I can believe that it wasn't RIAA staff that did the downloading; it certainly seems plausible that people at the ISP abused these IPs (which seem to be assigned to servers) for downloading torrents.

The most interesting part from my point of view is that IP addresses are what the RIAA use to point to two things:

1) Identity. 2) Accountability.

Now they are trying to use one of these things to shrug off the other as a defence, whilst using the same two points for offence on the other side of the battlefield.

Furthermore, the fact that they appear to be succeeding points to a not exactly balanced legal system.

They probably did the wrong thing too. If they just "identified" and fired a random person for it and made it public, they could continue with their tactic. Now they can't do that anymore - the next well known "downloader" lawsuit will use the same line they did...

This will not stop their use of this tactic.

1. Greater than 50% of people are "guilty" of copyright infringement.

2. It is cheaper to pay several thousand dollars in shake down fees than engage a lawyer (even if you are not part of the guilty set above).

The RIAA will continue to spray and prey (spelling intentional) as it is a winning technique. The judicial system in the US is broken in this respect, and something big needs to change for this to get fixed.

I hope they realize the irony of this, although going by how completely ignorant they've been about anything that doesn't promote their own agenda, they probably don't.

It makes no sense thinking that they just need to understand their lack of rationality. Like Apple and North Korea, they do, say and claim whatever they want because they get away with it.

Try talking some shame into a mafia member who just sold some insurance to a corner store as he is hauling a bag of gold back to his apartment.

When the mafia member does something ironic while hauling his gold, is it helpful for a passer by to say "aha!" and point it out?

Seems to me like there's a method to their "ignorance".

Oh, an IP address does not match one-to-one with an identity? That's curious.

Good. Refund to the others then please.

No problem, as long as they get the same treatment that other people who've used the same defense get. Maybe the RIAA should take a lesson from the Matt Cutts/Google Chrome smackdown a week or two ago.

Is it possible that they were seeding bait content in a torrent swarm to collect IP addresses to sue?

Or is it more likely that their employees were just torrenting at work?

If I remember correctly the first time it was revealed that RIAA owned IP's had been torrenting, the article was careful to only name torrents which RIAA has no rights to.

This is distracting us from the real point, that the RIAA is trying to acquire an ability to use IP addresses to resolve internet downloads into automatic lawsuits that fly through court.

Lawsuits are a huge source of revenue. Step 1. Get lots of people to download stuff for free they would never in a million years pay $16 dollars for.. Step 2: sue them as if the free download was a lost sale.

This profit model isn't going away until it is forcefully taken down.

While I don't think that we can prove that any particular person was the infringer based on this, I find it interesting to compare this data to the public rhetoric that everyone else isn't "doing enough" to stop piracy.

Maybe they should, you know, clean up their own networks first.

This article was published on December 21, 2011.

Here's a previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3377641