Analysis of RIAA vs Princeton Student

An anonymous reader submits: "Joe Barillari, a computer science student studying under Prof. Ed Felten, posted an analysis on his blog of the lawsuit filed by the RIAA against a Princeton college student for running "Napster-like" networks. He argues that the case doesn't quite live up to its contributory infringement claim due to limitations in the DMCA. A good read!"

Comments

RIAA can collect

[archnerd]

They can't collect the full 97 billion, obviously, but most of that is punitive damages, which are immune to bankruptcy. So, if the RIAA wins, the defendants will be in debt to them for the rest of their natural lives, unless one of them gets very, very rich.

fp?

Re:RIAA can collect

[abhisarda]

Challenging the legality of this case applies to Joesph Nievelt too. He had 1100 mp3 on his system, unlike the 650,000 that the RIAA stated. While Napster could *only* be used to search for mp3's this search and index tool is used for a lot of files other than mp3's.

Speaking as a present MTU student, if Joseph is expelled then MTU will be loosing a very talented programmer.

He was ranked 4th in the nation in the Top Coder competition
Top Coder MTU News

Re:RIAA can collect

[Anonymous Coward]

One constant throughout human history has been the struggle between the "haves" and the "have nots." For the purpose of this discussion, I will refer to the "haves" as "the elite" and will call the "have nots" "the rabble." I am doing this to emphasize the fact that the rabble, while comprising most of the population, is almost always pitifully weak and disorganized, thanks to constant manipulation by the elite. "Divide and conquer" has always been the name of the game here; it has always been easy for the elite to manipulate public opinion and keep the rabble squabbling among each other.

The elite, though comprising only 1% of the population (the exact percentages are arguable, though the figures I am using are in the right ballpark), control most of the wealth. (In modern America, one has to be worth at least $100 million to be a serious player.) The elite don't have to work per se; they spend their time making deals, which, although stressful at times, is much too stimulating to fall into the realm of institutionalized drudgery which people commonly refer to as "work."
Falling below the elite in status and power are what could be called "elite wannabes," "lackeys of the elite," or "wealthy rabble." These people are very wealthy by rabble standards.

Power and status are hardwired into human behavior. Before the rise of agriculture, when humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers, it was difficult to accumulate power and status, since possessions were limited by what people could carry with them. There were probably powerful lineages that got passed through the generations, but the gap between the powerful and everybody else was limited due to the nature of their lifestyle.

All this changed with the rise of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago. For the first time, people became sedentary, and they produced surpluses of grain which had to be defended. These surpluses meant unprecedented power for whoever was able to control them, and the first elite was born. For the first time, organized war became possible.

Howard Zinn's "A Peoples' History of America" describes the real dynamics at work behind the American Revolution. Rather than some idealistic "liberty and justice for all," the American Revolution was actually fomented by the American elite, who chafed under the British royalty.

It has been pointed out that by fighting an enemy, one takes on many of the characteristics of that enemy. Interestingly, it was World War 2 when America became a fascist power. By fascism, I am referring to Mussolini's definition: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

By 1945, state and corporate power in America had merged into what was later termed the "military-industrial complex," even though it wasn't until 1961 that Dwight Eisenhower gave his famous speech warning America about a system that had already been in place for 15 years.

Even though America had become fascist by 1945, there remained a vast amount of consolidation to do: there still remained the rabble and their pesky vote (an archaic carryover from the Revolutionary War era). The rabble had recently suffered two major traumas -- the Great Depression and World War Two, and had reached an unprecedented level of solidarity. The rabble had become dangerous, and it was necessary to manipulate them back into their customary position of helplessness, while at the same time enhancing the power of the elite.

It's important to realize that everything to come was perfectly "legal." (The elite have always defined what is "legal" and what is "illegal.") Further, there was no need for a "hidden conspiracy." Every iota of what the elite did was reported (and is still being reported) in the press every day. There was no need for the elite to get together and form a conspiracy: they already shared the same line of thinking. An analogy is the peace movement: nobody has to tell anybody what to do.

The elite strategy, which began during WW 2 and was mod

Re:RIAA can collect

[Anonymous Coward]

So, lets compare. In the OJ suit (the civil, not the criminal), he fined less than a hundred million for murder. Four students get fined about a hundred billion for setting up a file sharing network. Another case is Microsoft. For alleged monopoly practices, there were discussions of fining them several billion, not a hundred billion. But maybe the RIAA is correct: four students will start the end of the free world, so it is good to ruin their lives and make an example of them for any other doomsday followers.

