only way to do [the analysis] . . . and there is nothing that could be peer-reviewed." In essence, the RIAA says it is such a common (and only) methodoloy, it doesn't need to be tested. The RIAA misses the point.
What they RIAA doesn't tell you that these cases are new and no one has actually challenged the methodology yet. For the first part of the 20th century, phrenology [wikipedia.org] was accepted as a way to tell a person's character based on measurements of their head. It was used in court cases to help prove guilt. Later, it was debunked as a pseudoscience. Also Dr. Jacobson's methods have been successfully challenged in the Netherlands.
The second part of the defendant's motion was with the data from Media Sentry itself. In his deposition, Dr. Jacobson admitted:
- he did not know how Media Sentry gathered the data
- he did not know the accuracy of the data
Basically, the defendant is asking where the data comes from and how accurate is it? The RIAA's own expert does not know.To this the RIAA responds that the "plaintiffs have authenticated the MediaSentry data . . . and the defendant has not offered one shred of evidence to contest the accuracy or reliability of the data." The RIAA tries to sidestep the accuracy question by vouching for the data themselves and asserts the defendant has no offered any proof the data is bad. That misses the point completely. The point was that the data is a such a mystery that even their expert does not know much about it. Also the RIAA hints that the defendant has not sought discovery from MediaSentry yet. What the RIAA doesn't mention is that in many court cases, it has sought to shield MediaSentry from discovery.
Finally, the RIAA challenges that all these technical arguments were made by defendant's lawyers and that the defendant has not offered any expert testimony to counter their expert. This point is moot as the defendant now has an expert.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Dr. Pouwelse's qualifications... (Score:3, Informative)
His qualifications are that he is heading a research group and has published several peer-reviewed scientific papers on the analysis of p2p network traffic.
With respect to question 2:
A brief check shows he's a professional engineer who subsequently acquired a PhD at one of the better universities (rank 53 worldwide, 13 in europe).
With respect to question 3:
Do you know this definition?
http://www.webster.com/dictionary/slander [webster.com]