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MTU President Peeved At RIAA
mcdude writes "The president of Michigan Technological University has responded to the RIAA suit against one of his students, accusing the RIAA of encouraging cooperation with universities but then bypassing those procedures with the current suit. Curtis Tompkins says, 'I am very disappointed that the RIAA decided to take this action in this manner. As a fully cooperating site, we would have expected the courtesy of being notified early and allowing us to take action following established procedures, instead of allowing it to get to the point of lawsuits and publicity.'" Attention universities: lawsuits are your reward for being a "fully-cooperating site". If you missed the lawsuit news, see our earlier story.
hm, it seems the RIAA won't stop until they have angered everyone... although, I must say I would enjoy watching a fight between the RIAA and Microsoft!
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
accusing the RIAA of encouraging cooperation with universities but then bypassing those procedures with the current suit
For some reason, I mis-read "suit" as "stunt." On reflection, I do believe I had it right the first time.
Awful lot of law-stunts going on these days.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
Maximum transmission unit President? Who does he report to - the Emperor of TCP/IP?
The RIAA are pushing forward with a number of highly publicized actions in order to draw attention to the problem (as they see it) and try to scare people off. There is nothing to be gained by them dealing with people through the sort of process described Mr Thompkin's letter.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
The RIAA seems to consider itsself a pretty powerful force, but really, they're just another sales organization. Universities, on the other hand, hold substantial power as gatekeepers to one of the music industry's largest customer groups. If colleges start banning RIAA-affiliated bands from performing on campus, and eliminate all RIAA-affilitated material from their on campus stores, the message to the RIAA might become a little clearer:
You are an unnecessary organization.
Music can and will be made, produced, and sold without you.
Leave us alone or cease to exist.
"Our Information Technology department, upon receiving this letter, contacted your office twice by phone (leaving messages for Jonathon Whitehead) and three times by e-mail in an effort to update our reference materials and procedures with you." Read between the lines, you schools are not out to save you. Here is proof they are working with the RIAA and the RIAA is looking to "set examples"
This is all well and good but what exactly are the implications here. Obviously the university can't condone priracy, but the idea of course is that a University does need to be a place for the free exchange of ideas and they need to protect their students.
I guess what's importain here is that the RIAA can more easy track a static ip whereas for a dial up connection they have to go though the ISP. Though I'm starting to wonder how they knew anyway who it was without the university's co-operation.
Reguardless, what can we realisticly expect Universities to do to help students? Any takers?
Universities should also fully cooperate with the BSA. Otherwise they could be in big trouble...
[--------**-] -- sacrasm meter
Red or White Wine?
Tastes Great or Less Filling?
Lethal Injection or Gas Chamber?
Allow a Univeristy official handle the situation, or let the RIAA file lawsuits?
It ranks right up there....
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
Everyone knows the RIAA is a bunch of publicity seeking, money grubbing pricks. They are going to do anything and everything in their power to make it look as if they are being vicitmized and driven out of business. The only allies they have are those that they bought. Hopefully universities and ISPs will realize that cooperation with the RIAA will only cause them more headaches and lawsuits in the long run as the RIAA lashes out and sues everyone in sight.
These people look deep into my soul and assign me a number based on the order I joined.
They pick a small technical school (no offense to MTU). If they want some publicity, they should go after a large law school.
Oh, yeah, they want good publicity.
fair points, well made etc. Builds a little, seeming to draw to the conclusion and then ends with
Taking all of this into consideration, we realize the seriousness of the allegations against Mr. Nievelt and will cooperate fully in resolving this matter.
Was I the only one expecting to see "Fuck You" - maybe even all in caps?
How much more of this can the world take from the RIAA before so many people are so pissed off that there's a huge political backlash against the RIAA? They're going the right way about it. Give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves. Go RIAA!
Stick Men
Your organization responded to none of these messages.
That's because everyone in the RIAA was too busy either pushing lawsuits or restoring backup copies of their webpage.
"I bet I'll get blamed for this." --Mayor Quimby
It's probably a safe assumption that hundreds of students at any given university are sharing copyrighted media files at any given time on various P2P networks. The students being selectively prosecuted in these lawsuits were probably chosen because of the large amount of material they had in their shared libraries or becuse they went to better known or reputable universities. It would seem to me that with millions of users on these P2P networks at any given time, a plea of "not guilty" on the grounds of selective prosecution would be a no-brainer.
I've received numerous parking tickets in NYC when no other cars on that street received any, simply because I don't have NY plates and would be less likely to contest the tickets. However every single one was dismissed on grounds of selective prosecution, and that's just a $50 parking ticket. We're talking about a $97,000,000,000 lawsuit against a few people that were doing the same thing as hundreds of other people at their university, and millions of other people nationwide. Give me a break, these lawsuits are just plain rediculous and the world knows it.
There is an important point here for universities.
Having served on a comittee that heard some of these cases come up, the RIAA generally asks that the school shut down the site, cut of network access, and turn over the students name.
The fully cooperating university must be aware of what this last step means. It means the RIAA has the power to bypass any intermediate sanctions and sue a (usually poor) college student directly.
You would be surprised, but losing dorm room internet access for a year is considered a pretty significant sanction. This raises the issue to whole new level, one that is rarely seen on a college campus in another context.
