Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Moves Against College-Network Fileswapping
pazu13 writes "The RIAA is taking action against college "Napster networks". It's suing four network operators, two at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, one at Princeton University, and one at Michigan Technological University. Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc... my speed across the network is ridiculously faster than when I try to access outside sources."
Can you use the DMCA against them? Create a system that only lets local IP's access the servers. Then use some simple crypto to transfer the files. Top it off with in access policy that forbids non-student use. If they access your network, it would then be illegal.
By reading this you have broken the DMCA as this message is encrypted with the English Language Cypher. I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV.
It seems like nailing the network admins for the (mis)behaviour of the students is a bit of a broad move to make.
They have an AUP I'm sure, but at the bigger schools, it becomes tough to enforce. The inability to control what the students do (at some level) somehow makes the admins responsible? I don't agree with that, but that's just me.
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
On a slightly odd recent discovery, it seems the RIAA may not have been so evil at a point.... jpg
http://members.cox.net/datafox166/irony
I pulled this off an album circa 1965 or something like that. It _was_ that now its doing this? What happened?
[old argument] Yeah, that works great for the n% of artists that the major recording companies have signed and paid their way onto the radio playlists. For the 100-n% that are making it on their own, or are being suffocated by a major label contract they can't escape, GOOD LUCK. Soon the RIAA will move to kill the college stations, and if they succeed they will control the entire radio market top to bottom [/old argument]. MTV is even worse, you have to be able to afford to produce a palatable video that'll fit nicely into one of their anointed genre pigeonholes.
Indy bands that give away a few mp3's on their websites get my vote however. Best way to promote your music online, IMO. And it heads off "music piracy" the RIGHT way.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Shutting off all the TVs to prevent minors from viewing violence.
I mean really, its not the RIAA's job to be our parents. Its should be left up to the college. Capitalism is important yes, but its not everything, money is not more important than education, if you cannot have freedom of speech even in the educational enviornment well then I'm going to move to China, I mean if we have to be monitored by the RIAA, whats the point of staying in the RIAA's country, Its not ours anymore, if we had a vote right now most people would be for piracy, and for filesharing, this reminds me of prohibition, or people who try to outlaw porn.
Look, it will never work, give it up, the people want to share music, the RIAA can adapt to the industry, or they can hiijack our government and change the laws. If they are allowed to change our laws, we arent a democracy.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
How is the RIAA (Recording Industry Assholes Association) finding out what is being traded on these networks? From my understanding (based on the file sharing network at my school) is that the system is only accessible to people on the school's local network (which requires a direct connection to a on-campus drop or use of VPN software AND the use of a school-issued userid/password). Is the RIAA illegally breaking into people's LANs, hiring campus spies or what?
I wonder why they're choosing lawsuits over legal prosecution. As I understand it, lawsuits require less proof, and give them much greater investigatory allowances, but in my book these people should be prosecuted rather than hassled with lawsuits.
What the hell is the point of forcing us to sit through 15 second FBI warnings before movies if they're not going to use the FBI?
Once they've won their million dollar lawsuit, the judge might not throw out the "trespassing" charge against them, but it would be a slap on the wrist penalty for it.
And it sure as hell won't protect you from the million dollar settlement.
Besides, they might not even use the evidence they've illegally obtained. Rather, they would find some student/traitor that would be witness to the "awful theft of IP".
The law isn't a tool you can use, it's for them to use. Think of it as a smart gun that knows their fingerprints... you might punch them and take it, but it won't ever shoot them.
Look, I don't mind paying $18 for a CD if its something I want. Honestly. I download stuff I think I might like, listen to it on my computer (which is a hassle still) and see if I like it enough to buy it. If I don't, I delete it. Honestly. How hard is it to grasp that there are mature people out there who's use of P2P actually benefits the RIAA and other (non-RIAA) artists?
Its a ongoing problem, many groups DONT get air play, so their sales suffer and remain virtually unknown.
Sampling via 'illegal' means is the only way you decide if you want to buy the rest of their stuff...
And a 10 second sample doesnt count, that is not representative of a artists work.
And yes ive bought many albums i never would have risked money on, unless i could hear the WHOLE thing.. I have to work for my music budget...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So far so good, no misinformation yet. But then the spin gets started:
"These systems are best described as 'local area Napster networks,' said Cary Sherman, President, RIAA. 'The court ruled that Napster was illegal and shut it down. These systems are just as illegal and operate in just the same manner."
Ok, so now we're defining a LAN as a LANL? And Sherman is saying that a LAN is the same thing as Napster? But wait, it gets better:
"This is a particularly flagrant way to illegally distribute millions of copyrighted works over the Internet,' added Sherman. 'The people who run these Napster networks know full well what they are doing ?'"
The first quote already differentiated between LANs and the internet, but now they're being lumped together. Also, that question mark at the end is in the original article, and I think that it deserves to be there, since now we are referring to LANs specifically as "Napster networks." But wait, now things get really confusing:
"The perpetrators of these internal Napster networks named in the suits filed by the RIAA make use of software known variously as Flatlan, Phynd or Direct Connect."
Ok, so LANs are "Napster networks" which use software? I thought that Napster was software too, but now I see that it was a network, though I'm still not clear on whether it used software or not. Anyway, I learned a lot from this article, like the RIAA's music piracy hotline, 1-800-BAD-BEAT. Call in and report a rival company or school that is hosting a "Napster network," and keep America running!
