Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Grabs Student's Life's Savings
An anonymous reader writes "ABCNews is reporting on a 19-year-old college student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. He created a site named ChewPlastic.com where students could search for files on the university network. Mind you, this is not a music file sharing software, this is just a search engine. Presumably, the search engine was being used to search for music files as well. The folks over at the RIAA did not take too kindly to the idea, and sued the student. He settled but denies any wrongdoing. What was settlement, you ask? His life's savings."
the story says he has been a music fan for over 40 years. I don't know if "trust fund brat" covers old people :)
once again, this story is interesting enough without the sensationalistic spin the slashdot editor felt it needed.
The RIAA didn't "grab" anything, they settled with the student, which doesn't nearly sound as sinister as they made it out to be.
And his life savings was only $12000, which isn't anything to sneeze at, but it's not like a bank robbery here.
You want to debate this case fine, but please let go of this wild overreaching hyperbole.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
So because this guy's an idiot and settles; He wants help from me? Tell you what, he'd have a lot more support if he told them to fuck off and asked for legal defense funding.
His stupidity, shouldn't cost anyone but him money.
I traded in my angst and all I got was this lousy ennui.
Once again we see the maturity level of Slashdot mods at work. If you don't like what the person is saying, he must be a troll. Yes, that's it. Someone with a well written point is obviously a troll among the ranks of ACs who post goatse.cx links.