The schools involved need to jump into this with their eyes wide open. It doesn't seem they were that aware in this case.
With the RIAA? If the RIAA had notified the school of the transgressions, I think they would have had a much better success rate in reducing piracy. Because they pursued legal action, they now have pissed off everyone in that community.
I wonder, if they pursued legal action at Michigan State University, could they be held legally accountable for the ensuing riot?
Tom
(Modified a bit...)
LANDO: LAWSUITS? That was never part of the deal!
DARTH VADER: I'm altering the deal. Pray that I do not alter it any further.
Vader leaves
LANDO (to himself): This deal is getting worse all the time!
So sayeth the editor
Attention universities: lawsuits are your reward for being a "fully-cooperating site".
The university isn't being sued, it's the student. The president dislikes the bad publicity that the lawsuit is generating, and I can't blame him for that. It drives away potential students when they find that one of the places they're looking at allows the RIAA in so easily. Sure, you can find out about how MTU was 'fully-cooperating' with the RIAA with a little bit of research, but now anyone who has a slight interest in the RIAA knows about it.
So, he's getting sued for a maximum of almost 100 billion dollars (not Trillion, like one article implied). This figure comes from ~650,000 mp3 files @ $150,000 each. But what did the guy do? He kept a database of what was on the university lan. That's it. He didn't create a file-sharing client, or write protocols for distributing music. He actually only had a relatively small mp3 collection on his machine (1100 files if IIRC).. and I know a dozen people that legally own enough CD's to make a 1100 file collection.
To think I was going to set up a web-interface lan spider here at my university.. if i only had an extra ethernet port around here. That would put any lawsuit in the $23 Bil range for me. Scary.
If you don't notice a student with a Massive MP3 server on your network, fire your admin. In my epxerence comanpies and universities realy arn't paying this much attention. They draft polocies and put procidures in place to basicaly cover there asses. They realy don't care about stoping it.
Perhaps this well be enough of an incentive for network owners to take this stuff seriously. It's breaking the law, and just because you don't agree, dosn't mean you should ignore it.
If you realy hate the DMCA, then protest to your congressmen or support one of the numerous organizations out there dedicated to getting rid of it. But don't act surprised when some acutally inforces the law and uses the system. The RIAA are acting within there rights, the music distributors are not.
"Failure is not an option, it's part of the standard package"
... not that the RIAA filed suit without informing MTU what it was doing, but because he actually expected advanced notice!!!
Let's get real here! The RIAA has been exploiting the DMCA since it passed! If anything, somebody at some time is going to have to stand up for "fair use" rights (whether this student is guilty of infringement or not!). My sense is that universities, who have the most to gain from strong fair use laws, should step up to the plate. Instead, in a prime example of the pussification of America, universities cowtow and kiss ass to the RIAA out of fear of legal reprecussions.
Well, what's worse? Allowing the RIAA to slowly weaken fair use so that any lawsuit becomes a multi-billion dollar slam dunk for them, or stepping up to the plate (and paying the legal fees) to defend now?
Either way, the universities (whoever) are going to be out of a lot of cash. But, by fighting now, they at least can say they had the balls to do something about it!
-A
Hello there,
I go to the University of Iowa.
We had a service here for a while called "HawkSearch" (our team being the Hawkeyes), run by a student. It existed for a while in the form of a http search page. One day, an article was written about it in the paper. The University had Hawksearch down within 10 minutes, and everyone they could prove used it had their internet connection shut off.
Of course, the university isn't stupid. They know exactly what I know, which is, every student in the school with a computer has kazaa and 80% of them run it like a vital piece of their windows XP. p2p will never die, so we have to live with it. until everyone realizes this (which may never happen), there will be this ongoing, useless struggle where some people suffer and some don't - it's the luck of the draw.
As for local area network sharing... it's just the wrong place to do it (on campus). I mean, if one of your friends wants a CD, they can borrow it. If you want music off the radio, you may tape it. I mean, let's be honest - your friends burn your cds, and you burn theirs. Is this worse or better? Better because it's not on a large scale?
p2ps next stage (if wide area sharing dies, IF) will be small local area networks, and without a university packet sniffer to rat out a small percentage of the guilty people, there will be no way to prevent it.
Let not the guilty go unpunished? Ha.
"It was like trying to hand out speeding tickets at the Indy 500."
- Apocalypse Now
Set aside, for a moment, the credibility (or lack thereof) pertaining to this case. What scares me is the way a large bullying corporation can intimidate and screw individuals through litigation. Even if they lose the lawsuit, if they can prevent individuals from creating software and services which fringe upon RIAA financial interests and venues of profitability, then they will see themselves as successful. Must we all be looking over our shoulders anytime we work on projects which potentially could be used for piracy in addition to legitimate purposes? Will I be the next person in the RIAA's crosshairs, meat for a litigation nightmare.
Thanks be to the RIAA for creating a reverse fortune lottery. Millions of Americans are players. I wonder who'll be the next lucky winner who gets his/her life screwed? Perhaps the RIAA can kill two birds with one stone -- innovation and justice.
