It looks like the students are planning on giving the RIAA a legal beating now they have wheeled out their big gun.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070808-oklahoma-state-students-attack-riaas-expert-witness.htmlThe latest bit of news from that front comes courtesy of Ray Beckerman and Oklahoma State University, where 11 "John Doe" students are attempting to quash the subpoena issued to OSU, requesting that it hand over the names of those using IP addresses fingered for file-sharing by Media Sentry, the RIAA's investigators.
The students make the usual arguments that the ex parte discovery (i.e., discovery taken against the subjects of a lawsuit without their knowledge) is improper, but they also attacked the RIAA's expert witness, Carlos Linares. An expert witness hired by the students has gone over (PDF) Linares' declaration supporting the case, taking issue with many of his statements.
Street notes nine errors or "facts without any supporting evidence" in Linares' declaration, concluding that the RIAA's claim that an IP address "uniquely identifies" a person is "an oversimplification" that demonstrates the record labels' attempt "to use technical terms to assign blame without evidence sufficient to identify the alleged file sharer."
I was suprised that US law still allows suing folks under fake names to aviod giving them a chance to dispute any of the RIAA clams, not only is this practice morally wrong, its being abused wholesale by the RIAA to fraudulantly obtain court orders that are more "fishing expeditions" that any real effort to seek any alleged civil copyright law breakers.
An amendement to this odious and morally wrong peice of legislation in use here would benefit both the Judiciary and the public perception of justice handed down by them.
