Slashdot Mirror
Interview with Student Sued by RIAA
TinoMNYY24 writes "Jesse Jordan, owner of chewplastic.com, was on CNN this morning discussing the RIAA settlement. You can read a poorly spelled transcript of the interview. Jesse is one of the two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute that were sued by the RIAA."
Let me get this straight...
This guy ran a search engine on his PC that essentially turned every particpating client PC into a single unit of a JBOD RAID array?
It would have been interesting to see the court case unfold if the guy had had the resources to fight
So what did the government... I mean the RIAA [claim you did]
Sounds like something a slashbot^H^H^H^dotter would say about them. I agree with the goatse man post a few comments up.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
We have the power to crush and destroy those fuckers. If we **ALL SHARE OUR MUSIC**, we can bring those scumbags to their knees and have them reduced to utter helplessness. The true power lies in the hands of the People; if we act together, we can topple the fucking bastards that suck everything they can.
I say it's time the people put forth a bill for all elections state and national to require full disclosure of all contributions. The current system allows for too much sneaky back room deals. This way everyone can see exactly which politicians are being bought out by which companies. That's the only real way people can make well informed decisions. Not, vote for the person with the best ad campaigns on TV.
My family, friends, and I set up a network of FTP servers. Right now we have about 7 servers that I use regularly. A few are pop a couple indy and a few are rock. I can find anything I want within a couple of minutes. Anything I can't I ask the nodes and they will look in their network of FTP servers (friends of theirs that I don't know) usually this doesn't take long and the bandwidth is better than kazaa lite. I encourage each of you to teach friends and family how to set up FTP servers and sample your music that way. Remember to support your favorite artists and go to their concerts and buy their merch. They actually see the money from this.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Such threats are called baratry, and as has featured prominently on /. serveral times it is now a viable economic model for some companies (especially those wielding unenforceable patents).
The most disturbing issue about the RIAA's work to shut people down, is that they're going after those who do little economic harm in order to frighten their uninvolved or only marginally involved (in the file trading scene) supporters into compliance somehow. Why do you want to threaten your customers?
Any spoon would be too big.
For the first time ever, I actually felt like protesting something. I showed up at around 1:40 (it should have started at 1:30) and there was absolutely no one there. Shame. Though it was probably because it was poorly advertised (a few posters and an email to a handful of people) and during finals week.
I'd like to see the legal system set up so that neither party can spend more than the other, with some minimum allowance. For instance, if the RIAA wants to sue a student, and the student doesn't want to spend more than $100, the RIAA can't spend more than that, plus some basic allowance, say $1000. If the RIAA wants to spend more, they have to get the student's permission to loan him the money, and if they lose, they don't get the money back.
Apply it to governments too, so a state can't send in the well paid DA and his staff to prosecute some illiterate scum bag for a capital offense, while the public defender is only budgeted for one hour of time.
And yes, I do know about snowballs and hell.
Infuriate left and right
that's a mighty convienent mistake considering the media attention this has gotten.
I'd have to agree with the father, this was just a big PR trick for the RIAA and its a shame they aren't suing someone with the $$$$ to fight back.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Really, a more applicable analogy would be "if people use Google to find child porn, is it Google's fault?"
In 2000, the RIAA claimed that sales dropped 4.1%. Meanwhile, they cut their album inventory by about 25%. They are making more money per release in the past three years than in the history of CDs.
How, exactly, have the RIAA stolen music? If they have, then that's quite interesting, but if you're just talking about paying the artists next-to-nothing, then that's not stealing. The artists signed the contracts. If they didn't hire all sorts of lawyers to go over them and make sure that there weren't loopholes, then that's their problem.
I actually met a contract lawyer once. He said that out of all of the recording industry contracts that he had reviewed, not one had been payed correctly. The artists were almost always owed significantly more than they had been payed.
For what it's worth, I lived down the street from RPI for two years, and it is a "hotbed for piracy," however the kid's father may protest.
What you have, basically, is a campus full of geeks and alpha geeks, and the half-secretive tradition of cracking that goes with it. Years ago it was phreaking the telephones for long-distance calls (I got this straight from an alumnus), and people I know who still go there have told me that tons of students ("everyone" is the phrase he used) have hard drives full of MP3's.
However one feels about so-called "sharing," it's only honest to admit that plenty of it goes on at RPI.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
And twice the interviewer thought the student was being sued by a government body. Has the RIAA so ingrained themselves in the collective unconscious that reporters now think them part of the US govt?