Are they going to sue everybody? I don't understand why artists stand behind this organization. have they all gotten so greedy that they're willing to alienate their fans to this point? this is absolutely ridiculous. 97 billion?!!??!? are they out of their minds? this is just getting stupid now. it reminds me of the iraqi information minister "we are in control, the usa is running away in fear" Denial. It runs rampant among out of control regimes.
>> Attention universities: lawsuits are your >> reward for being a "fully-cooperating site". LOL! how old are you again? :-) LOL.
you're vastly underestimating the apathy of the typical college student.
A physical or digital signature of the owner of an exclusive copyright right (i.e., the copyright owner himself or the owner's exclusive licensee of the right(s) to reproduce, distribute, display, perform or create derivatives) or the owner's authorized agent;
A description of the works claimed to be infringed;
A description of the allegedly infringing works, sufficient to enable the agent to find them;
Sufficient information to enable the agent to contact the complainer;
A statement that the complainer believes in good faith that the use of the material is not authorized by the owner, the owner's agent or the law; and
A statement that the information in the notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that the complainer is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of one or more exclusive copyright rights.
Usually #1, the physical or digital signature of the copyright holder, is never sent with the complaint. So the college responds with a request for the signature. Usually there is never a reply back.
A lot of the work in tracking down pirates is done by third-party companies which have to send the signature request back up to the people they are working for. This small but significant bit of red tape seems to become an annoyance enough that no signature is provided. Thus making the complaint more or less dead.
So one can be fully-cooperating with the MPAA but at the same time not cooperating in a way the MPAA would like, mainly to ignore the signature requirement and just shut off whoever is providing the pirated content.
Let the superpowers of rights restriction destroy each other...then we can have free mp3 and divx files of the legal battles.
When the Universities see a drop in tuition they should sue the RIAA. Don't all students go for the big pipes and free tunes?
Trolling is a art,
This isn't about those schools. It didn't matter whether the President of MTU, of Princeton or of Wake bent down and licked the choccy starfish of the RIAA---they wanted to make this a loud, ugly lawsuit. Two reasons:
(1) Chilling effect. Every local sharing service I know of is shut down. The UConn Phynd hub had a message up the day of the lawsuit, and the website had vanished the next day. By making every kid in American thinking "I could be next0rz!!", they shut down every Phynd/Direct Connect/Flatlan system in the nation. But that's just gravy, because the real goal is...
(2) Precedent. If they can get these kids to knuckle under (which they most certainly will do, given the threat) and waive their federal appeal in return for a reduced settlement (pay $1k/year for the rest of your life, for instance), a big, shiny precedent will have been set---that the original settlement amount ($98B or whatever it gets reduced to) is a legit fine for the offense. Then, armed with precedent, they go after the bigger fish---KaZaA, ShareReactor---for setting up similar services.
It's dastardly clever.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I... I can't believe that actually exists.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This is probably due to the fact that MTU students provide more revenue to the school than the RIAA does; and the fact that MTU doesn't want to see a drop in enrollment as a consequence.
But still...just because your university isn't allowing you to break the law, doesn't mean they're conspiring against you.
This comment is brought to you by the drug caffiene, and the number 5.
I mean, this is unacceptable! This Powell guy somehow manages to ruin every effort from Rummy and his gang to alienate every other country in the world (except Micronesia). Prez Bush should fire Powell and give the job to RIAA.
The university could also civilly charge the RIAA (and the products they represent) as presenting an "attractive nuisance" which is disruptive to the students' learning environment and the campus as a whole.
Our RIAA is acting as though it were Standard Oil from ~1900. Anyone that interferes with it becomes a target for outrageous lawsuits nad public humiliation in hopes that everyone else will cease and desist. What is most concerning here is that the RIAA is a de facto trust that is likely breaking the law by monopolization of intellectual property and distribution with respect to music. Technical innovation is being stifled by the DMCA because they apparently can't keep up to date with current means of distributing music. Mostly this is about greed: both on the part of the RIAA to maintain its non-realistic profit expectations and of some people who refuse to pay for music at all. There are some people out there engaged in blatently criminal acts of intellectual property theft as currently defined by the law.
What we need to do is 1) Reform the current laws (maybe with a "DMCA Lite"?) 2) Educate incoming freshmen at major universities about what the hell can happen to you for getting involved in this crap and 3) putting the RIAA in check by either legal means or a boycott on their products. Standard Oil did the same sorts of things to potential competitors and had all kinds of legal protection before TR came along and broke it up, but GW is certainly not interested in hurting potential campaign donors nor is anyone else I can think of given the proximity of a presidential election. Certainly the RIAA does not expect to collect 0.097 trillion dollars from a student but I'll wager a Golden Dollar or two that we'll hear that exact same number used in reference to Congress on why the RIAA needs "protection" against a new technology they can not use to their benefit. Allowing this sort of corporate welfare hurts both the consumer by allowing higher prices and the entire populace by allowing a de facto trust to run into the rights of the people simply for corporate benefit. Can anyone else present potential solutions to this problems?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Me thinks I will begin blocking RIAA owned ip addresses at the firewall level on every protocol and layer... too bad they won't play ball, we really wanted to help.
If I were a university admin, I would do the same thing if I were you... If they can't see it, it isn't happening. Yeah, they can still find stuff, but it won't be as easy.
