Bad Decisions: Judge Allows Evidence Of Suicide In Lori Drew Computer Fraud Case

from the bad,-bad,-bad dept

While the entire lawsuit against Lori Drew is a joke, the one good thing was that it appeared the judge was going to exclude any evidence related to Megan Meier's suicide -- as the fact that the girl committed suicide has no bearing on whether or not Drew violated computer fraud laws. Unfortunately, though, the judge has now reversed himself and will allow such evidence to be presented at the trial. This makes the case officially ridiculous. There is simply no way that Drew can get a fair trial.

She is being charged with computer fraud. The fact that a girl eventually committed suicide should have absolutely no bearing on whether or not computer fraud happened. But, because of the emotional connection to the fact that a girl committed suicide, some folks want to string up someone out of revenge. Unfortunately, the emotions surrounding the case will lead way too many people to conclude that it's okay to find a woman guilty on an entirely separate issue that will set a horrible precedent. At this point, it's quite clear that the lawsuit has nothing to do with the actual law, but it's an attempt to punish someone because a young girl killed herself. It's understandable that people are angry over Megan Meier's suicide, but that's simply no excuse for twisting laws for lynch-mob justice.

Filed Under: computer fraud, evidence, lori drew, megan meier

Judge Likely To Exclude Evidence Of Suicide In Lori Drew Lawsuit

from the makes-at-least-some-sense dept

We've already pointed out how ridiculous it was that prosecutors charged Lori Drew with violating computer hacking laws. It was, quite clearly, a case where prosecutors were stretching the use of the law beyond its intention in order to file any charges in an emotionally-charged case. Drew, of course, is the woman who many people blame for the eventual suicide of teenager Megan Meier. Drew had created a fake MySpace account to see what Meier was saying about Drew's own daughter -- who had been friends with Meier. A few different people had access to the MySpace account, and eventually created a false persona of a boy who became friendly with Meier. In an effort to end things before it went too far, a friend of Drew's daughter tried to cut off conversation by being especially mean to Meier, which may have lead to her committing suicide. Meier's suicide is tragic, no doubt, but to go from there to charging Drew with computer hacking for creating a fake profile would set a very dangerous precedent. It could open up almost anyone to felony charges. No matter what you think of Drew or her actions, it's ridiculous to support this lawsuit.

While the judge in the case decided not to dismiss the case, he apparently has decided that evidence of Meier's suicide will not be allowed in the case. This, at least, is a good decision. The lawsuit itself has nothing to do with the suicide, and allowing it to be used in front of a jury would likely lead to the same emotional response that resulted in the original charges being filed. Of course, with the case getting so much widespread publicity, you'd have to imagine that many jury members will already be familiar with what happened in the case.

Filed Under: computer fraud, evidence, lori drew, megan meier

RIAA Also Tells Judge That Proof Shouldn't Be Necessary To Sue For Infringement

from the heard-this-before dept

Following in the footsteps of the MPAA, the RIAA has now filed its response in the Jammie Thomas case, claiming again that actual proof of distribution doesn't make sense: "Requiring proof of actual transfers would cripple efforts to enforce copyright owners' rights online." See, there's just one problem with this. The law isn't designed to make it easy to enforce copyright owners rights. It's designed to make sure that only the guilty party is actually blamed for breaking the law. So the fact that it's "difficult" shouldn't sway the judge.

Furthermore, while the discussion here was supposed to focus on whether or not "making available" is infringement, it looks like the RIAA decided to pull in a bunch of other arguments as well, noting that Thomas downloaded many of the songs in her folder (yet, the case was about uploading, not downloading), and that none of it matters because the RIAA actually does have proof of distribution (in the form of Media Sentry downloading the files). Again, though, those points are not what's up for debate here. So, once again, we have the RIAA trying to cloud the issue. Oh yeah, and, of course, the RIAA can't resist using its bogus arguments that international treaties require US courts to treat making available as distribution. That's an incredibly weak argument, based on the idea that these treaties, often written by the industry, and approved by diplomats who don't understand what they really mean, should be binding over what the law actually says.