Re:RIAA can collect

[TiMac]

It could be worse.

If the RIAA triumphs over these students, and they face punitive damages of such astronomical proportions, I would hope that they'd be put on 24/7 suicide watch.

Faced with a hopeless existence, that no matter how hard they work, they will still be in dept to a large faceless corporation, is a modern-day form of slavery. These guys would never achieve their dreams (assuming their dreams involved some sort of profit), and therefore, it's not hard to think that they might find such a life not worth leading.

I hope so very much that this doesn't occur...but if it were to happen, I would be at the head of the line to go and kick the crap out of those greedy RIAA bastards for causing the death of a poor student.

The parent is correct...legal or not, how can even the RIAA think this is okay? Oh...I forgot, cartels can do whatever they want.

As a final thought....remember in Austin Powers 2 when Dr. Evil asks the President (in the 60s) for $100B? They laughed him under the table. Yet, that's exactly what these people are facing...and its no laughing matter.

DOWN with the RIAA.

Not that it matters...

[Anonymous Struct]

He makes a lot of good points, and the gist of it is that the RIAA's case is pretty poorly made. But that's something that most people already know, maybe even including the RIAA. Thing is, they don't have to win in order to be effective. They could get creamed in court and it still wouldn't matter. All they have to do is scare the living bejezus out of a handful of people and they'll get what they're after. Aiming a multi-billion dollar lawsuit at one student has a pretty sobering effect on anybody that's nearby and watching, and the RIAA has the resources to file suit all day and night, win or lose.

Of course, based on some of the numbers that have been coming out over the last few years, they might actually stand to gain more by collecting the $96 billion from this one guy than by ending file sharing.

Re:Not that it matters...

[jandrese]

Actually the $97 Billion doesn't matter either. The only thing that matters is that they drive this guy so far in debt with legal bills (by dragging on the proceedings for a few years), that he'll never get out and serve as a warning to any college student who thinks that information wants to be free. All they want is for people to say "I don't want to end up like that guy, starving cold alone and constantly in court defending himself."

Re:Not that it matters...

[MMaestro]

The 'scare tactic' of the RIAA isn't effective against its target though. You're talking about a David and Goliath battle with less than 5% of the Davids looking on as the Goliath sneezes on one of them splattering them in the ground.

Ok a little too graphic but the point is this; you're targeting millions, if not billions, of people who download illegal MP3s many of whom have not even heard about this case. Even if it succeeds in scaring people, or even distantly succeeds in having a law passed against these programs, whos going to be insane enough to enforce it? (Using China as an example) China has trouble as it is censoring webpages which it deems illegal, so how is China going to start censoring certain search programs without censoring Windows or web browsers such as Google which has a search programs?

This is the internet, not your hodgepodge hippie group with a bunch of college kids protesting against Vietnam that you can isolate and silence. Unless you want to try and enforce the Internet, which is suicide even if you had a couple trillion dollars and the world smartest programmers working for you, in the long run; this is going to blow over like a hyped up wimpy rain storm.

Re:Not that it matters...

[FunkSoulBrother]

you enforce it through things like AOL and MSN clients. The RIAA is a business, not a religious group. Which means it deals not in numbers like 0% and 100%, but in gradients. If they can succesfully shut out AOL/MSN users through their client then they may regain 30% of casual pirates as buyers. Thats a major victory for them.

If anything, be happy. They know they can't really shut down Usenet and IRC, all the geek haunts shall be fine.

Re:Did anyone bother to ask...

[MP3Chuck]

"I'm sure that at least some of the artists being shared are among the 90% or so of musical artists that are in favor of file sharing;"

BAHAHAHA ... where did you get numbers like that?? Do you honestly think that 90% of musical artists agree with distribution of their music without getting paid for it (regardless of whether they get a lot or a little)? C'mon now...

A few questions...

[Nalanthi]

Ok... so basically what the article is saying is that RIAA hasn't hopw of winning the indirect infrigement charge and if the kid can get a decent legal representative he can eat the direct damage charges a long with those. So I have a few questions/points I want to raise.

1. Has the RIAA left themselves open to a countersuit for such a poorly founded lawsuit?

2. How can we inform the public at large at how poorly this (and other) RIAA finding is founded.

3. The author repeteadly apply's internet conventions and precedents to the lan, this makes sense to me, but will it make sense to the average computer user?

Thats all folks,
Nalanthi

Re:Good Points, however..