They have officially shot themselves in the foot. If they want to find something, their employees will have to do it on their own home network.
l8,
AC
Comment removed based on user account deletion
ISTR that in the Kevin Mitnick trial, companies including Sun claimed that Kevin's actions had cost them $billions in lost sales. However, some share holders took legal action against them, because by law, publically listed companies must disclose losses of this scale in a formal statement. The fact that none of them had suggested that either (a) they had not incurred the losses they claimed, or (b) they were guilty of misleading their shareholders.
I was wondering if a similar approach could be used in this case. Mythical multi-billion-dollar losses are being arrived at by multiplying hypothetical figures together once again. Anyone know what happened to Sun et al in the end?
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
He is also the Commander-in-Chief of the System Templars. The RIAA should tred warily!
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
The president defending the students??
How uncharacteristic of the university's administration!
I went to Tech for (several) years, and the administration
constantly ignored complaints and requests from the students.
I think the only reason the University had the student government
and took opinion polls was so that they could do the exact opposite
of what the students wanted.
On a side note, the RIAA may have sh!t in the wrong backyard by pissing
off MTU prez Tompkins. If memory serves, he had some pretty close ties
to Ex-US prez Mr. Clinton.
When Hillary is president in 2004 maybe she'll declare them an unfair
monopoly and break them up into mini-RIAAs!
I attended Michigan Technological University for 5 years (yeah it took me 5 years...SO WHAT!) for my B.S. in Computer Science. This is absolutely the most publicity that MTU has EVER received. People outside of Michigan usually have never heard of MTU. I'm sure president Tomkins is really smiling on the inside over this lawsuit. I feel bad for the student, but not for the University.
P.S. It really is a good school. There just aren't enough women there.
I wonder how the supreme court's recent 10x damages cap might affect these cases. Sure, RIAA gestapo claim 98B actual damages (not punitive), but still....
Don't expect your school (or any other common carrier) to take your heat or cushion the consequences for what you do. You think what you're doing isn't bad? Fine, make your case in court, or with the public, or with your legislators; that isn't the issue. Don't drag your school into it. Even if your school has been shielding you up to now, it is apparent that the RIAA now sees through this.
IMHO, this is probably a good thing. While I believe this president desires to act in his students' interest and likely just wants the RIAA to go away so he can getback to his real job, waging this war through proxies is probably really just imposing additional burden on the school and really hurting everyone. And it must be damned unsatisfying for the RIAA. And it just muddies the issues. Let the engagement really begin, and if the results turn out to be radically different than peoples' sense of justice, then public policy can be revised as a result of it.
There isn't any reason for the schools to be a major part of the process, except to perform their duties as a common carrier. Just let it go, president Tompkins, and in a few years -- one way or another -- you won't have to deal with this crap anymore.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You think this will stop Kazaa?
lol.
I loved it when I was at a university, I could download any movie I wanted in ten minutes.
Or, I could knock on my neighbors door and ask to borrow a DVD or CD for copying, both are just as easy.
Go ahead MPAA or RIAA, stop case #2. LOL, come on, do it.
You are horse and buggy operators in an automobile world, lol, lawsuits, bring it on, you can't stop internal combustion.
Holy crap! Does that mean that suddenly my ISP is responsible for what I do with the connection? Is the RIAA going to start suing cable companies and telcos next?
There was the same brouhaha about kiddie porn in the early days of the net---is the provider of a connection responsible for the content passing through it? If you make them responsible for monitoring one type of traffic, they have to then monitor all types of traffic.
Sorry, but I just don't buy it. Don't the words "common carrier" mean anything any more?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If past precedent says anything. Absolutely Zero...
So you sue the kid... and get $x billion, million, thousand whatever...
What do gwen steffani and the other artists who are supposedly being protected get? Absolutely nothing.
If the RIAA wants to talk about fair. They should catalog every violation by signature (as someone has already stated) and make sure the appropriate artists get their "fair share" of the settlement money. This would also add credibility to their insane 1,000,000,000 dollar lawsuits...
But this is probably too much work.
Let be honest RIAA... it's not really about the artists anyway is it its about the record labels being able to continue gain huge profits while they throw the scraps to the artists and cry "We're taking heavy losses really don't blame us!"
See, at my school it was exactly the opposite (until this latest lawsuit)---the ResNet folks actually encouraged the Phynd hub, because it cut down on external bandwidth use. Since the University is in the middle of a terrible money problem, they care more about staying in the black than appeasing some far-off corporation.
Of course, now that the far-off corporation can cost them more money than even the most ridiculous bandwidth use, the equation has changed.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
All this made me wonder if free broadcast is copyrighted. I mean, you never see that FBI warning at the beginning of a movie on broadcast (free) tv. You never hear any copyright warning announced on the radio before or after a set of songs. So, if you recorded FM broadcast, and parsed the songs out as mp3s, could you trade those? It's more work, but would it be legal? Most of the mp3s out there are 128kbs anyway - I imagine the radio rips would be comparable. So, we leave our computers on recording the genre of choice, save them all as decent quality mp3's, and after a little p2p, the only songs the RIAA cares about are available. So, the only problem (if recording radio is legal) is proving that your particular song came from radio ... and getting enough people to participate.