Filed Under: copyright, distribution, evidence, infringement, making available, proof
Companies: riaa

City Council Tells 'Dumbest Criminal' To Stop Posting So Much Evidence To YouTube

from the give-the-cops-a-challenge,-man dept

We've been mocking various attempts to get laws passed that would make it illegal for criminals to post evidence of their crimes on YouTube. This makes absolutely no sense -- as you're basically telling criminals "stop giving us the evidence we need to convict you." If the criminals are so dumb as to hand over such evidence, shouldn't the police and gov't officials be happy about it? Now, in a rather extreme example of this, the city council for Leeds, in the UK, has banned a man they refer to as one of the city's "dumbest criminals" from posting any more evidence to YouTube. In fact, the City Council even seems to recognize how helpful the guy has been: "He has handed us the evidence against him on a plate. In the last three years, we have seen a 32 per cent reduction in crime in Leeds. If more criminals were as obliging, the city would be even safer." So why would you ban him from uploading such evidence?

Filed Under: bans, criminals, evidence, leeds, uk, videos, youtube

New York Wants To Punish Criminals For Incriminating Selves On YouTube

from the if-you-confess,-we-punish-you-more dept

We've been seeing plenty of stories lately that incorrectly place the blame when people film themselves doing something illegal and put that video online. This should be something where politicians and the police should be thrilled. After all, it makes it that much easier for the police to find them, arrest them and convict them of a crime. If people are so stupid to post evidence of their crime in public, then isn't that a good thing? Yet, politicians who incorrectly like to put the blame for the crime on the video of the crime, come up with harebrained proposals like a new one in New York that will make putting a video of yourself committing a violent crime online a felony in itself (above and beyond whatever charges you might face for the violence). Think about that for a second. New York politicians are basically telling people that they'll get charged with even greater crimes if they decide to incriminate themselves by posting evidence online. This makes no sense.

The reasoning behind the bill is that politicians believe people are committing these kinds of crimes for the publicity in the first place. The thinking is that such crimes wouldn't happen at all if they couldn't be put online. However, that's rather meaningless. If someone is going to commit a violent crime -- punish the violence itself. Not the fact that the idiots handed over the evidence as part of a publicity stunt. If the (small number) of idiots who commit violent crimes and post the videos online are getting caught and arrested for the violence itself, shouldn't that act as enough disincentive?

Filed Under: blame, crimes, evidence, incriminating, new york, videos, youtube
Companies: youtube

TorrentSpy Gives Up; Shuts Down

from the there-goes-another-one dept

The saga between TorrentSpy and MPAA will certainly be declared a "win" (if not a "significant blow") by the MPAA, but it's really more of a sad statement on the way the entertainment industry goes about its business. TorrentSpy announced earlier this week that it was shutting down and giving up, not due to any court order, but mainly because it was sick of the whole process and it didn't seem likely that the judge was going to see its side of the story. If you recall, TorrentSpy lost its case, but not on the copyright claim. Instead it was based on TorrentSpy potentially having destroyed some important evidence. It does look like the company (stupidly) did destroy some evidence, though some of the "destroyed evidence" was TorrentSpy's refusal to keep log files on its users, something it felt would be a violation of its own privacy policy. Based on the destruction of evidence problem, it's not too surprising that the company shut down -- but there really was no ruling at all on the more important question of whether or not simply operating a search engine counts as "inducement." This case also highlighted some of the MPAA's more unethical moves, including having someone hack into TorrentSpy's email servers and forward internal emails to the MPAA. So, while the MPAA will surely declare victory, all the case actually showed was (a) how unethical the MPAA can be (b) that it was able to shut down a site with owners who stupidly destroyed evidence and (c) that no ruling was made on the actual claims concerning copyright.

