Recording Industry vs The People: MediaSentry removes terms "investigation" and "gathering evidence for litigation" from its web sites in attempt to cover up

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

MediaSentry removes terms "investigation" and "gathering evidence for litigation" from its web sites in attempt to cover up

A reader sent us some interesting "screen shots"..... before-and-after shots of MediaSentry's web site, showing that -- in response to the various investigations and litigations over its illegal investigations -- it has removed the terms "investigation services" and "gathering evidence for civil/criminal litigation". Our reader writes:

Ray, I am sending you a PDF file printed from MediaSentry's web page on 2/3/08. In the fine print on the left hand side of each of the pages, MediaSentry claims that it [provides] "Investigative Services", and that "Safenet has extensive experience gathering evidence for civil/criminal litigation and prosecution against those who engage in unauthorized online content distribution".

When I checked the web page again yesterday, 2/18/08, The page had been completely changed. Gone from the web page are the terms investigation, and information gathering, and they are replaced with terms like "intelligence services" and "Globally detect, track and deter the unauthorized distribution".

Looks like a MediaSentry is trying to cover its tracks.

It does indeed, doesn't it?

Good thing our reader was astute enough to make an historic record, as this *pdf should be useful to many prosecutors and other lawyers who are now trying to disprove MediaSentry's lies that it wasn't involved in 'investigation' at all, just gathering statistics for a 'nonprofit organization'.

[Ed. note: For those of you who like looking at old litigation documents made under penalty of perjury, you might want to try some of Richard Gabriel's declarations about MediaSentry's role: September 27, 2006, Declaration*; November 9, 2006, Declaration*. If you get into any litigation over whether MediaSentry was an "investigator" or not, just subpoena Mr. Gabriel as your lead witness.]

MediaSentry web pages*

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

Commentary & discussion:

p2pnet.net
Slyck
Ars Technica

Keywords: digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property

10 comments:

Anonymous said...: Good thing our reader was astute enough to make an historic record,

While I commend your reader, the Wayback Machine, also known as The Internet Archives, attempts to maintain copies of all web pages and their versions since the beginning of the web. This has proven devastating in court for more than one litigant who felt that the moment they changed their web-page, all previous evidence of what it once was went away forever. Furthermore, unlike just a "screen snapshot" open to alteration ala SafeNet's usual evidence, this comes with an audit trail of when and how it was captured.

Your astute reader has performed an invaluable service by pointing you to exactly where to look in the event that his provided .PDF file is challenged by those liars that we all know them to be now.

XK-E; February 19, 2008 at 1:10:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...: Isn't that the very definition of 'spoliation'?

TwoCents (or maybe just one); February 19, 2008 at 1:55:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...: Since they now seem to not offer officially their "interdiction services" any more does that mean that they silently stipulate that up until now in all the past and also still pending case EVERY filename on those screenshots, that RIAA provides to judges where RIAA can not provide a digital copy of the alleged song with complete chain of evidence, is infact one of their "fake files" and thus no copyrightinfringement of plaintiffs' copyrights?!; February 19, 2008 at 2:56:00 PM EST
James said...: So now they are going to completely claim to be something they're not? How is this not going to be perjury once this subterfuge finds its way to the courtroom?

Oh wait...too late.

But all in all, the good guys are surely on a roll right now. Thank you, R.B., along with any other lawyers like him reading this.

-James; February 19, 2008 at 3:19:00 PM EST
StephenH said...: Maybe they are afraid of being guilty of investigating without a license in three states. If they are guilty, the RIAA cases using them are in danger of the defendant winning.; February 19, 2008 at 3:24:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...: Alter Fritz,

Don't mix up SafeNet/MediaSentry with Media Defender, a separate outfit who is dedicated (for a significant fee) to pushing out fakes of music files on all specified P2P networks, and recently suffered an embarrassing 700MB e-mail file leak. They are two different companies, both of whom the recording industry contracts for some services.

That e-mail leak, btw, showed that internally Media Defender knew how lame and ineffective their services were, and how they illegally used IP addresses not their own to bypass blocklists. They actually made fun of the ignorance of their very own customers on occasion.

XK-E; February 19, 2008 at 3:31:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...: I guess archive.org won't be helping after all. They blocked it from copying their site with a robots.txt file...; February 19, 2008 at 6:34:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...: Mediasentry is acting like a kid that was caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Awesome.

