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RIAA Apologizes for Incorrect Infringement Notice
theradixhunter writes "News.com is reporting that the RIAA has apologized to the Pennsylvania State University for sending a threatening letter making an incorrect allegations of copyright violations. It appears that the automated system that the RIAA uses picked the term "Usher" and the extenstion ".mp3" on an FTP site hosting the work of Professor Emeritus Peter Usher and falsely assumed that the files were songs by the musician Usher. The university accepted the apology saying "that this was an honest mistake by the recording industry" and Spokesman Tysen Kendig said Penn State "remains committed to working closely with the RIAA"."
I'd be happy if the RIAA deleted every file in the world containing the strings 'Usher' and 'mp3'. Sure, there could be innocent casualties, but think of the lives that would be saved...
finally, a public apology. Didn't this happen a while back when some child got in trouble for having a Word document and the line "Harry Potter" was found.
.smell my feet.
Is the RIAA going to pay for the legal fees the university incurred? Or the time they could have used to educate their students rather than going on a wild goose chase? I rather doubt it.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Once again, I feel it's appropriate to slam MediaForce and their gang of sleazebag nerds that write the software that does this.
For shame....
I have nothing better to do while waiting for a kernel to compile, so...
I find it to be the usual government style of action: act first, apologize later. They send out threat form letters to anyone who might be violating their stupid-*** laws, and then when they find they're wrong, they throw out a whoops, and they're done. There is something very wrong with that picture.
(-:Stephonovich:-)
"Who needs reincarnation when we've got parallel universes?" -Me
Why should the RIAA check their "sources"? They're making a lot of money/press by blackmail and coercion.
Just a matter of time before they pick on the wrong people.
It would be interesting to see how many time the RIAA systems access servers with restricted use policies: "Ve haf found der pirate!!!!" "No, you've trespassed on the private server of esquires Anastacia Lopez and Santana Aguilera of the law firm that prosecuted the tobacco settlement. Pay up."
That makes it what, roughly a billion or so to go until they've atoned for stifling creativity and ruining music? Anyway, what kind of company would use software that sends out cease and desist letters automatically? Shouldn't there be at least SOME human intervention? That way, someone could say, "Hey, I've never heard of this Professor Usher. Did we just sign him? Maybe we should look into this. Or at least, I dunno...listen to the file first?"
Just like that other time when OpenOffice.org got nailed for distributing their own software.
Yup, that's their mentality: Guilty until proven innocent.
Please direct all bug reports to
...because we know how he accepts apologies!
"We have withdrawn, and apologize for, the DMCA notice that had been sent to Penn State University in error. In order to safeguard against errors like this one, we have individuals look at each and every notice we send out. In this particular instance, a temp employee made a mistake and did not follow RIAA's established protocol, and we regret any inconvenience this may have caused. We are currently reviewing any other notices this temp may have sent."
I think by "temp employee," they mean to say the person responsible is now fired. Doesn't sound like the RIAA really took responsibility for the incident either, but rather placed the blame on John Doe.
Penn acted as spineless morons.
They should have slapped the RIAA fools with a libel lawsuit and requested an injunction to keep RIAA away from their computers forever or else. Then, only then, settled out of court if needed.
You can't even trust academia to defend their own these days. Sheesh.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Worst apology ever.
Fact - My first name is Rock (R - o - c - k)(Yes that's what my parents choose)
Fact - I'm in the Radio business
Fact - I have lots of Mp3's named rockxx.mp3 on my computers (where xx is a number)
I can't imagine the drool that would be produced by the RIAA if they were to ever come across my hard drive. I'm sure they would think "Pay-Dirt!!" When in actuality it's just another voice in the crowded radio dial.
I'll have to warn my good buddy John L. Zeppelin to be on the lookout for the RIAA piranha. (His real name too!)
The RIAA suing a professor for violating the copyright of a band named Usher, for which they should be getting sued to death by the heirs of Edgar Allen Poe.
Ahem, no matter what I predict we will see the Fall of the House of Usher...
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I too would think twice if someone assassinated me.
