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Uni Students Slammed For Music Swapping
jomaree writes "The SMH Online reports that Sony, EMI and Universal will be in the Federal Court today, in an attempt to stop students using uni computers to swap music files. Michael Speck, the director of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, is quoted as follows: 'And we're not talking about one track here, one track there,' he said. 'We're talking piracy, significant examples of piracy.' By contrast, Sydney Uni says it knows of one student with a handful of files on a website, which does actually sound quite a bit like one track here, one track there."
In Australia (and probably most other places), it's a very common abbreviation.
It's war on a generation of cyber piratesPrint this article | Close this window
ByAmanda Morgan
February 18 2003
The recording industry has launched its most aggressive offensive yet against illegal music swapping over the internet.
In the Federal Court in Sydney today, record companies will try to seize evidence of song swapping by students using the computer networks of the universities of Sydney, Melbourne and Tasmania.
Record labels in the United States and Europe have warned the world's top 1000 companies they must stop illegal music swapping on their networks or face legal action.
Australia's major record companies, Sony, EMI and Universal, are acting on suspicions that students, and possibly staff, are using the universities' computers to swap digital music files. The industry says the three universities have not divulged information, but that others have co-operated.
Michael Speck, the director of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, which tracks swapping on behalf of the Australian record industry, believes the illegal file trading is significant.
"And we're not talking about one track here, one track there," he said. "We're talking piracy, significant examples of piracy."
The University of Sydney says it knows of one student who established a website with a handful of songs for swapping on its system. It has "isolated the website, and will hand over the evidence at an appropriate time", a spokesman said.
There are hundreds of thousands of song files on personal computers worldwide. They are "swapped" for free using special software, robbing artists and their record companies of royalties.
But the president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Cameron Murphy, said the industry was wrong to target students.
"The focus of these organisations should be on people who are running or pirating music for clear commercial benefit," he said. "I don't think there is any benefit to the community in prosecuting individuals who do this as a one-off. I mean, we'd have half the students in Australia in jail."
Mr Murphy also questioned whether the universities should be forced into the role of policing their students.
Mr Speck denied the industry was making an example of the universities. "Somebody gets caught being involved in a wrongdoing and they utter, 'We're not the only ones, why are we here?' Well, you got caught."
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/17/10453305 39310.html
=252) refR=refR.substring(0,252)+"...";Where it's not obvious, could you please expand on any acronyms used by story submitters?
/. editor to do, doesn't it?
Someone who's Australian (or world travelled) might know off the top of their head that SMH refers to they Sydney Morning Herald but it would be nice if the rest of us don't have to go clicking through links or searching the web just to find out what this TLA (three letter acronym) or that ETLA (extended three letter acronym) stand for.
On the other hand, that sounds too much like actual editing for a
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"Information" doesn't always mean open content. They're protecting their copyrights, nothing more.
Banaaaana!
A staff member was suspended from Monash University (in the outer suburbs of Melbourne) a few weeks ago for "alleged infringement of copyrights in sound recordings and song lyrics published on the staff member's home page". Apparently this led to a large amount of co-workers' computers being forcibly searched as well. No other suspensions have happened, but a lot of people have become quite nervous. It's believed that this action was at the behest of ARIA, which is basically the Australian equivalent of the RIAA.
Now, many of us have recently been advised by our superiors that we will "infringe copyright" even by doing such things as copying our own CDs or encoding them to mp3 files and bringing them into work. Also, our networks are being regularly scanned for machines running file-sharing applications.
It seems that they're gearing up to instituting a policy where having a machine that has transferred large amounts of data and has been seen listening on certain well-known port numbers will soon constitute grounds for having the contents of its hard drive searched.
But it doesn't mean the same thing in Northern Iowa.
You live in a dreamworld mate. The universities will bend over and take it in the arse, rather than risk a lawsuit. Especially if they're public-funded. They might let things happen as long as it's not something public that anyone is aware of, but as soon as there's the slightest whiff of a lawsuit coming their way, they'll shut it all down pronto.