The question is, will they get away with it?

Stevger; February 19, 2008 at 7:53:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...: XK-E

I am aware about Media-Defender and that the guys in the record companies instructed them to put out fakes. *

I just thought from the old webpage of MediaSentry that "interdiction services" is the same kind of service. Maybe thats not the case, Probably worth asking one of the MS guys what exactly "interdiction services" do involve next time one of them is commanded to appear at a depo.

* google cache result; February 19, 2008 at 9:40:00 PM EST
raybeckerman said...: MediaSentry is in the business of sending out millions of fake corrupted song files. See deposition of its president.; February 19, 2008 at 11:10:00 PM EST

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JUDICIAL QUOTATIONS

"[T]he Court is concerned about the lack of facts establishing that Defendant was using that IP address at that particular time. Indeed, the [complaint] does not explain what link, if any, there is between Defendant and the IP address. It is possible that Plaintiff sued Defendant because he is the subscriber to IP address .... As recognized by many courts, just because an IP address is registered to an individual does not mean that he or she is guilty of infringement when that IP address is used to commit infringing activity." -Hon. Barry Ted Moskowitz, Chief Judge, S.D. California. January 29, 2013, AF Holdings v. Rogers
"The complaints assert that the defendants – identified only by IP address – were the individuals who downloaded the subject “work” and participated in the BitTorrent swarm. However, the assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time." - Hon. Gary R. Brown, Magistrate Judge, E.D.N.Y. May 1, 2012, K-Beech v. Does 1-37
"The concern of this Court is that in these lawsuits, potentially meritorious legal and factual defenses are not being litigated, and instead, the federal judiciary is being used as a hammer by a small group of plaintiffs to pound settlements out of unrepresented defendants."
-Hon. S. James Otero, Dist. Judge, Central Dist. California, March 2, 2007, Elektra v. O'Brien, 2007 ILRWeb (P&F) 1555
"The University has adequately demonstrated that it is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty...[C]ompliance with the subpoena as to the IP addresses represented by these Defendants would expose innocent parties to intrusive discovery....[T]he Court declines to authorize discovery and quashes the subpoena as to Does # 8, 9, and 14" -Hon. Nancy Gertner, Dist. Judge, Dist. Massachusetts, November 24, 2008, London-Sire Records v. Does 1-4
"[C]ounsel representing the record companies have an ethical obligation to fully understand that they are fighting people without lawyers... that the formalities of this are basically bankrupting people, and it's terribly critical that you stop it...." -Hon. Nancy Gertner, Dist. Judge, Dist. Massachusetts, June 17, 2008, London-Sire v. Does 1-4
"Rule 11(b)(3) requires that a representation in a pleading have evidentiary support and one wonders if the Plaintiffs are intentionally flouting that requirement in order to make their discovery efforts more convenient or to avoid paying the proper filing fees. In my view, the Court would be well within its power to direct the Plaintiffs to show cause why they have not violated Rule 11(b) with their allegations respecting joinder. [I]t is difficult to ignore the kind of gamesmanship that is going on here.....These plaintiffs have devised a clever scheme... to obtain court-authorized discovery prior to the service of complaints, but it troubles me that they do so with impunity and at the expense of the requirements of Rule 11(b)(3) because they have no good faith evidentiary basis to believe the cases should be joined." -Hon. Margaret J. Kravchuk, Magistrate Judge, District of Maine, January 25, 2008, Arista v. Does 1-27, 2008 WL 222283, modified Oct. 29, 2008
"[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, District Judge, Western District of Oklahoma, February 6, 2007, Capitol v. Foster, 2007 WL 1028532
"[A]n overwhelming majority of cases brought by recording companies against individuals are resolved without so much as an appearance by the defendant, usually through default judgment or stipulated dismissal.....The Defendant Does cannot question the propriety of joinder if they do not set foot in the courthouse." -Hon. S. James Otero, Central District of California, August 29, 2007, SONY BMG v. Does 1-5, 2007 ILRWeb (P&F) 2535
"Plaintiffs are ordered to file any future cases of this nature against one defendant at a time, and may not join defendants for their convenience."
