MPAA sues grandfather of 12 year old for up to $600,000

Hmm .. sounds like another BS publicity stunt by those cold MPAA thugs. I wonder if the 12yr old used Peerguardian or an ipfilter blocker at all ?

...since the movies were downloaded upon iMesh, they were then available for illegal distribution to thousands of scofflaws via the iMesh Network. Er, did they go after the person providing the file, rather than the person who downloaded it? Downloading something does not automatically mean it goes into your share and you become a hub for it. If anything, Grandpa needs to bung the kid upside the head for downloading what he already has on DVD. What a waste of bandwidth!

Oh well, there is always the Chan defence, which blew the RIAA out of the water in another case involving a minor, beside the industry looks a bit stupid for suing customers who have already purchased same on an ordinary dvd! gives the message to the consumer buy our legitimate product, but we will sue you anyway forget about the fair use laws! Somehow I get the feeling the Mob representing MPAA here are amateurs, are better versed in corporate, contract and tax laws then either civil or criminal law proceedings!:X

Ms. Bernards went on to say that the problem is, since the movies were downloaded upon iMesh, they were then available for illegal distribution to thousands of scofflaws via the iMesh Network. Since the kid downloaded the files, they were them being shared also, which is the case of this lawsuit..

That's the problem with most file sharing networks. When you start downloading a file, the completed parts automatically become shared to the world so even though the boy didn't have the complete file during his download time (which is often several days for a network like edonkey), he was already redistributing parts of the copyrighted work to thousands thus the crux of this lawsuit. I think a legitimate tactic that could be used by all file sharers now would be to encrypt files with a commonly known password or maybe share a gigantic .par (google quickpar if you don't know what I'm talking about) file that has 100% of the blocks needed to recreate the original file. The the defense you could use would be the same defense a chemical company would use if sued by a family for their chemical being an ingredient to a bomb that someone set off. In other words you are sharing parts that in no way resemble the original copyrighted work, cannot recreate any portion of the copyrighted work on it's own, but when assembled with other parts from other people by someone of dishonest intent, could be used to break the law. In other words you're a fraction of the ingredients needed to break the law but not technically breaking the law yourself. You can't argue that an encrypted part or parity file is akin to piracy because any file (notepad.exe for instance or a text file of random garbage) can be made to resemble a copyrighted work when subjected to the right mathematical equation. This would force the RIAA to a position where they would have had to download the entire file from the person being sued and recreate the original copyrighted work and couldn't just download a handful of parts and file a lawsuit.

shame on you mpaa :r

People can share the files on the network, which is the case but to distribute the movies in FULL im sure it would have taken a long time due to slower upload speed and what happens if that file was a bogus file like what the MPAA do to track peoples IP's You carnt win a case if you dont have the physical evidence, that is the actual WORKING movie on his computer.