I speak from experience. In Oxford we had this great Gnutella clone called OxTella - ran on the 100Mbit/10Mbit LAN, so it was damn fast and good, and across all of Oxford. Then the RIAA sent a letter about some AIM file sharing to one of the colleges, some idiotic IT college officer sent out a mail to the entire college about it instead of keeping quiet and the next issue of the college newspaper had a big headline about it, and man, you never saw hundreds of nodes go down faster.
The universities are purveyors of education, not filesharing. They won't jeopardise the first to provide the latter.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
very entertaining, keeps you on your toes.
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practically an AC
But we (I work in IT at a college) *do* have policies against using our equipment for breaking the law, and copyright infringement is specifically listed. And if we catch them, we'll nail them. All the RIAA needs to do is note the date/time and IP and we can trace that back to a specific student and disciplinary procedures WILL happen. Problem is, the RIAA doesn't get personal satisfaction. Just like when someone e-mails abuse@ and we reply "We are investigating and will take appropriate action. However, FERPA prevents us from sharing with you the results of our investigation and any disciplinary action." It pisses the complainer off and it's to no good end because we *do* act on these complaints and if a student is violating our terms, they get disciplined and sometimes expeled.
After copying it elsewhere of course...
.mp3 files. Of course it's pretty obvious that a file that is a couple of kilobytes in size and named index.html.mp3 isn't in fact a Metallica track. But, maybe I'll get to join in the fun...
I'm a Usyd student and I've known about this was happening for a reasonable amount of time.
I did a "find ~ -name '*.mp3'" when I first heard about it and was disappointed that I only had three mp3 files. None of which were music, and all of which were legally obtained.
Since I felt like I'd be missing out I copied one of the directories in my web space and then renamed the files to be
piracy != theft
Theft=larceny
For that matter:
copyright infringement != piracy
"Piracy" is armed robbery on the high seas. How on earth this word got associated with the wholly non-violent act of copying a digital file is beyond me. At least it isn't called "music terrorism" or possession of "musical weapons of mass destruction" (yet).
Welcome to the wonderment that is Australia.
Disclaimer: I'm an American living in Sydney.
You're often guilty until proven innocent here. For instance, while riding a bus or train in sydney, you often have to prove that you are not riding illegally or face a minimum fine, or (as i learned the hard way) jailtime for giving them the "innocent until proven guilty" speech. If you can't prove you didn't steal, then Aussie law says you did, and lip service to the transportation authority personnel will get you locked up until you can prove that you were, in fact, riding legally.
Also, when you leave any store in australia with bags that you entered with, often you must surrender them for a hand search to prove that you did not steal anything. This is even AFTER you pass through the security tag detectors. Guilty until proven innocent reigns here.
a bit more on topic - if you have tens of thousands of songs that you've downloaded, I say that you shouldn't be too surprised that they're going to try to force you to stop. steal all you want, i think this in particular is a victimless crime, but don't get caught, and don't scream "information wants to be free!" when you get caught, you are breaking the law, after all.
And if you own the music you've copied to your hard drive, you better be ready to prove it at any time, since music companies do not believe in due process, and they're quite happy to hand you your own ass in a little plastic bag without a trial if they catch you.
>
I understand that you're trying to use quotes from the article to support your view, but you -should- really finish that quote...it highlights the hypocrisy of the anti-IP crowd extremely well. Notice that even the guy who's leading the fight to support the right of people to violate copyrights is saying that it's -extremely- widespread. His quote that this suit will affect -half- the students in Australia definitely conflicts with the "sharing a few singles on a website" that some would prefer you to picture.
"The focus of these organisations should be on people who are running or pirating music for clear commercial benefit...I don't think there is any benefit to the community in prosecuting individuals who do this as a one-off. I mean, we'd have half the students in Australia in jail."