PI License May be Required to Investigate Digital Copyright Infringement – If Evidence is Used in a Court Proceeding – UPDATE

In July, I published a post titled, “PI License May be Required to Investigate Digital Copyright Infringement – If Evidence is Used in a Court Proceeding.”

Essentially, RCN argues that in order for evidence collected by Rightscorp (a digital infringement services company) to be used in a judicial proceeding, Rightscorp would need to have a private investigator’s license.

We are still waiting for the court’s decision (as to whether or not the data Rightscorp provided UMG and other entities can be used in a judicial proceeding) but, in the meantime, UMG had to submit a reply to RCN’s ‘No-PI-License’ argument by August 31^st, which they did.

Here are a few of their points:

“This principle is also fatal to RCN’s new theory that Rightscorp allegedly acted unlawfully by acting without a private investigator license… The only connection RCN alleges between its alleged harm and Rightscorp’s alleged failure to obtain a private investigator license is that Rightscorp “would not have engaged in” its practices had it “been subject to the training and licensure requirements for private investigators.”

UNRELATED YET CURIOUS ISSUE REGARDING RIGHTSCORP

There was a recent Torrent Freak (TF) article that rose a few interesting questions about Rightscorp itself, titled, “Rightscorps Site Triggers Security Warnings and Links to Cannabis Site.”

Say what?

Here are a few excerpts from the TF article”

“Rightscorps Evidence

“This has already resulted in a massive windfall in their case against Cox, where a jury awarded a billion dollars in damages. The same music companies now hope to get the same outcome against and RCN, Charter, Bright House, and Grande Communications.

“What followed was a series of copyright infringement lawsuits where Rightscorp’s piracy notices were used as key evidence. The data helped the RIAA to argue that ISPs did not take reasonable steps to stop persistent pirates on their networks.”

According to the preliminary TF investigation, Rightscorp, the same company that major music industry entities have relied on (such as the RIAA) for data used in lawsuits against various Internet Service Providers (ISPs), has an unreliable website with a cannabis associated domain.

Say what?

One more quote from the TF article:

“The accuracy of Rightscorp’s evidence is not without controversy. It was contested in court several times but, thus far, no judge has ruled that Rightscorp’s evidence is so flawed that it can’t be used. However, this doesn’t mean that everything is running smoothly at Rightscorp’s technical department.”

FINAL THOUGHTS

Of course, this doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not Rightscorp can provide usable investigative data (without a PI license) in a judicial proceeding, but the website problems and cannabis domain connection doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

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