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U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Duluth, Minnesota has declared a mistrial in the only win in RIAA’s long legal fight against consumers. He also commented on the laws behind the copyright infringement claims of RIAA stating that they were “unprecedented and oppressive” for

non commercial p2p users

and intended only for operations which sought to compete with record labels.

Full quote from the Thomas ruling[pdf]:

While the Court does not discount Plaintiffs’ claim that, cumulatively, illegal downloading has far‐reaching effects on their businesses, the damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs. Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs ‐ the equivalent of approximately three CDs, costing less than $54, and yet the total damages awarded is $222,000 – more than five hundred times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than four thousand times the cost of three CDs. While the Copyright Act was intended to permit statutory damages that are larger than the simple cost of the infringed works in order to make infringing a far less attractive alternative than legitimately purchasing the songs, surely damages that are more than one hundred times the cost of the works would serve as a sufficient deterrent.
Thomas not only gained no profits from her alleged illegal activities, she
sought no profits. Part of the justification for large statutory damages awards in
copyright cases is to deter actors by ensuring that the possible penalty for
infringing substantially outweighs the potential gain from infringing. In the case
43 of commercial actors, the potential gain in revenues is enormous and enticing to potential infringers. In the case of individuals who infringe by using peer‐to‐peer networks, the potential gain from infringement is access to free music, not the possibility of hundreds of thousands – or even millions – of dollars in profits.
This fact means that statutory damages awards of hundreds of thousands of
dollars is certainly far greater than necessary to accomplish Congress’s goal of
deterrence.
Unfortunately, by using Kazaa, Thomas acted like countless other Internet
users. Her alleged acts were illegal, but common. Her status as a consumer who
was not seeking to harm her competitors or make a profit does not excuse her
behavior. But it does make the award of hundreds of thousands of dollars in
damages unprecedented and oppressive.

EDIT: If you are visiting this post from Encyclopedia Dramatica your PC may be infected by a drive by download. I captured this pic from a vmware image infected from that site

Denizens of 4Chan’s /b/ spent the better part of yesterday coordinating a search for the identity of a teenager who was stupid enough to upload video of himself abusing a cat to Youtube. Dubbed “Operation Dustyce” anonymous agents gathered in #catraid2 on the EFNet irc network and scoured Facebook and other websites matching photos to portions of the video which showed the interior of the house.

An anonymous person then set up www.kenny-glenn.com with details about the abuser and his immediate family including physical addresses and phone numbers. Local news station KSWO is covering the story and has recently reported that Kenny Glenn was arrested then released to his parents.

A post to a Facebook group supporting the abused cat, “Dusty”, states Oklahoma laws can punish animal cruelty of this magnitude with a felony offense:

Oklahoma Statutes, Title 21, Chapter 67
Section 1685: Acts of Cruelty to Animals
Any person who shall willfully or maliciously overdrive, overload,
torture, destroy or kill, or cruelly beat or injure, maim or mutilate,
any animal in subjugation or captivity, … shall be guilty of a felony and shall be
punished by imprisonment in the State Penitentiary not exceeding five
(5) years, or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one (1)
year, or by a fine not exceeding Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00). Any
officer finding an animal so maltreated or abused shall cause the same
to be taken care of, and the charges therefor shall be a lien upon
such animal, to be collected thereon as upon a pledge or a lien.

It is difficult to predict the outcome of the court in matters like this however the online community is easier to predict. The outrage of the community is inversely proportional to the punishment he receives by the State. That is to say, if he is only fined $500 and given a “slap on the wrist” the same mob that tracked him down will demand justice in other ways. Should he register an account with any service they will be there to “out” his past actions. Kenny Glenn, and all those around him, will be haunted by his cruelty for a long time by any means the community can muster. Hate mail, prank phone calls, and possibly even visits in person are not out of the question.

One thing is for sure. Dusty will be avenged.

Text from the Broadcast Commission

STATEMENT BY THE BROADCASTING COMMISSION ON ACTIONS AND RECENT DIRECTIVES RELATING TO BROADCAST MEDIA CONTENT
The Commission assures the public that it continues to actively work with broadcast licensees, the Minister of Information, the Media Association of Jamaica, the Jamaica Association of Community Cable Operators, the Entertainment Fraternity and other stakeholders to bring a halt to the deluge of inappropriate content on the airwaves. The public will have already seen and should continue to expect strong disciplinary action against those who fail to cooperate and comply with the broadcasting regulations.