This disclaimer found on the Altavista MP3 Search page:
Disclaimer
Please be aware that the multimedia files referenced, made accessible or made available to you on these pages or by means of the AltaVista multimedia search engine are protected by the copyright and trademark laws of the United States and other countries. Therefore, you may need to obtain authorization of the owner of such materials before using them. Some of the multimedia content accessible through our search engine may be offensive to you. AltaVista accepts no responsibility or liability for such content, or your use of such content.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Has the RIAA so ingrained themselves in the collective unconscious that reporters now think them part of the US govt?
In one word... yes.
That's actually the latest tactic of the gun control freaks. IIRC, there's been some legislative activity aimed at putting an end to these frivolous lawsuits. (I'd look it up, but the info I have on the subject is at home right now.)
Another analogy you could make would've involved VCRs instead of photocopiers. There, you have a Supreme Court decision against Big Media.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
...is the title of a book of these. I think it may have been compiled from the bits Jay Leno did on the Tonight Show.
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
For the record, those they chose to use as examples were not casual fil traders, they had (in general, can't speak for all of them) chosen to set themselves up as some sort of central clearing house, operating some sort of website/index to help/encourage their fellow students.
While I don't condone the actions of the RIAA, their "victims" are hardly innocent, and were almost certainly aware that trading MP3's is not an ethicly "pure" pastime, and that they were treading on thin ice by operating their sites. The RIAA has played nice, they made their point and now have settled. If you don't think its a reasonable agreement, keep in mind these are adults (over 18) who clearly had the resources to operate these sites (not running on dad's old 486, or relying on school systems, or spending 4 hours a day putting themselves through school). They made a choice, same the kid busted for selling grass to his "friends".
If you really think this is such a travesty, create a fund to pay their fines, but honestly, don't you think your money would be better off going to the EFF, making sure we don't loose our rights to copy music that we PAID FOR to alternate media such as MP3 players or backup discs we can carry in our cars?
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
First: You need to read a book called "All You Need to Know About the Music Buisness" by Donald Passman. This book is a great read for exactly how record company math REALLY goes. You also find out that basically the entire goal of the recording industry is to screw the artists and keep as much for themselves. (I mean really I can have 1000 CDs pressed for right around $1000 WITH the the cool cover art and everything, so where is all that money really going?) Second: Most record companies (the big 5 anyway) are stationed out of either LA or New York, and California placed a law into effect that basically makes bands that sign to recording contracts nothing more then "works for hire". In other words the artists don't even OWN their music anymore. This law is being relooked at and hopefully changed. So just because it's not TECHNICALLY stealing, it's not exactly what one would call moral either... Three: The fact that YOU quote a contract lawyer saying "most always owed significantly more the they have been paid" TOTALLY makes your whole argument right above that COMPLETELY null and void ...
Let's call a spade a spade. It's stealing. We all do it, but it's stealing.
It is not stealing. Copyright infringement is NOT STEALING. It is a crime. It is wrong. But it is a different kind of crime from stealing. Calling it stealing is like charging and assailant with murder when nobody actually died from the event in question.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I can't help but reply to your sig: there is a P2P app called circle which actually does have an interface to apt. It's actually used; if you browse peoples' files, you'll find many with almost only .debs.
Note the parts in bold. Morpheus and Grokster just won a suit by claiming the exact same thing. Of course, they have lawyers
It would be beneficial if instead of just telling me I'm stupid you'd help out. Based on what I saw in the interview, it looks to me like he has the same defense as Morpheus and Grokster, just not the funds to present that defense.
So, I'm "lying"? Nope. Misinformed? Often.
Details would be nice.
1) Lecture notes - Usefull, though I would expect a class oriented mailing list to be more helpful.
2) Programing assignments - Are you refering to "borrowing" someone elses assignment? Cheating on programing assignments is not really a defensible position, anything else falls into cat 1
3) Design Arch. - See 2)
4) Accessing your own computer remotely should not involve a search engine. You're losing focus on the issue. I said I support your right to do this, I just won't support someones write to build a searchable index of songs you have negilgently failed to protect with simple security measures to limit access to them.
Having not seen the service in question, I can't really comment on the details any more than you can, though I can see that a college specific search engine might be useful. If the engine really was general purpose, then the suit is VERY questionable. And I'm not saying there aren't very legitimate reasons for having them. But since I don't know how he chose to advertise its presence, if he accepted advertising, what the "home" page looked like, etc. all I can do is take what I do know. He chose to operate the engine/page; which means he chose to accept the liability for such. If he didn't understand this when he started, that $12,000 is going to teach him a usefull lesson in addition to the $80,000 he's already paying to attend RIT (Don't correct me with actual numbers, stay on the issue)
Do I think this kid got screwed? Yes. And I think he's going to get screwed again, cause he's created a "fund" to help him pay the fine, but I don't think he's considered all the ramifications, such as Taxes and Financial aid. But hopefully I'm wrong.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.