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."
what is it with government and big business.. they crap on us and we allow it. They lie to us and we allow it. We elect them.. we need to change things. If you don't vote don't bitch! ROCK THE VOTE.
Now we know where all the ex-KGB agents went. They now work for the RIAA. It's a sad time when your afraid to develop something because it 'MIGHT' be used for illegal things. Bastards!
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
Suing Yahoo because someone found copyright material on an unauthorized page? GASP!
Won't happen. Google and Yahoo are companies that can afford lawyers. They can afford litigation costs, whereas the poor college student can't. Him only giving over his life savings was probally a bargin for his point of view, since he didn't have to pay a lawyer to sit though an actual trial.
Remember, the wolves go for the weak caribu first. When they go for the strong ones, they have to spend a lot of energy running it down, and it isn't worth it to them.
I'm torn between the idea of helping out this guy who got the ol' shaft, and paying off the RIAA. I'd rather donate to a legal defense fund than OK paying off the music Mafia.
Do you really thinkg a college student with a life savings of $12,000 could take on the RIAA and it's team of lawyers in a US court?
Seriously...
5,000 music CDs printed at a cost of 5 bucks each, and sold for 15 dollars is 50,000 dollars profit. In record contracts, usually you have to sell millions before you see an equivalent amount of money. People pay as much for a band t-shirt.
The best act of revenge against the RIAA would be to encouraged this with every local band you know. This would choke them off. Best of all, a good band could grow the business to be really huge, they would just cut out the middle men every step of the way.
If most bands did this, the big record companies would to cut back to their own traditional staples, such as classical music. And even then...
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Very true.
The RIAA apears to want to put the fear to create any sort of software than can in any way be used to diminish their earnings, no matter what else it can be used for, into all programmers worldwide.
Bullying individuals, is not only cheaper for RIAA than attacking companies with adequate legal defense capabilities, is is sending the message to programmers worldwide just as well or maybe even better, because the victims are more like you and me.
Why didn't university help him?
Were they afraid to help him, or just plain indifferent?
It would seem that morally the right thing for the university to do would be to pay for an adequate legal defense and counter attack for their student, because the student has been a very good example for the other students in the university by creating a usefull piece of software for the benefit of his fellow students, and are being victimized because of it.
Maybe the university is afraid that if they helped the student, half the other students and their parents would be begging the university to pay their legal fees, in all sorts of cases that did not merit the universities help. We will never know, unless someone gets an interview with the persons in the university administration who made the decision not to help their student.
Why should someone ask permission to search for files?! You're buying the RIAA's ridiculous argument that searching is illegal or is somehow wrong. As stated before, Windows has the built in ability to search for MP3s files on a network. Google allows people to search for MP3s. The internet is dead without the ability to search across it. I think others are right, the RIAA is attempting to shut down the internet by making searching illegal. These are just tiny steps in that direction.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Everytime I hear people suggest going to concerts to support their favorite artists instead of buying CDs, I laugh. It's not the answer for every situation.
Most of my favorite music are '70s music, ranging from pop to rock to disco, and British and Australian music ranging from pop to opera. Most of the '70s music stars are retired or semi-retired and no longer tour, so the only way I can hear their music and support the artist is to buy their CDs.
For the British and Australian music, since I live in America, it's all but impossible to go to the concerts of British and Australian musicians I like. Again, the only way I can hear their music and support the artist is to buy their CDs.
The current American music, the ones I can go to their concerts, are complete and utter crap, including both the "top 5" music labels and the independents. I can't stand most of it at all, and the rest I'll tolerate at best. So what am I to do? I don't want to support the RIAA, but if I want to hear the music I like and support the artists I like, the only option I have *is* to buy CDs issued by the "top 5" music labels.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
> The only thing I can do is stop buying music
Wrong. You can donate to the EFF. You can purchase music or otherwise support artists on CD Baby, an "online record store that sells CDs by independent musicians" (not distributors). There's pleny of things you can do to thwart the efforts of the RIAA mafia.
I dunno... $7 for a CD single with 1-3 songs (one of which might be a remix) vs. $15+ for the full album. Doesn't take Alan Greenspan to determine which is the better value there.
1) this will encourage people in the future to settle if they think they'll get paid off
Even if he manages to recollect all $12,000 (which I doubt will occur), he still hasn't been "paid off". He's only not lost all of his money. He would be no better off than he was before if all of the settlement is donated back to him.
Okay...
The whole thing I'm not getting, is how is this good for the music industry?
Sure, they're bullying college students, who are indecently the target audience for a lot of the stuff they produce. They might make a few grad here and there, but this is the worst possible publicity they could EVER hope for.
In yet another move to demonstrate how woefully behind the times they are, they have beaten yet another college student into submission. That's good. But I would be willing to bet that there are probably a few hundred more college students who will never buy another CD as a result of this.
I think the reason sales of CD's are down is because people are disgusted with the behavior of the Music industry. In particular, the RIAA has acted in a manner that is not only disturbing, but only questionably legal.
Wouldn't it make sense that in a time of slower sales, that they would be focusing their efforts on promotion of their products, R&D product development, cheap sales ploys to get people to.. I don't know... buy stuff? This pre-occupation with internet file sharing is not only in bad taste, but it's a complete waste of resources.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
couldn't the student have claimed that he was protected under section 512 of the dmca? seems to me (admitidely after only a very quick glance) that he qualifies for the safe harbour provision.
... how embarressing! :o)
ooh, this is my first ever post. been reading for ages and just never said anything
he would have lost in a second and probably would have ended up owing the RIAA millions. Yet this way he still gets to dny any wrongdoing and may actually manage to have some money
I'm not saying that the settlement amount is right. I'm saying that that's the only way for him to not have his life ruined utterly by the RIAA
read my blog
musings on politics and technol
No it isn't. It is a contract issue. Why doesn't anyone understand that "free speech" only applies to the government not being able to censor speech. If you write an article critical of the government and the newspaper decides to publish it, the government can not come in and tell the paper to remove it. That is free speech. If you write an artle critical of the govennment, newspaper, your dog... whatever and the newspaper refuses to publish it--thats business--you can always try to buy ad space but it is not a "free speech" issue.
If you sign a contract (legal settlement) and agree to do or not do something then it is something that you agreed to in a contract in exchange for some consideration and has nothing to do with free speech.