I went to tech for 4 years and I can say personally that the administration there doesn't care a bit about the students. The only reason that the administration would ever take any kind of action would be if it 1) made them look good or 2) made them money. I would also like to mention that I was one of the first (back in the day when running hotline servers and making money of banner click throughs were all the rage) at tech to get busted by the riaa. Thh whole time the riaa was threatening me with a $15.5 million dollar lawsuit (you can bet my parents were thrilled) the school never did anything except threaten me themselves. As long as i have a soapbox to stand on I would also like to mention that after four years I decided that the faculty was so worthless and underqualified that I best take myself somewhere else cause a degree from tech WONT get you a job unless you want to work in Michigan or Wisconson! I am happy to say that while still degreeless (I'm starting classes again this summer online to finish) I chose to go the certification route and am now a happily employed Systems Administrator as well as running a consulting business on the side. Screw You Tompkins and Janners!
Yea so... The RIAA seems to pull this $93 Bill figure out of its ass and slap it on a poor college student, who has less mp3's than a lot of kids I know on my campus. Is the RIAA really protecting anyone? These "artists" still have their Escalades, Ferrari's and huge Mansions. They can't really expect $93 Billion in compensation costs from anyone... rediculous. The more they pull lame stunts like this the worse its going to get. They're messing with a theoretical system that "we" built and is constantly evolving. The RIAA is fighting with a worldwide community that is a thousand times more intelligent then themselves and infinitely more passionate.
Stop morons. Anyone who TRUSTS the riaa to cooperate with them is an idiot. Curtis just got what he always had coming but never knew it. They were always going to do WHAT THEY WANTED, working with you Curtis is just a way to get MORE INFO YOU FUCKTARD!!!! Ever heard, keep your enemies closer than your friends? Better learn it quick you idiot.
Evil bald guy (RIAA) starts out small... requires "1 Million Dollars" (small fines)... gets laughed at by UN.
Evil bald guy makes correction... inserts pinky into corner of mouth, and asks for "1 Billion Dollars" (big fines, and/or jailtime)... it tends to get a bit more notice.
I'm guessing that initial attempts with the DMCA worked, but the lesser penalties didn't really attract notice. Now that they're asking for "1 billion dollars" (in essence), as well as MS pursueing jailtime for modchips, I expect a lot more notice. Hopefully this will lead to the DCMA being made into toilet paper and being flushed... but in the immediate future I see a fair number of scared people thinking twice about running astray of violations - which is the exact intent of such lawsuits.
However, the sheer amount of money adds to the rediculousness of this case. The only thing that will push it through is if the student bargains down on a guilty plea, or the judge gets a similarly significant amount in anonymous "donation".
They pick a small technical school (no offense to MTU). If they want some publicity, they should go after a large law school.
Perhaps they are only testing the waters here, and will carry on with larger fish should this go well for them. After all, this could blow up in their faces, why risk that with a high profile target?
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
simply hold a series of assemblies (or speak at a football game) and explain what happened
Unfortunately MTU no longer sponsores a football team due to the last round of budget cuts from the state.
Here are two past Slashdot articles that are on point:
... the very type of system that the Princeton student is being brought up on charges for running.
Rosen, Valenti Warn Colleges About P2P
Handling Campus AUP (non-)Violations?
The second one is particularly interesting as it deals with Windows file-share indexing
I go to MTU, and frankly, tompkins is an idiot.
How about taking some responsibility for your own actions and not being a thief in the first place?
Maybe it will take a ton of bad press and embarrassmnet for universities to start (effectively) policing their networks for illegal activity.
honestly, i think RIAA deserves an icon on slashdot... or a topic by itself...
my blog
He wimped out at the end. This letter basically says "I'm mad at you, but I'm not going to do anything about it. Please don't hurt me."
He should have told the RIAA to go screw themselves and try pressing charges on 15,000 students all sharing files openly. In which case, of course they would just press charges against the university.
It's unfortunate how much fear the RIAA wields. This letter is essentially pointless, and will have no effect. I'm sure the recipient had a good chuckle and threw it away.
MTU has got a buttload of NRA members, being up in the U.P. and all. It's my understanding that the NRA is one of only two lobbying organizations that can effectually push legislation through.
So, how about we ask the NRA to come to bat for it's yooper members, and push some legislation through that compromises the integrity of the RIAA? Something to the effect of "Thou shalt not be a middle-man in industries that don't require it..." or "If you write the song, you own the copyright to both the song and any recording thereof done by you."
I figure that the RIAA would bitch and moan about such a bill, but eventually die when it's passed.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
By innovation I didn't mean this case specifically, I meant anything that distributes music electronically (Napster, Kazaa, etc.). The student could get hit for a lack of originality charge if such a thing existed. If the RIAA had foresight, they'd have found a way to do e-distribuition themselves before Napster meant something other than a sleepy infant or a nickname.
If you think that the RIAA is not involved in practices of intellectual monopolization, please name some record labels disassociated with the RIAA that are not under extreme pressure to join and can actually compete. In Nashville my (very limited) experience was that almost all of the labels had affiliation with said organization. Most of the people distributing music online are doing so for free or with small labels that are looking for other ways to compete with the RIAA. I think they are trying to make industry-wide prohibitions on how music gets distributed electronically but haven't been successful yet and that there are agreements between labels, though I can't prove the latter and the former is thusfar based on circumstancial evidence.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
It is clear from MTU President Curt Tompkins' past that his real motive in this affair is his job security. His objection is to RIAA putting out a press release naming institutions, not individuals, and being caught unawares before he could relay the bad news to his superiors, the Board of Control, and more importantly the state legislature, before they read about it in the MoTown rags.