The Commission has examined a number of songs, popularly referred to as “daggering songs”. “Daggering” is a colloquial term or phrase used in dancehall culture as a reference to hardcore sex or what is popularly referred to as “dry” sex, or the activities of persons engaged in the public simulation of various sexual acts and positions. The Commission has found these recordings to be explicitly sexual and violent, contrary to the provisions of Regulation 30(d) and Regulation 30(l) of the Television and Sound Broadcasting Regulations which state:

30. No licensee shall permit to be transmitted –

(d) any indecent or profane matter, so, however, that any broadcast to which regulation 26 relates shall be deemed not to be indecent; Reg. 30(d)
(l) any portrayal of violence which offends against good taste, decency or public morality. Reg. 30(l)

This content also offends against the tenets of the Children’s Code for Programming. Consequently, the following directive has been issued to Broadcasters:

DIRECTIVE TO LICENCEES
1. There shall not be transmitted through radio or television or cable services, any recording, live song or music video which promotes the act of ‘daggering’, or which makes reference to, or is otherwise suggestive of ‘daggering’.
2. There shall not be transmitted through radio or television or cable services, any audio recording, song or music video which employs editing
techniques of ‘bleeping’ or ‘beeping’ of its original lyrical content.
3. Programme managers and station owners or operators are hereby required to take immediate steps to prevent transmission of any recorded material relating to ‘daggering’ or which fall into the category of edited musical content using techniques of ‘bleeping’ or ‘beeping’.

CHANGES TO THE BROADCASTING REGULATIONS
The Commission has already recommended to government important changes to the law governing broadcasting and which are intended to be tabled in Parliament soon. The changes include:

• The introduction of financial sanctions for breaches of the regulations. Ensuring that the compilation of music charts is in accordance with an approved methodology.
• Maintaining playlists and programme logs of music played for examination by the Commission and accredited rights agencies.
• Evidence of approval of music sheets and playlists by station management before any song or video is transmitted.
• The arrangements for inclusion of local cable channels within the group of directly regulated operators, further to recent changes in the Broadcasting and Radio Re-Diffusion Act.

EXPANDED CITIZEN-BASED MONITORING
The Commission recognizes the critical role that citizens can and should play in monitoring the numerous radio and television channels that exist. In this regard, the Commission encourages continued submission of complaints about problematic content on electronic media. As a response to the increase in broadcasting and cable outlets, the Commission itself will be establishing islandwide Citizen based Media Monitors to assist in more comprehensive and effective monitoring of radio and television output. The media monitors will be drawn from diverse age groups, communities and organizations across the country. The Commission is also accepting volunteers.

CONTACTING THE COMMISSION
Members of the public are encouraged to support the Commission in monitoring the airwaves and reporting any breach of the directive or otherwise transmission of inappropriate content.

The Broadcasting Commission may be contacted at 1-888-99-CABLE (22253). Email messages can also be sent to  info at broadcom.org to report complaints or to seek additional information.

SIGNED: BROADCASTING COMMISSION

Youtomb has had a blog for quite some time but it was never linked to the front page for technical reasons. Well no more! Expect a lot more posts from the team now that we are linked to the front of our research project.

As some of you may know I consort with the evil geniuses behind ROFLCon. We are really really excited about the ROFLThing NYC event coming up this weekend and there are FIVE tickets left in the entire world. Five.

all proceeds will go to charities (real ones too, not fund the Zeroday Waffle Addiction Foundation)

* ROFLTicket supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation
* ROFLTicket supporting Big Cat Rescue (in honor of our guest Sockington)
* ROFLTicket supporting the Internet Archive
* ROFLTicket supporting Global Voices
* ROFLTicket supporting New York Cares

Did I mention these auctions are only for 24 hours? I should have.. you have less then 20 hours. GO!

From Ars Technica:

Jones wrote in his opinion that equating each download with a lost sale is a faulty assumption. “Those who download movies and music for free would not necessarily purchase those movies and music at the full purchase price,” Jones wrote. “[A]lthough it is true that someone who copies a digital version of a sound recording has little incentive to purchase the recording through legitimate means, it does not necessarily follow that the downloader would have made a legitimate purchase if the recording had not been available for free.”