On that note, maybe we should start putting files called "this_is_not_britney_spears_hit_me_baby_one_more_t ime.txt.mp3" files on public ftp servers..
That aside, is there any sort of legal problem with the RIAA randomly searching FTP sites and logging in to them searching through directories for files? Is this unauthorized access if there is an MOTD that states they are not allowed to access it?
And it would also appear that simply using a phony filename extension will be enough to fool the "automated system." From now on, I and all my partners in tune trading criminal activities will use .RIAA to denote classic .mp3, and .MPAA instead of .mpg or .mpeg, but only on even numbered days. Other times we'll switch 'em around. That oughta hold 'em off for a while.
Oops! Did I just divulge a circumvention technique? Will I be liable for prosecution under DMCA or US-PATRIOT or some other silly-ass law?
.nosig
Get this: The department has on its faculty a professor emeritus named Peter Usher whose work on radio-selected quasars the FTP site hosted. The site also had a copy of an a capella song performed by astronomers about the Swift gamma ray satellite, which Penn State helped to design.
That kind of search could only be termed "shotgun".
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
is there any database of RIAA server IP's or their minions? Just on general principles I would like to block them all. Their actions are damn close to illegal search and seizure, at least IMHO.
Yea, it's real easy to make false and unsubstantiatable allegations first, then apologize if someone their false when someone provides proof. That's alot easier and cheaper than actually verifying the validity of the accusation first. The RIAA doesn't give a flying fuck that this costs individuals and universities thousands of dollars. Not their concern -- after all, in the US, you're free to make false and ludicrous accusations against anyone without any proof.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I have a friend named Billy G. Metallica-Sucks.
Ok maybe not. I don't really have any friends.
Better yet, virus-riddled files named Britney Spears - One More Time.mp3.exe - let them download and "check" them. ;)
I suppose it's only a matter of time before the same thing happens to Professore Arturo Metallica of the University of Milan.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
This gives me a great idea. Just like RIAA/MPAA is flooding p2p networks with fake files we could flood their search methods with fake files.
If every internet user with a webpage hosted 2-3 blank mp3 files with names like "BritneySpears-Baby.mp3", etc... The time it would take RIAA/MPAA to find all of them and verify them as blank would flood their capabilities.
Where the Music Matters
I'm an undergrad here at Penn State. Over the past few months they have been cracking down on copyrighted materials. They emailed the following letter to every student in the University:
I have a serious message for you about making illegal copies of copyrighted material. While you may be tempted not to read this email, I suggest that you do so in order to better understand just what the risks and penalties are for violating the law.
In recent years, high-speed computer networks and personal computers have made it easy to copy computer programs, movies, and recordings. Most of this material is copyrighted, which means the right to make copies is restricted. Making copies of any copyrighted material without the right to do so is against both state and federal law and University policy. Most people who make illegal copies know it is wrong, but are unaware of how severe the penalties can be.
The US Copyright Law (Title 17 of the US Code) has very serious penalties for violations. These include significant fines for each copy. If you copy more than $1,000 worth of material, there are criminal penalties that include substantial fines of up to $250,000 and up to 10 years prison time for flagrant cases of infringement.
The software, record, and movie industries are stepping up their enforcement of copyright laws. They are using computer technology to detect those who run servers or simply download something they have no right to possess. The likelihood of being caught is growing every day, and prosecutions will become more frequent.
You may have downloaded copyrighted materials and not been caught, so you think you're safe from prosecution. I urge you to think again. Two students in Oregon were caught and prosecuted under the criminal statutes. One received a suspended two-year sentence, the other spent time in jail. A student in North Carolina spent 41 months in prison for copyright infringement. Messing up your future is a steep price to pay for music or a video.
What happens at Penn State if you are caught? By statute, the University must immediately block your network access when we receive notification that a particular computer has been involved in a violation of the law. You may also be taken to court by the copyright holder or charged in the federal courts with a crime. That is not all that can happen. You should know that falsely certifying either that you have the right to material or have removed it can result in federal perjury charges as well as copyright infringement.