Just two weeks ago Curt was flailing arms before the state legislative appropriation committees about shrinking state support for his institution (10% cut this year). He told legislators MTU would have to go private or close its doors if cuts continued. The chairmen of those committees probably melt Curt's phone when they heard what tax dollars were going toward up in HoTown while the rest of the state faces a tough rescession. And before you mention it - it does not matter the computer lab networks are completely paid for thro' student fees. Legislators are also going to be ticked off engineering students are garnering publicity thro' their leisure-time activities instead of helping the state build hydrogen-powered cars and increase employment. Curt is going to catch holy heck the next time he comes before the committees - if he's still president by then - and cannot show Michigan Tech students are working hard like their bretheren: UofM and noble Diversity or the Roman aspirations of Michigan State University students. (Now there's something our half-in-the-bag politicians can truly admire!)
until i found out the RIAA existed, i continued to buy music. The old adage of any publicity being good publicity doesnt work when everyone who understands your existence wants you to be destroyed.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I'm not a lawyer but I thought that the "duty to mitigate" was still a part of tort law.
In essence, the principle is that, when you to notice you're being injured, if you don't take "reasonable" efforts to stop the injury, the person you subsequently sue about it isn't responsible for the damages caused after you noticed the problem and decided to ignore it.
For example, suppose a prankster lights your home's door-mat on fire, rings the bell and runs. If you open the door, see the fire, ignored it, and it burns down your house, in theory you're only entitled to sue for the damage to the doormat, because any reasonable person would have done something (call the fire department, if nothing else). If you try and fail to do something "reasonable", or aren't competent to do it, or aren't home, then you get to sue for the cost of the whole house; the prankster doesn't get a free pass for "someone *should* have been able to put it out".
In the MTU/RIAA case, if the RIAA let the problem "build up" because they wanted a headline-grabbing lawsuit, then they failed to mitigate their damages and shouldn't be allowed to claim them past the point they first noticed the problem, if this were a normal tort case.
However, since this is a Federal copyright case, I'm not sure if "duty to mitigate" applies. I can't think of a reason it wouldn't, but copyright law has its own special nooks and crannies and I have never seen it come up in any of the cases I've looked at.
Indeed, as a student, I am all too aware of the way the RIAA/MPAA usually deals with this kind of stuff. They search for certain files on various P2P networks (the only ones I know for sure are Kazaa and eDonkey, although I'm sure they watch others too), and when an IP that has that file matches their database of IPs belonging to universities they have agreements with, they send out a nice e-mail to that university's policy person, who then takes whatever action they want (over here, they disable your internet connection for a bit, and then make you do community service). In case you're curious, here's what one of those e-mails looks like: Dear Sir or Madam: Please be advised that Universal City Studios, Inc. and its affiliated companies (collectively "Universal") are the exclusive owners of certain copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property rights in and to the renowned motion picture properties (the "Universal Properties"), including, but not limited to those listed below this notice (the "Universal Motion Pictures"). Notwithstanding this, it has come to our attention that the Internet site(s) located below, for which Cornell University is a service provider, is offering unauthorized copies of the Universal Motion Pictures. Universal diligently enforces its rights to the Universal Properties in all forms of media. As you may be aware, Internet Service Providers can be held liable if they do not respond to claims of infringement pursuant to the requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA"). In accordance with the DMCA, we are notifying you of infringements on an Internet site for which you act as an Internet Service Provider. We hereby request your assistance in ceasing the distribution, sale, and/or offering for sale of the infringing VCDs, and any other unauthorized copies of Universal Properties, on this Internet site and any other sites for which you act as an Internet Service Provider. Please contact me regarding this matter at your earliest convenience. Under the penalty of perjury, the undersigned is authorized to act on behalf of Universal with respect to this matter and the information contained in this transmission is accurate. Please contact me regarding this matter at your earliest convenience. Finally, please be advised that this letter is not intended as a complete statement of the facts or law as they pertain to this matter, and that Universal reserves all rights and remedies. Very truly yours, Aaron Markham Manager of Internet Anti-Piracy, Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, INC. 100 Universal City Plaza Universal City, CA 91608 tel. (818) 777-3111 fax (818) 866-6339 antipiracy@unistudios.com Notice ID: [removed] Title: Head of State Infringement Source: eDonkey Infringement Timestamp: 4/3/2003 11:08:14 AM PST (GMT-8:00) Infringer Username: None Infringing Filename: Head of State.avi Infringing Filesize: 445821648 Infringers IP Address: [removed] Infringers DNS Name: Infringing URL: [removed]
Since I run a very similar indexing and search engine at Wesleyan University, I'm more interested than most in how this is going to turn out (and a bit worried that I'm going to be sued too, though it was really cool when PySMBSearch got mentioned in the analysis posted by the Princeton student). The idea that I could be liable for up to 15.1 billion USD (checking just a second ago, there are 100,921 files ending in .mp3 returned by my search engine) just for indexing other people's files, without explicitly providing any method of accessing them is just ridiculous.