-Hon. Sam Sparks and Hon. Lee Yeakel, District Judges, Western District of Texas, November 17, 2004, Fonovisa v. Does 1-41, 2004 ILRWeb (P&F) 3053
"The Court is unaware of any other authority that authorizes the ex parte subpoena requested by plaintiffs."
-Hon. Walter D. Kelley, Jr., District Judge, Eastern District of Virginia, July 12, 2007, Interscope v. Does 1-7, 494 F. Supp. 2d 388, vacated on reconsideration 6/20/08
"Plaintiffs contend that unless the Court allows ex parte immediate discovery, they will be irreparably harmed. While the Court does not dispute that infringement of a copyright results in harm, it requires a Coleridgian "suspension of disbelief" to accept that the harm is irreparable, especially when monetary damages can cure any alleged violation. On the other hand, the harm related to disclosure of confidential information in a student or faculty member's Internet files can be equally harmful.....Moreover, ex parte proceedings should be the exception, not the rule."
-Hon. Lorenzo F. Garcia, Magistrate Judge, District of New Mexico, May 24, 2007, Capitol v. Does 1-16, 2007 WL 1893603
"'Statutory damages must still bear some relation to actual damages." Hon. Michael J. Davis, Dist. Judge, U.S.District Court, Dist. Minnesota, January 22, 2010, Capitol Records v. Thomas-Rasset
"[T]his court finds that defendants' use of the same ISP and P2P networks to allegedly commit copyright infringement is, without more, insufficient for permissive joinder under Rule 20. This court will sever not only the moving defendants from this action, but all other Doe defendants except Doe 2."
-Hon. W. Earl Britt, District Judge, Eastern District of North Carolina, February 27, 2008, LaFace v. Does 1-38, 2008 WL 544992
"[L]arge awards of statutory damages can raise due process concerns. Extending the reasoning of Gore and its progeny, a number of courts have recognized that an award of statutory damages may violate due process if the amount of the award is "out of all reasonable proportion" to the actual harm caused by a defendant's conduct.[T]hese cases are doubtlessly correct to note that a punitive and grossly excessive statutory damages award violates the Due Process Clause....."Hon. Marilyn Hall Patel, Dist. Judge, N.D. California, June 1, 2005, In re Napster, 2005 US DIST Lexis 11498, 2005 WL 1287611
"[P]laintiffs can cite to no case foreclosing the applicability of the due process clause to the aggregation of minimum statutory damages proscribed under the Copyright Act. On the other hand, Lindor cites to case law and to law review articles suggesting that, in a proper case, a court may extend its current due process jurisprudence prohibiting grossly excessive punitive jury awards to prohibit the award of statutory damages mandated under the Copyright Act if they are grossly in excess of the actual damages suffered....."-Hon. David G. Trager, Senior District Judge, Eastern Dist. New York, November 9, 2006, UMG v. Lindor, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83486, 2006 WL 3335048
"'[S]tatutory damages should bear some relation to actual damages suffered'....(citations omitted) and 'cannot be divorced entirely from economic reality'". -Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin, Dist. Judge, Southern Dist. New York, August 19, 2008, Yurman v. Castaneda
"The Court would be remiss if it did not take this opportunity to implore Congress to amend the Copyright Act to address liability and damages in peer to peer network cases.... The defendant is an individual, a consumer. She is not a business. She sought no profit from her acts..... [T]he damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs." -Hon. Michael J. Davis, District Judge, Dist. Minnesota, September 24, 2008, Capitol v. Thomas
"If there is an asymmetry in copyright, it is one that actually favors defendants. The successful assertion of a copyright confirms the plaintiff's possession of an exclusive, and sometimes very valuable, right, and thus gives it an incentive to spend heavily on litigation. In contrast, a successful defense against a copyright claim, when it throws the copyrighted work into the public domain, benefits all users of the public domain, not just the defendant; he obtains no exclusive right and so his incentive to spend on defense is reduced and he may be forced into an unfavorable settlement." US Court of Appeals, 7th Cir., July 9, 2008, Eagle Services Corp. v. H20 Industrial Services, Inc., 532 F.3d 620
"Customers who download music and movies for free would not necessarily spend money to acquire the same product.....RIAA’s request problematically assumes that every illegal download resulted in a lost sale."
-Hon. James P. Jones, Dist. Judge, Western Dist. Virginia, November 7, 2008, USA v. Dove