What else does Penn State do? When we receive a complaint, student offenders are referred to the Office of Judicial Affairs and employees to the Office of Human Resources. Why? Because it is illegal and against University policy to infringe on someone's copyright. A student can be expelled and an employee terminated under University policy.
The bottom line is that there is a potentially high price to pay for an illegally copied computer program, movie, or recording. Stealing is stealing and against the law, regardless of how you try to justify it.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Rodney A. Erickson March 31, 2003
After the letter was sent 220 students were served notices from the Judicial Affairs Office. You can read more about it in the school newspaper. school newspaper. In the article it says, "Rodack said it can take only one complaint against a student before dorm Internet connection is shut down and he or she is investigated."
Has anyone else seen the same pattern at their school? Is this par for the course?
Can this post get any longer?
Off with their heads!!
::breathes::
::breathes:: in ::breathes:: the ::breathes:: name ::breathes:: of ::breathes:: the ::breathes:: force ::breathes:: do ::breathes:: you ::breathes:: think ::breathes:: you're ::breathes:: doing? ::breathes::
::breathes::
::breathes:: What
::outstretches hand::
I'm waiting for the RIAA to find my MP3s of key sections of meetings of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.
"Worst. Apology. Ever."
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Madonna and others place bogus mp3 files out there, just to make it harder to find real mp3's...
And now we're going to put bogus mp3 files out there, to make it harder for the RIAA to find real mp3's (and up their noise to signal ratio)...
i like it, i like it!
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
All child molesters are human.
Therefore, Hilary Rosen is a child molester.
This syllogism is brought to you by the RIAA Institute of Critical Thinking and Logic.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
this is a bit of good reading from Steve Albini. If you don't know who he is, well, he has been a figure on the indoe music seen from bands like Big Black and Shellac. He has engineered albums from Nirvana as well. His production style is often imitated. In short, he's the shit. Go here to learn something
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Penn State is working closely with the RIAA because Barry Robinson a lawyer for the RIAA is on the Board of Trustees so instead of representing the interests of the university and protecting the students, Penn State president Grahm Spanier has chosen to let a trustee influence university policy for the sake of the crooked organization he works for. I should post this AC but I really dont give an fsck. Penn State is dedicated to building unnecessary buildings while removing as much parking as possible. I now have to walk 20 mins from a staff parking lot to work so fire me before I die of heat stroke this summer ;)
Notice the Prof is now looking into the excess dammage by the DMCA and is contacting Congress? We need more of these to hit Congress.
The truth shall set you free!
This reminds me of a joke:
Jason has a conversation with his new neighbour Pete:
J: So what do you do?
P: I teach deducive logic.
J: Huh?
P: Let me demonstrate. Do you have a dog?
J: Yes.
P: From this I deduce that you have a family?
J: Yeah.
P: And a wife?
J: Yeah.
P: And if you have a wife, I deduce that you are heterosexual.
J: That's amazing!
After this Jason visits his friend Chris:
J: I just found out this awesome field called deducive logic.
C: Say what?
J: Let me demonstrate. Do you have a dog?
C: No.
J: Then you must be gay.
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
Kind of reminds me when I was in high school. I had an mp3 of "Hack the Planet" (from H2K) on my network drive, and the school deleted it, locked my network drive, and called me to the office for having "illegal mp3's". I never got an apology though...
They are filling lawsuits without even CHECKING to see if defendants are in violation? Am I violating a copyright if I change the FILENAME of my mp3s to infringing titles?
Boy, it's awful they're just going to let this slide. I would file a countersuit claiming libel/slander at a bare minimum, even if it where to be thrown out, just to make a point to them. Of course, I noticed a fairly recent post stating the RIAA is on the board of trustees at Penn State. Sad.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Hit them. In the face. Hard.
When asked why, respond, "You look like someone who owed me money. Guess not. Sorry. Here's a Ultimate Fighting Championship T-shirt and DVD."
It's great to be on board with the tactics used by our friendly copyright holders! Go Team!
