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Lawyer who fights the RIAA speaks out

Ray Beckerman is one of the few US attorneys willing to help people targeted …

The RIAA continues to fire flaming subpoenas against suspected file-swappers across the country, many of whom lack the resources with which to defend themselves. Those without cash find themselves hard-pressed to even begin defending against a federal lawsuit of the kind that the RIAA usually files, and few legal firms are willing to help.

Ray Beckerman is one of the few lawyers who has taken a stand against the RIAA, and he recently took part in a conference call organized by Defective by Design, an anti-DRM coalition. Beckerman gave a broad overview of the RIAA's tactics; not surprisingly, he was opposed to them on the grounds that the group's investigations turn out very little actual evidence.

"They say the defendant downloaded, distributed and/or made available for distribution certain song files. But they have no evidence of any downloading, they have no evidence of any distributing, and at most they can say that someone who might somehow be associated with the IP address might have made some files available. But they certainly don't know what the defendant did. All they know that the defendant did was to write out a check for internet access."

Despite these key weaknesses, the RIAA uses its resources to file suit against individuals and then presses them to settle out of court for cash—usually $3750 or $4250.

Even when people find lawyers willing to help them fight such cases, Beckerman claims that many judges simply don't get it. Most judges are "anything but digital natives," and they don't understand the technology or the arguments that the RIAA is making. Few judges are truly up to speed on "hash table," "metadata," and "supernodes," which puts them at a disadvantage when they rule on these sorts of cases.

Beckerman's firm prefers to intervene before a case reaches this stage, since actually having to argue federal cases can be quite expensive. As he puts it, "If you get into the merits of the case to prove that you're innocent, you've already lost because under any scenario you're talking tens of thousands of dollars at least in legal expenses in order to defend such a case."

In many cases, though, this can't be avoided, because Beckerman's firm does not hear about the case early enough to challenge RIAA subpoenas. Most frustrating of all are the lawsuits where the accused could not possibly be guilty. Though such people usually end up having their cases dismissed, the entire process takes time and money, and is indicative of the (in)accuracy of using IP addresses to target individuals. Beckerman describes the case of UMG vs. Lindor "where the defendant Lindor is a home health aid who's never used a computer. She's never used a computer, she's never owned a computer, she's never even turned on a computer. The only connection she has had to a computer is that she has on occasion dusted near the parts which she believes are a computer."

Though the lawsuits have continued unabated for several years, people have increasingly decided to fight back, and some have won their cases. Beckerman hopes that such outcomes will soon be the norm, and that the RIAA will eventually stop suing "unemployed people, disabled people, housewives, single mothers, home healthcare aids, all kinds of people who have no resources whatsoever to withstand these litigations." Presumably, he'd be happy to see the group stop suing dead people as well. Beckerman laments the lack of support (financial and otherwise) his group has received, and he wishes that more legal teams were involved in fighting these kinds of suits.

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Channel Ars Technica