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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."
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
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.
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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.
All it takes is a big enough bounty for one student to cave and access it/report it for violations. They'll have a local IP address, access as a student, and be difficult extremely difficult to predict ahead of time. Plus, being college students, the bounty probably wouldn't need to be too big... maybe a pizza.
Actually, the RIAA bought me pizza once. They came to a class I had in 1997-98 (Legal Issues in Computing) to discuss music piracy with some college students. At the time, I wasn't very familiar with the concept, but, uh, shortly after, I became very well acquainted. They even gave us some free CDs!
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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!
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.