I'm not sure you can have an FTP that allows anonymous access and not call it public. If you're going to host videos/songs then you should be smart about it. Some dumbass that puts an MP3 file on his school's FTP server deserves to get caught. Just don't allow anon access, and you should be okay (because if they try to break in, guess what? That's called illegal entry)
Vote for global prefs bug
I can understand this for a startup company, as long as the company quickly moves to start covering the costs of its labor. But in the case of a wealthy organization, this means that the wealthy organization just *chooses* not to give economic justice. More for me, nothing for you.
I have been seeing this more and more, and it is part of what ails America. It comes from the move to give more to the investors, and comes from the blinds that are provided by corporate coverage, in which the investors can't see the plight of their workers.
But let me point out the results of economic injustice: if there is economic injustice, then the victim's investments remain unpaid, and in that case, it does not pay for the victim to invest!
In the case of inventors who can't afford to patent and defend their inventions, because the patent system only benefits wealthy corporations, the proper response is to not devote effort to inventing.
In the case where your compensation is not based upon justice, it does not pay to invest in an education that will make you a more valuable employee.
In the case where businesses are taxed to death, so that other businesses can recieve lucrative government contracts, it does not pay to start a business and help the economy: it pays to work your own garden instead.
In the case where individuals are taxed to death, to pay for more tax collectors, the farmer's strategy doesn't pay -- only the highway robber's strategy pays. If you want to see what this is like, look at Congo/Zaire.
If you think it is getting bad, and the problem is the government, then tell the government. If you don't think they'll listen, then it's better to leave, and find a better place.
Here's How.
If you think it is getting bad, and the problem is the people (yeah, they're all good people, they just, well, you can depend on them to do really evil things), then it's doubly important to find a better group of people.
Here's a hint.
If worst comes to worst, duck, cover the ones you love as well as possible, stay out of the way of wars as much as possible, and try to live with as much justice and charity as possible.
But the bible is absolutely right: when we choose to withhold a man's wages, we commit violence. When we choose economic theft as a regular diet, we commit murder. And we recreate our world to become a horror. Our spiritual failings definitely bring physical problems and death.
Just my two cents. That's all.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Don't those DMCA threaten & harass letters almost always include a statement along the lines of: "I hereby swear, under penalty of PERJURY, than I am the copyright holder or the legal representative therof."???
Said statement was obviously NOT true in this case, and I don't think those letters include a disclamier like: "unless I get CAUGHT lieing, and apologize afterward".
So do those "swear under penalty of perjury" clauses have any real legal validity? If so, isn't it appropiate for some RIAA/Metallica drones to be shareing bunkspace with Charlie Manson in the very near future? After all, when a regular citizen does it, perjury is a pretty BIG deal. Why should the RIAA/Metallica enjoy any immunity?
Or are those lines not, in any way, legally binding? If that's the case, why include them at all?
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
For those who want to use PeerGuardian, here's how:
n text.asp for the plaintext list of ranges to block.
1. Download PG from here: http://methlabs.org/pg/
2. Install it.
3. Edit "C:\Program Files\PeerGuardian\Guarding.P2P" in a text editor.
4. Go to http://www.simply-click.org/uploadertest/pg2_plai
5. Copy and Paste it into the Guarding.P2P file. It must have no empty lines at the beginning of the file, and must have at least one blank line at the end of the file.
You may want to leave off the last few lines from that webpage, this is a submission type of thing, and new submissions are added to the bottom of the list. Delete the bad lines from morons and such at the end. They get onto the list every so often.
6. Startup PG and make sure it reads in the block list correctly.
Congratulations, you're now blocking all TCP connections with over 50 million IP addresses, most of which are probably "the bad guys". I don't generally steal music or offer up music, I just don't like these people and so I block them on principle.
Also, PeerGuardian supports a pgdat:// type of link, so as new addresses are changed, you can click the links on http://www.simply-click.org/uploadertest/pg2.asp to add them to PeerGuardian directly instead of manually editing the blockfile.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"Things are not always as they appear." My father once told me this, and he was right, too.
.mp3, and then sending a threatening letter based upon it is rather stupid in my view. I'd say that making an accusation based upon looks and appearances alone (without even actually doing an acoustic analysis of the file in order to determine if it IS indeed a copy of copyrighted material) is completely and totally idiotic.
