"My life as an RIAA defendant," by Nick Mamatas [ip]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0510,mamatas,61813,22.html

Meet John Doe
The RIAA runs its lawsuits as a volume business, and sometimes 
downloaders just gotta settle
by Nick Mamatas
March 7th, 2005 2:05 PM

Of the millions of people who illegally download free music using 
various peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, only about 8,400 have been sued by 
the recording industry—including, last month, an 83-year-old dead woman 
from West Virginia. Those odds seem pretty good, until it happens to 
you. This past October, my former Internet provider alerted me that they 
had been subpoenaed by the Recording Industry Association of America 
(RIAA) on behalf of its member labels with the demand to turn over the 
names and addresses of 100 "John Does" that the RIAA had detected 
sharing music. The RIAA is now appealing an 8th Circuit Court decision, 
which ruled that Internet services providers don't have to reveal names 
of customers who have not yet been sued.
[...]
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