[ibbey]

for any of that to matter the Judge and Legal counsel would have to be technologically literate.

Not really. The case spelled out, even in the executive summary, is quite clear. In addition, the possible repercussions of this case are so significant that I can't imagine that Mr. Peng won't have the best possible legal council.

Think about it... If wake.princeton.edu is liable for $150,000 dollars for every copyrighted song they liked to, so is Google, Yahoo, Inktomi,... I guarantee that they (knowingly or not) link to more copyrighted material then wake did.

The DMCA spells out very clearly what a copyright holder needs to do to deal with copyright violations on the web. In this case, the RIAA is trying to be lazy & not have to send out thousands of cease & desists. Unfortunately for them, they have no legal ground to stand on.

Re:The RIAA Has No Case

[ibbey]

The basis of Copyright Law is simple: A copyrighted work can not be used to make money by anyone but the copyright holder. If Mr. Peng were "bootlegging" copyrighted music - ie Making CDs and selling them for a personal profit - then yes, he would be in violation of Copyright Law. But this wasn't the case.

Ummm... I think you need to get your money back on that course... You are violating copyright law whenever you distribute copyrighted material without the copyright owners permission, unless your use falls under the category of fair use. In most cases, even copies given away freely are not allowed. Profit is a factor in determining your liability, but not your guilt.

Re:Peng has troubles though

[Wylfing]

The liability he may have for [direct infringement] could easily force him to settle with the RIAA without ever bringing up the more-questionable "contributory infringement" copyright issues to court.

Ding, ding, ding! You win the prize. The RIAA does not believe it will collect nearly 100 billion dollars from a college student. They do, however, believe they can threaten this fellow with, let's say, 100,000 dollars in direct infringement liability -- a number they could probably get a judge to buy -- and get him to cave. NDA the settlement and then go tell Congress how this proves they're up against 100-billion-dollar "piracy emporiums" on Uni campuses.

You know, just like they seized the equivalent of 421 CD burners.

Re:google cache

[puck71]

I wish I had mod points to mod that up. Thanks for pointing that out...I wanted to actually get a look at what we're talking and not just here what the RIAA Information Ministers say about it.

Unfortunately, he appears to have been pretty stupid about what he was doing. First off, the site shouldn't have been accessible from outside of the network. That was his first mistake. Second, his Search In field could be used against him. Notice they're pretty much all for probably illegal stuff (mp3 avi divx mpg, etc). However, it's the last box that's the worst for him. The filesize filter is a great idea, but why in hell did he put in those descriptions like "music" and "full movies"? Just put the filesizes in and let the user figure it out. Don't lob the RIAA/MPAA such an easy pitch to hit out.

With all this said, I still don't think they really have a case, because when push comes to shove, it was still just a search engine searching the campus network. But with as much money as they have, you don't really need too great a case. I wish the guy luck, but he did bring it on himself with some key mistakes.

Re:google cache

[fuzzybunny]

You have valid points, however I question their relevance to the situation.

-Is it illegal to make a search engine available off a campus network? No. Unless Princeton network usage policy says otherwise, there is no issue here.

-Regarding the 'Search In' field, let's be frank. You and I both "know" that he was providing what essentially amounts to a warez crawler. Nudge nudge wink win. However, before the law, "patently obvious to anyone with common sense" is not sufficient evidence to convict someone or to win a case. I'll go out on a ledge and compare this to a 'fair use' scenario, where you may use, say, a certain file format to transfer illegal information, or cryptography to engage in illicit acts, but the mere fact that there are legitimate uses for these technologies, and that they were not designed explicitly with malfeasance in mind, prevents legal action against anyone using them just because they're using them.

Same with a search engine that explicitly allows qualifying strings such as 'mpg' or 'mp3'. I realize that it's a big leap between allowing me to enter these strings into google and providing a ready-made interface that already enters them for me, but I don't think the legal difference is that big, or relevant. And even if it were, I fall back on my above argument--there are legal mpg/mp3/avi/divx files not covered by restrictive copyrights. Disputes about illegal material should be handled between the copyright holder and the provider of the material--not a completely neutral intermediary.

Same applies to the filesize filter. He is obviously attempting to qualify searches, and I am positive that he was aware that a lot of these searches would be for pirated material. So what?

As long as the interface did not differentiate between the legality of content, but rather between file format types, I would be shocked to find that there is a case.

If the guy was sharing copyrighted material himself, well, my sympathies as I really dislike the RIAA, but that's a different matter entirely.