I haven't taken the search down yet, but I'm seriously considering it, given how much the RIAA is asking, and given that I'm doing no more than any of the current defendants were (though I'm not sharing any copyrighted materials myself, so they wouldn't have the "direct infringement" case).
the ISO for creating a standard defining mp3.
When considering what had happened to this student upon reading it when it was first posted, I began to think about a system of distributing music that might make it harder for the RIAA punish you legally. Suppose you had a FTP server running in your college of choice. You could set up a system where all members of the college could access a webpage and give you the username part of their university email address. (Say just the username part of username@college.edu) Then each week you email them a randomly created password to access your FTP server with all the music stored on it. This way, only students at your college could recieve the password and if the RIAA felt so inclined as to break in or access your FTP server you could state that they did so illegally, which might make their legal case bunk (i'm not sure if this is accurate...any corrections are welcome). This might work better than a p2p program that is open for all.
SIGFAULT
2) Most students don't seem to care either. I doubt you'd manage any significant boycott of RIAA material on most campusses.
3) I seem to recall that most music was sold off-campus anyway, at least where I went to school. Most musical events were off campus too.
Until mainstream America really starts getitng pissed off with the RIAA, the status quo will not change. They'd have to sue a few hundred people a day to piss off a signficiant number of their customers, so I don't think they have any incentive to change their tactics.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They're still here.
--Rob
"Mother says there are rats in the rockery."
--Ratman's Notebooks (1968)
Towards the Singularity.
I am a tech student, and this seems to be the first time in my few years up here that he's given a damn about the students. Usually he's just raising tuition to accomodate his car payments.
I'd say to consult a good lawyer copyright/IP lawyer about this.
I'd say chances are however that the networks were ratted out to the RIAA by a student, who probably got little more then pizza money for it in return. Otherwise, unless the university itself got pressured into granting them access to snoop, they would have had to break in themselves -- which is illegal.
Would really be interesting to find out in a deposition just how the RIAA accessed these computers, and whether or not those who did give them access can be proscuted.
IT IS MY BELIEF however that none of these cases are actually intended to come to trial. Too much information would be released to the public, any high profile loss would really hurt all their efforts, and outcomes of trials are always uncertain. I hope there is someone of that group willing to fight this as far as necessary.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I agree with what you have said. Simply hearing that some poor college student is getting sued for billions of dollars is enought to make most people stop and think if leaving kazaa running in the background is really worth it or not. I can't see this case really going through the courts, and I feel what the RIAA is doing is really wrong. Hopefully other people in America will realize this and try and find a way to change something.
SIGFAULT
Couldn't something like Freenet (or a modified version thereof) prevent singling out individuals and thereby prevent this happening in the future?
Someone put a copy of one of my projects online, violating my copyright. Yahoo indexed it. People downloaded it. Can I now sue Yahoo for billions?
As a student of Michigan Tech I thought everyone might want a little inside scoop on what this lawsuit has been like for a student of MTU. Starting off the first thing I saw about the case was on slashdot. I expected Tompkins to send out a letter to the all-student list the next day or two, but this didn't happen...so I waited. I got an email from my department System Admin saying we shouldn't pirate musics, etc. Finally on April 7, four days after appearing on slashdot, we got a email "from" Tompkins about the case. Looking at it a little further many student, including me, noticed it was simply a copy of Penn's States letter with Penn State replaced with Michigan Tech (Penn State copy here http://www.politechbot.com/p-04614.html)
Then on the 8th we got another letter, informing us that the last email wasn't really written by Tompkins! Here are a few quotes from the letter:
The letter written over my name should have clearly stated that this was not my work. This is no different than what we tell students in the classroom every day: cite your sources when you are quoting directly from someone else. Give credit where credit is due. I did not do that and I apologize.
Unfortunately, I had not seen the letter, but I was told that the Michigan Tech letter would be similar to the letter from Penn State. I didn't realize that my letter would be a duplicate. The staff member, as happens often, handled the details.
And now our President "writes" another letter to the RIAA, I wonder if one of his staff memebers copied and pasted this one too from some other email. Other than this life at Tech is exactly the same, classes are still held, to much dismay, and the campus resnet is still kicking.
Oh ya, all quotes from are from MTU, wait no, Penn State's...crap how do I cite this one.
Polytechnics and similar exist to teach existing technology and skills. They reinforce the status quo by producing a workforce whose careers depend on that status quo being maintained.
Of course there is overlap, particularly visible in engineering. My point? A college that cooperates 100% with the RIAA (and still gets stuffed) is behaving like a polytechnic. A college that challenges the RIAA and argues that technological progress is making them irrelevant is behaving like a university. If the US is to continue as the world technological leader, I really think it needs to encourage its true universities and allow them to experiment with the effects of deviant and creative thinking. And if that means some form of protection from hugely inflated lawsuits by trade cartel bodies, so be it.
One possibility would be some kind of judicial oversight over damages claims - making it perjury or criminal libel, i.e. a criminal offence, to present information in a statement of claim which inflated the damage suffered. This would provide an effective remedy, for instance, for cases in which damages were exaggerated to over $250000 to allow the FBI to be called in.
