Yesterday we reported on how both the Recording Industry Artists of America (and the United States Department of Homeland Security) were caught red handed with their IP addresses being used to download every episode of the Showtime series DEXTER. Well, obviously, RIAA has a perfectly logical explination for how this happened.
“Those partial IP addresses are similar to block addresses assigned to RIAA. However, those addresses are used by a third party vendor to serve up our public Web site. They are not used by RIAA staff to access the Internet,” a spokesperson for RIAA told CNET.
Basically, it wasn"t us!
It"s almost the same defense that the people RIAA commonly sues for downloading material would use. That a friend was over using their Internet and did it without their consent. That their wireless wasn"t secure and that it must have been a neighbor. That someone hacked into their computer and did the downloading without their knowledge. RIAA"s lawyers never seem to believe it in court, yet RIAA is using the same type of logic to defend themselves.
Except those IP address belong to RIAA. An IP address isn"t just similar to another address. It"s either the address, or it isn"t. As TorrentFreak points out, the listing of RIAA"s IP addresses is publicly avaliable on the ARIN website. If RIAA owns the IP addresses, they"re just as legally liable as those individuals they come after. Maybe there would be one good thing to come out of SOPA if it were passed, in a cruel twisted way, it could allow us to shutdown the RIAA for copyright infringement.