OT?: Legal question about p2p

[Joseph Sinclair]

IANAL.

As far as I know, a subpoena is a basic request for information, and as long as they can plausibly tie you to a case, they can subpoena your testimony.  I think the standard is that they must convince a judge that your testimony might be relevant to their case.  Given that a large number of judges in their preferred jurisdictions are basically their lap-dogs, I suspect the actual requirement is pretty minimal ("We think they might be trading files via the hated 'P2P'". "Oh! Well then subpoena them, by all means").

Keep in mind, they don't bring these suits because of "piracy", that's not enough of a real problem (in the USA) for them to care.  They bring the suits to kill all alternative distribution models, since something like 80% of their profit is skimmed from the distribution layer of their consortium (in between publishers and retail), so they don't want ANY distribution they don't explicitly control.

Just my 2 cents.

>>Erik Bixby said:
>>
>>>Does anyone here have any idea what degree of certainty organizations
>>>such as the RIAA must have in order to subpoena people?  I had an idea
>>>for a scheme of exchanging files where the peers protect each other from
>>>knowing for certain whether or not a particular machine actually holds
>>>any particular file.  (http://www.crabboy.com/secure.txt)
>>>However, if it is the case that even if there is only a one percent
>>>chance the RIAA can still subpoena people, the scheme would only serve
>>>to run up their legal costs.  Not a altogether bad thing.  But, I was
>>>hoping that there was some sort of legal threshold they had to meet...
>>>
>>>Thank you, in advance, for your time.
>>