Seeing "Usher" in A FILE NAME, which just happens to end in
Hell, it's roughly the same as seeing a fruit basket and assuming that since it looks like an apple it is an apple, and chowin' down; only to realize halfway through your second very zealous bite that it's wax fruit and you've screwed up.
But odds are, the lesson hasn't been learned: the RIAA will continue to send out very threatening emails with great frequency every time they spot a word in a filename which happens to (by coincidence, I'm sure) belong to a musical artist that the RIAA "looks out for the best interests of."
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
cat /dev/urandom > /var/www/Britney_Spears_-_Greatest_Hits_Track01.mp 3
of course, that might actually be the same command they use to create their "music"
If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
It's still working without the "www."
Nothing to see here; Move along.
Don't they make these claims under penalty of perjury? So they're guilty of perjury. Clearly if there's a human or primate that actually sends the notice and not just a computer program, then they screwed up. If there isn't they're just plain reckless. So where's the penalty part? Oops! Sorry, lets just forget that we did something wrong, umkay? Umkay.
Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
I have a mind to start a new sourceforge project - a bot that creates a tar-pit website to confuse this kind of bot.
It would grab the album chart from FreeDB and then make a pseudo random listing of 20 or so artists. Clicking on an artist's name would reveal the names of the albums, and clicking on the album name would reveal links to song downloads as MP3s.
Each page would have a 10 second delay on loading, and each MP3 download (which would be white noise) would be downloaed at about 10 bits per second. The idea would be to tie-up as many threads on thhe RIAA servers for as long as possible.
Next, the system would run on a wildcarded domain name so that it would look to the RIAAbot as if it were a large number of sites. Each of these sites would link to each other creating a vast low bandwidth tarpit.
How about that then?
An Usher CD and T-Shirt in "appreciation of his understanding" sounds more like a punishment than an apology.
like 'Ushering in change at RIAA.mp3'
fill it with a rant about how much (and why) the RIAA sucks...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
That's the point of those lines: you aren't supposed to send out harassment letters unless you are sure that you are right, to prevent things like this.
by mistakenly planting bogus files with the same name that they don't own. If RIAA mistakes someone else's file as one of their copyrighted ones (and we see how easy that was to do) they could be interfering with the distribution of someone else's property. That's in the same category as spamming, or worse. I hope there would be a way for the victim to get legal compensation ... seems like just a matter of time before it happens.
All sigs should be as funny as possible, but no funnier.
From the network admin mailing list at Penn State:
"<i>...I was also led to believe that I am the first on-campus complaint where the RIAA allegations were not legitimate. We have a professor Peter Usher, and an mp3 file in another directory that was done a cappella by our employees and extols the capabilities of the Swift Gamma Ray Burst satellite that is scheduled to go into orbit later this year. Nothing else that would even come close to infringement.</i>"
So if everyone were to just ramble on into a microphone about their favorite (or despised) artist, and then name it accordingly (eminem.mp3, madonna.mp3) and share it, the RIAA would have to keep paying lawyers for every warning they issue. The costs add up.
Actually, yes. I think you've hit the nail right on the head: one way to combat the stupidities of the RIAA and MPAA, and demonstrate that their arrogance and the DMCA clearly overstep all reasonable boundaries established in the Constitution, is to expose them.
If the RIAA and MPAA are incapable of determining whether a given file is a violation of copyright automatically, then how is it that they expected Napster to do so? How about Verizon? Or any other ISP/University/person? Basically, the RIAA and MPAA get to talk out of both sides of their mouths (do as we say, not as we do?). This we must fight with all of our strength.
Also, be sure to pad your files with random noise, or non-copyrighted things (reading aloud the works of Shakespeare, for example), so that the final file size reasonably approximates the size of the Matrix Reloaded movie on divx, or any given song you want to spoof. That way file size no longer serves as a useful way to determine whether a given file might be a violating file. Of course, this also makes it harder on people who have legitimate reasons to find those files (Matrix Reloaded may not have any legitimate reasons to be on p2p just yet, but I can think of at least two perfectly valid reasons for a person to d/l, say, "Music.mp3" by Madonna over p2p networks).
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)