Filed Under: copyright, evidence, mpaa, torrentspy
Companies: mpaa, torrentspy

Click This Link, Go To Jail

from the wide-open-to-abuse dept

Declan McCullagh has written up an article about a questionable tactic used by the FBI to go after people looking for child porn. It set up a honeypot server and then posted links to it on a forum frequented by those who are looking for child pornography. It then used the IP address of people who clicked on the link as enough evidence to charge them with a crime. In the specific case McCullagh discusses, the guy was found guilty of simply clicking on that link. Of course, it's always difficult to separate out legal discussions like this from the fact that it involves child pornography -- which immediately sets off an emotional response. The problem here, though, is that the evidence on which the guy was found guilty could be used to find many people guilty of many things. The FBI didn't even track the referrer log -- just who went to the site. In other words, if someone had taken that link out of the forum and posted it on another site, a blog or sent an email around -- and anyone clicked on it without knowing anything about the link, they could have broken the law. This is open to tremendous abuse. If all you need to do to get someone convicted of child porn charges is get them to click a link, that doesn't seem right. Furthermore, in this case, the only other evidence was two small (admittedly questionable) thumbnail images, that there was no evidence that the guy looked at. In other words, to have enough evidence to convict someone and send them to jail for years (and get them listed as a sex offender), you could just send them an email with a link and some thumbnail images attached. If they click on the link (even if they don't ever look at the attached files), that's enough evidence, according to this case. That seems incredibly problematic.

Filed Under: evidence, fbi, jail, link

Quotes From Judges Who Aren't Swayed By Flimsy RIAA 'Evidence'

from the nice-list dept

Ray Beckermann has compiled a nice list of quotes from judges who don't buy into the RIAA's flimsy evidence. It makes for good reading. Here are just a few of the quotes, though you can read them all at Ray's site:

"[W]hen plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005.....Whatever plaintiffs' reasons for the manner in which they have prosecuted this case, it does not appear to be justified as a reasonable exploration of the boundaries of copyright law....."
-Hon. Donald C. Ashmanskas

"[N]either the parties' submissions nor the Court's own research has revealed any case holding the mere owner of an internet account contributorily or vicariously liable for the infringing activities of third persons.....In addition to the weakness of the secondary copyright infringement claims against Ms. Foster, there is a question of the plaintiffs' motivations in pursuing them..... [T]here is an appearance that the plaintiffs initiated the secondary infringement claims to press Ms. Foster into settlement after they had ceased to believe she was a direct or "primary" infringer."
-Hon. Lee R. West

"Plaintiff ... must present at least some facts to show the plausibility of their allegations of copyright infringement.... However, other than the bare conclusory statement that on "information and belief" Defendant has downloaded, distributed and/or made available for distribution to the public copyrighted works, Plaintiffs have presented no facts that would indicate that this allegation is anything more than speculation. The complaint is simply a boilerplate listing of the elements of copyright infringement without any facts pertaining specifically to the instant Defendant. The Court therefore finds that the complaint fails to sufficiently state a claim upon which relief can be granted...."
-Hon. Rudi M. Brewster

When the RIAA first chose to go down its legal path, many people simply assumed that judges would roll over and accept whatever "evidence" the RIAA came up with -- no matter how flimsy. The fact that judges are pushing back and questioning many of the RIAA's claims is good to see. If the RIAA has real evidence against people, that's one thing. However, so many of these cases are filed with incorrect or incomplete evidence, and the people accused are pushed very hard to simply settle rather than fight. It's good to see judges demanding actual evidence be presented.

Filed Under: copyright, evidence, judges, riaa
Companies: riaa

FSF Sets Up Fund To Pay For Experts Who Can Show How Flimsy RIAA Evidence Is

from the oh-so-flimsy dept

For years, people have been pointing out that the evidence the RIAA often uses in lawsuits against people for file sharing is often quite flimsy. While there's no doubt that many of the people the RIAA goes after are guilty of unauthorized file sharing, that doesn't rationalize the use of questionable evidence that can often suggest completely innocent people were engaged in file sharing. Of course, it's one thing to say the evidence is flimsy, and it's another thing altogether to bring experts into court who can convince a judge (or jury). The Free Software Foundation has now decided to create a fund (for which it's seeking donations) to help pay for expert witnesses to combat the RIAA's evidence in cases. Lawyer Ray Beckerman, who has been quite vocal in fighting the RIAA will help advise the fund and determine which lawsuits deserve money from the fund for an expert witness. It's really too bad that such a fund is even needed -- and it should (though won't) be a wakeup call to the recording industry to see that so many people are sick of these lawsuits that they would fund such a thing in the first place.

Filed Under: copyright, evidence, flimsy, fsf, ray beckerman
Companies: riaa