Youtube remixes now have links to amazon and itunes to purchase the songs. This is a great monetization strategy for youtube as well who has a snickering Hulu making money on the content which they, and only they, can negotiate (hulu is a joint project of Fox and NBC)

hulu is smart in that they are finally figuring out they can monetize their back catalogs with advertising revenue if only they made it easily available (no drm, etc). granted it only streams but this is a decent tradeoff for legal content on the internet. And this is from someone who absolutely abhors sitting through commercials or viewing 80% of advertising.

hulu officials have belittled youtube in trade publications [citation needed] because they don’t believe user created content can be monetized. I have a feeling they will be proven wrong in the next 24-36 months. as remixing becomes legitimized in both legal and social contexts the sheer amount of content created by unleashed masses with personal computers will start to eclipse the major studios.

more open source

* pine for email
* firefox for web
* gimp for photo editing
* audacity for audio editing
* more ruby
* more mysql

more cloud apps

* blip.tv for media storage
* less stagnet account on flickr
* more rss feeds

more mobile

* Twitter on mobile only
* IM on mobile only [edit: way too hard]
* increased IM on mobile
* email on mobile ReadOnly
* increase social app posts from mobile -> {flickr,youtube,blip.tv}

more social
* more irc
* more flickr posts with geotag

no drm
* none

According to various reports [1,2,3] the RIAA won a lawsuit against Ciara Sauro due to her inability to respond to court documents in a timely fashion. The unnamed judge has rendered a verdict in the amount of $8,000. This case was brought by the RIAA over 10 songs.

I once heard a story about a scheme to defraud people out of money. The scheme worked on the principle of embarassment and went something like this.

“Start a company with an innocuous name which places ads for something no one wants to be known for buying. When an order comes in reply that you are out of stock. When the customer demands their money back issue a check from a different company with a really embarrassing name printed in bold. The customer will never cash the check because they don’t want people at the bank knowing they tried to order from such an embarrassing company.”

I’ve toned down the retelling but you get the idea. While investigating some other leads today I came upon a newer version of this scam which adds the element of fear via destroyed credit rating. It is an interesting twist to this old theme.

People who are searching for popular downloads online will end up with search results from various torrent trackers. Somehow, likely through SEO manipulation, sites such as DownloadNova dot com are returned as valid search results. When a user clicks on the link they will be presented with a series of servers to download from. All of the links will say that you need to provide an email address to join the site. Once a user has submitted an email then the site will direct them to pay some nominal fee for full membership. According to various reports [1,2,3,4,5] the range is somewhere between $3-$5. Buried in the fine print are details of the actual membership.

It now said that I had activated three day trial memberships to three sites. One called ‘MegaDownloadPass dot com’ another called ‘Vipbookmark dot com’ and one called ‘DiscountVideoPass.’

[source]

Other versions of this scam exist like baydownloads dot com. According to the same source once your trial membership expires you graduate to full membership for all three sites and billed for $30 per month. Most of the reports I read showed people who cancelled their memberships by using the chargeback mechanism of their credit card company. This is the obvious way to go. Here is where it gets interesting though. I researched the phone number listed for support:
1-800-934-1875
I called this number posing as a web site owner who was looking to add support to my own websites. The support rep informed me that they had about 100 people working there and that they handled multiple websites. After a while he decided that he couldn’t answer my questions and should get the manager on the line. While I patiently waited he explained the situation to his superior. As it turns out the manager wasn’t willing to talk with me and instead directed me to email the company with any questions I might have. This was good enough for me as it gave me a central website to work from. The website findsupportonline dot com has this dire warning on its front page

A billing chargeback will place your name, address, zip code, and credit card number into an Internet fraud database. ALL INTERNET CREDIT CARD COMPANIES USE THIS DATABASE. We DO NOT have any control over this fraud database.

If you chargeback your membership, the billing company WILL add your information to the ban database. If you get into this database you will not be able to use that billing company again. It is impossible to get off the ban lists.

BE SMART! DON’T DESTROY YOUR INTERNET CREDIT BY BEING ADDED TO THIS LIST AND INVESTIGATED FOR FRAUD!

I doubt the veracity of this last statement. It is amusing to see this twist though. Get the user to pay a nominal fee and then spring new fees justified by fine print. Then assault them with a warning that their online credit will be ruined before they can even think about using the appropriate mechanism to stop the fraud. I really have to wonder how well this company is doing.

The support rep was not very talkative when he came back from his manager. Maybe it was because I called from a payphone. Maybe it was the questions I was asking. He did admit to servicing Megadownloadpass dot com but claimed they “stopped supporting them … two or three days ago”.

I also doubt the veracity of this statement however I don’t think the two companies are related at all. findsupportonline’s whois information points to an address in New York. Unfortunately novadownload hides their true registry information but megadownload and vipbookmark uses a false Delaware address in their whois registration. The email address in the registrations list marketingx dot com which has an address in Cyprus. This listing has an email address for prolastlimited dot com which points to the same address as does customersupporthelp dot com. So the update to this age old scam is to entice the user with warez downloads and then bill them for pornography. Then make sure that the support representatives are trained to intimidate anyone who tries to cancel their membership.