"With or without these services, people would be able to share these files," the student said. "It's Microsoft that's allowing people to share these files; we're just accessing public information." So, if some technotard shares out their "My Music" with windows file sharing, they are sueable?
If you want to sample an artist's music before buying a disc, why not listen to the radio, MTV, or the short samples available on Amazon.com (or wherever) to get an idea of what the artist is like?
Personally, when it comes to the mainstream English music I only buy the CD under 2 conditions: 1) I actually like 80% of the songs on it and 2) after listening to those songs for about 2 weeks (not constantly, but often) I still like them. That's why I prefer to download an album (when I can't borrow it from a friend) before I buy it. Most music retail sites rarely have all the songs in an album up, and even when they do hearing only 30 seconds of a song is decieving because if there's an annoying interlude 2 minutes into it that makes me detest it then I'll hate the song (maybe I'm too picky). Also, from past experience, mainstream English music when I like it tends to wear itself out really fast about half the time. I'm hesitant to buy CDs I might be absolutely sick of even the sight of in a couple of weeks. With the price of American mainstream CDs these days, I don't want just "an idea" of what an artist is like, I want to be SURE I like the album I'm paying for. Every artist has good and bad albums.
I blame American mainstream music industry for the high occurrence of crap among their products. I've noticed I'm drastically less cautious when shelling out the cash for foreign albums, part of that is because their albums even look a lot spiffier. I appreciate a product that looks, as well as sounds, thoughtfully produced.
I'm sorry, I don't care whether or not you believe him (or me.) Let me be the 8,000th person to say this on /., but I do buy more music thanks to file-sharing. Before Napster, I bought, on average, 5-10 CDs a year. I'm very, very picky. I like quite a bit, but I don't buy most of it. Only after extended listening, usually due to a friend owning the album (we're talking 5+ listens to the full album here) would I buy a CD.
Post-Napster, I'm buying 20-25 CDs a year. I burn entire albums, yes. Some are acts I already know, but want to check out an album that I don't own. I've been burned enough by the "I like one CD, so I'll probably like all of theirs" mentality enough to avoid it. Some are of acts I've only heard about. Burn it, enjoy it (or not), and expand.
In the middle of last year, I got onto an extended hip-hop kick. I've always been a big fan, but I started listening almost exclusively, and started snapping up CDs both new and used at the rate of 2 or 3 a week. Why? Because after listening to A Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders for about the thousandth time, I happened to be in front of a PC when I heard the line "favorite rap group back in the day was EPMD." Went to Amazon, read some reviews. Downloaded and burned Strictly Business, and listened to it on the way home. Went nuts. Went out and bought two other EPMD albums. Moved on to Nas (1 burn, 1 buy), Biz Markie (2 buys), De La Soul (2 buys), etcetera, etcetera. The result? My hip-hop collection has gone from about 30 CDs to about 80 (15 of which are burns), and I have an extensive collection of early hip-hop which I'm still adding to at a very accelerated rate for me. The moral, as always with posts like this, is that for the price of me "stealing" 10 albums, I've bought 40 others. Yeah, I'm "stealing and pirating." Yeah, the RIAA can feel free to condemn me. But if they would just take their heads out of their butts, they would realize and capitalize on this. So yes, I'm saying the same thing everyone else says, and you probably don't believe me or don't care. But they should.
To bastardize a quote: "Fuck the RIAA. Fuck them up their stupid asses."
In the final analysis, who is this really hurting?
Everybody!. Because the universities must spend more money in defending themselves, which raises their budgets, in the long run they have to raise their tuition.
This means that we have fewer students who can afford college; fewer graduates who have the skills and knowledge to improve our society; fewer educated people to make decisions.
I have watched the deterioration of our educational system for too long. I am getting very damned angry. What can be done to stop this? Do we have to declare open season on lawyers who take cases on simply out of greed? We should at least start slapping down companies/organizations who pull this kind of shit; it's obviously not contributing to the common good. Perhaps fines aren't enough; dismember the companies involved and execute the greedy fucks.
Good lord. I am sick of where this country is headed. The greedmongers have taken over, and we are all fucked in the long run. Maybe it *is* time for a revolution. I honestly don't know what else can be done at this point. The sheeple don't know enough to fix things - not that our political election system seems to work right, either.
Fuck.
SB *does not give a shit about karma tonite*
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Adam, a classmate of mine in a course on Information Technology and the Law noted on the course newsgroup that FindLaw has the complaints online.
The irony is that this happened the same week we discussed the Napster case in the class.
Thanks to Arlo Guthrie! :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Please note that according to this article at The Chronicle of Higher Education that a lot of the colleges are surprised and upset that the RIAA did not contact them or try to work with them on this. My guess is that it's because the institutions have lawyers who can defend in court the fact that a search engine is not illegal. So skip the lawyers by skipping the college. Oh, and don't tell the students until after the lawsuits are filed.
"Is this not a rare fellow, my lord? He's as good at any thing, and yet a fool." -from "As You Like It", Act 5,
it is enforcement of entirely legitimate intellectual property rights against actual infringers
Listen to yourself, man. You are advocating monopolistic practices as well as the possibility of physical harm to real live human beings over the consuption of a small sample of media that could be infinitely replicated without costing the RIAA or anyone else a penny. You think it is right to hurt our students for "stealing" risking possible prison time and the real threat of physical harm over a few leaves that fell off your Apple tree?
There really are no more Robin Hoods...
You people just make me sick! You ARE sick.