I know this is old news, but I just stumbled upon it. I guess the RIAA filed a suit against a mother from Oklahoma requesting damages for file sharing. The case has been dismissed.
I’m glad to see this. An IP address alone is not enough to find someone liable in a civil suit. I don’t even think having them on a computer should be enough.
If John Smith has his home network connected to the Internet, he could have a half a dozen or more computers available for someone to pwn. Any script kiddie or hacker on the net could take control of his network and use his box to fileshare without putting themself in risk. Likely they’d make John Smith’s computer(s) a server spewing out malware and warez. Why should John Smith be liable just because someone stored some files on his computer?
Now if you can show that he didn’t get pwned and is using the files, maybe you have some merit. But I don’t think the RIAA or anyone else ought to be able to snoop around on someone’s computer because they can’t adapt their business model to the digital world.