Disclaimer: I have been to both university and technical college, and I know the difference. And yes, those were suine aeronauts passing the window just now.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Well, you have to be a shareholder to have legal standing and take action.
The action you take might hurt your stock value.
Maybe that explains why so few are standing in line to complain.
Yes, you are the only one who that that.
However, Slashbots will not be able to resist your poor and lazy humor. It will be "+5 Funny."
Let's take the acronym and make unrelated words out of it. Then make a sidejoke that is not clever in any way to support it. Instant "+5."
"Sufferin' succotash."
Isn't that a violation of the FERPA Act?
To those of you in the music industry who are sculking about this site. I buy the artists I like and listen to all the time. The rest of the music I collect is just because. I would have never paid money for it in the first place, and especially will not pay $12-17 for an album with only one good song on it. Give my an option to buy individual songs for download with no DRM or any other other strings attached and I'd pay a buck or two to get them. Other wise I'll keep doing what am doing. Buying good albums and converting them to MP3's and getting the one hit wonders from friends or steaming them off of the net.
n/t
The universities should provide legal assistance to their students who are sued by the RIAA. Since the RIAA is suing people who are basically rnning media search engines, their compalints are largely baseless. If the universities support the students, the RIAA could lose in court which would be humiliating for them.
Lending officer: So Mr Nievelt, you want a loan to buy a car. You have just started a good job and in your application you list your only debts as your student loan.
Nievelt: Yeah, that's right.
Lending officer: We have run a credit check and I'm afraid it shows a debt of $96billion owed to the RIAA.
Nievelt:Oh shit, I'd forgotten about that. I mean they're taking it out of my pay and you tend to forget that sort of stuff.
Lending officer: Hard to forget $96billion I'd have thought. Do you expect to ever pay it back.
Nievelt: Oh no it'll be there till I die, for sure. But I think the RIAA has a policy on my life to cover it.
Lending officer: Oh, that's good. We may be able to help you in that case. Tell me, do they have any security for this debt.:
Nievelt: No, I don't own that much stuff.
Lending officer: Well the RIAA seem to have you by the balls forever don't they.
Nievelt: Yes, they have them too.
Lending officer: What.
Nievelt: My nuts. Part of the settlement. Had to sign a release and everything. Apparently they are still technically me cause you can't sell body parts. So I had to sign a release.
Lending officer: A release for what.
Nievelt: The anti-piracy ads.
We (Mr. MIT) don't like how you (Mr. RIAA) didn't respond to our phone calls about this matter before sueing one of our students and dragging our colleges name through the mud. Unfortunately we can do nothing to stop you, so thanks ass holes.
Ave Molech Setting
Perhaps Congress should have done a bit of math BEFORE setting legal limits on the amount of these lawsuits. The intent of a lawsuit like this is to recover lost funds, correct? Perhaps a bit of math is in order.... Amount of lawsuit: 652,000 songs * $150,000 / song = %97.8 Billion. Assuming average college student has $4000 he/she can spend each year not counting tuition (Significantly more then I have in my slush fund.....) MTU population: 6600 enrolled students. 6600 * 4000 = $26.7 million. So, they are suing for approximately 3,600 times more money then total college population could have spent. Furthermore: Accroding to the RIAA, the total value of every music product produced in the US (net value after returns) was $12.6 billion. So their claim is sharing music with 6600 students cost them nearly 8 times as much as they made last year. This is what happens when Congress does not stop to think about the laws they are passing, or what these limits mean.
You are overly critical.
;)
This has got to be modded +1, Funny. Only the most overly critical would disagree
I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
We're_not_gonna_protest! We're_not_gonna_protest!
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
I just wanted to let all /.ers know that one of the defendents in this case, Jesse Jordan of Rensselaer has set up a furom for discussion of the lawsuit and whatever else. Find it at http://www.chewplastic.com/bb
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
If what the MTU Prez sez is correct, than the RIAA probably damaged their own legal case -- and dramatically. It seems they knew about the infringement, and allowed it to continue for a long time. This was done despite the fact they had a "relationship" with the University and had previously discussed infringement with the IT and Provost's department.
The RIAA essentially knowingly let the students swap files for a l o n g in order to crank up the damages . . . They may have waited too long -- The concept is called waiver, and its designed to prevent this exact scenario -- allowing a malicious plaintiff to forestall prosecution in order to artificially crank up the damages; Its manipulative, and the courts frown upon this sort nonsense.
Hopefully, a sharp judge will see thru this crap, and express his disdain for these tactics by slapping the RIAA upside their head (ie, costs and sanctions).
"Eyes . . . I just do eyes."
I was wondering if a similar approach could be used in this case.
Not really -- because they *are* disclosing major losses (real, potential or imagined) due to file sharing.
Okay, you can't *ignore* it -- if you know it's there and look the other way, you've got trouble. But if you don't even find out it's there, and you have common carrier status, you're in the clear.
BTW, I metamodded the "Flamebait" mod on your comment as "Unfair". Especially after reading it in context - I for one get so fikkin' sick of the bad spelling and whatnot on a site that's purported to cater to intellectuals.
db
Cig:
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Yeah, but the poster probably took law, not engineering.