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MIT, Boston College Refuse DMCA Subpoenas
phreakmonkey writes "Here's an interesting change of pace- According to today's Boston Globe, MIT and Boston College have both refused to turn over the identities of students to the RIAA under subpoenas. Citing failure of compliance with court rules and student privacy concerns, both colleges have refused to give out the names, addresses, or phone numbers of students based on their Kazaa screen names and IP addresses. I wonder how long the schools will be able to keep the RIAA's pack of lawyers at bay..."
Interesting that the article mentions Dave Matthews and Radiohead since they both have always been in support of file-sharing...
Mike
Pardon the speculation, but maybe the reason they're dragging their feet is because the "student" is actually someone more closely related to the organization.
Hrmmm. I hope the schools maintain their privacy (for privacy's sake not to protect piracy), but I fear that the RIAA will start to pressure the donors of these schools (where many $$'s for research and support come from).
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
that auctually sounds like a good idea for a real world live theisis type project..
Let's name names. Who are the RIAA representatives and their lawyers? Where do THEY live? What's THEIR phone number? What's THEIR email address? (Come on, somebody's got to have this info)
Now that is very interesting.
I am curious, was there a warrant of any sort? Or did the University police (they are not allowed, at least in CA, to call themselves police unless they have true police powers, IIRC) just abuse their right-of-entry as landlords to enter the dorms.
As for deliberately planning it around the student's schedule so as to catch them out, this seems both unnecessary (right-of-entry and warrants both work regardless of presence of student) and unethical/below the belt.
As for even touching the student's computer, sans warrant it seems that that ought to be some sort of crime.
Sounds like a good time to password-protect your computer (a good idea in dorm rooms anyway, just to prevent being the target of some prankster) because if they actually dismantled your computer to scan hard drives (sans warrant) you could definitely report it as either theft (if they took it) or willful destruction of property / vandalism / something of the like if they just scanned it.
Talk about burying the lede. The Boston Globe buried the most important issue in the last paragraph:
It is this issue that might make a difference. If the provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act for issuing subpoenas without judicial action is ruled unconstitutional, and the ruling is upheld, then the efforts of the RIAA will be stopped in their tracks until the law is rewritten.
The rest of the university objections amount to no more than a short-term fight over notice and venue:
Even if MIT is right, these are problems the RIAA can easily remedy. If the RIAA has to file the actions locally, instead of filing them all in Washington, D.C., it will. If the RIAA has to provide more time for notice, it will. Neither of these issues will halt the onslaught for long.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Instead of waiting for a case to make it to the supreme court, why not join an organization like the EFF and start writing letters to your senators now?
J
What happens when we convince all of these poor students not to settle?
Can they defend pro-se, loose the case, declare bankruptcy, and leave the RIAA to pay its own lawyers for thousands of suits nationwide?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
From the article: ...In a subpoena addressed to MIT, the association is demanding the name, address, and phone number of a student who used the nickname ''crazyface'' to download at least five songs, including Radiohead's ''Idioteque'' and Dave Matthews Band's ''Ants Marching.''...
So lets get this straight - the (alleged) student used the nickname "crazyface" to download "at least" 5 songs? How do they know this unless they were sharing the songs and monitoring who downloaded them in the first place? Does this mean that the RIAA were sharing songs on KaZaa??
If this is the case, are they also not liable under the DMCA?
This is a very "special" piece of legislation that I suspect will be destroyed before too long, even given the current Supreme Court's tendencies to do what they want instead of what the Constitution demands.
See... if any copyright holder can issue any subpoena for any reason without a judge's support then...
hey... guess what...
Every paper I've ever written is copyrighted by me. I could register one/all of these, and then go off sending these subpoenas out at... everybody on the entire internet, and since no judge has to approve it, and the recipients are legally obligated to respond, I could build lists of persons names, addresses, telephone numbers, ISPs, and IP addresses...
now, dial-up users would change IPs frequently, but not broadband users.
Now, thanks to all the information I'll get from the ISPs I could even see where these users have been going on the internet. (if such logs are available -- and if not, well, then pretend that instead of me doing this its doubleclick, which has ads (and thus tracking) on more webpages than anyone could hope to ever count), and do all sorts of cool things: identity theft (ok, that would be illegal, but easy), very targetted marketing (very valuable -- go from what URLs surfed to stuff in your physical mail box) or just sell these lists to other companies who didn't want to go through the hassle of collecting the info, or any other number of things that would be bad.
So. Verizon, keep on appealling, I think you will win, and in the meanwhile know that we support your efforts!
Oh, and yay to the schools too, please continue to fight!
The Department of Education Website has a nice primer on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99), a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records.
I should note there are exceptions listed:
* School officials with legitimate educational interest;
* Other schools to which a student is transferring;
* Specified officials for audit or evaluation purposes;
* Appropriate parties in connection with financial aid to a student;
* Organizations conducting certain studies for or on behalf of the school;
* Accrediting organizations;
* To comply with a judicial order or lawfully issued subpoena;
* Appropriate officials in cases of health and safety emergencies; and
* State and local authorities, within a juvenile justice system, pursuant to specific State law.
Interesting they allow "judicial order or lawfully issue subpoena"
Why fight on principle and lose when you can win on a technicality?
That's basically true of most legal questions. For instance, the applicability of the Second Amendment to gun-issues is quite rare. The reason is that as soon as either side tries to push for a definitive ruling, it's going to go to the Supreme Court, and once there it's a crapshoot as to how they'll rule. As a result, the Second Amendment is almost never brought up in court by either side (though they may bring it up outside the courtroom).
I knew the DMCA was designed to give the companies that bought the votes ridiculous powers, but this is beyond scary:
Under a provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed by Congress to combat music piracy, music companies may issue the subpoenas without a judge's approval.
Private companies can issue subpoenas!!
Doesn't that violate the Constitutionally guaraneed right to Due Process?
Under a provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed by Congress to combat music piracy, music companies may issue the subpoenas without a judge's approval.
Far out. Anyone know exactly what the provision entails?
:wq
...I must say your argument is utter hogwash. It is merely the "if you have nothing to hide, why do you care about privacy" strawman dressed up in different clothes.
How is it privacy infringement? You're doing something illegal (copyright infringement), you are then caught, and you are then identified. Is their a reasonable expectation of privacy when transmitting your IP address to millions of other users when using Kaazaa? Hardly.
How is it privacy infringement? You're doing something illegal (conducting illegal business on the telephone), you are then caught, and you are then identified. Is their [sic] a reasonable expectation of privacy when you are talking on the telephone on a switchboard of millions of other citizens while talking? Hardly.
One reasonably expects one's communications to be private, whether it is by mail, telephone, or internet. Even large private meetings (private business teleconferences, etc.) have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The internet is really no different, and were lawmakers and the law at all sane ISPs would have the same common carrier status afforded the Bells.
You want to arrest someone for doing something illegal on the internet? Fine. Get your subpeana, go through the standard wiretapping process (complete with court order, etc.) and then invade someone's privacy as part of an official investigation by law enforcement who are held accountable to the public.
Do not allow private corporations and their lawyers to simply invade one's electronic home and communications at will, bypassing the entire intent and letter of the reasonable search and seizure clause of the constitution, and accountable only to their own shareholders. Or, if you do advocate such obscenely undemocratic violations of people's basic civil rights to due process and privacy, do not expect any legitimacy or sympathy from the rest of us, regardless of how despicable the actions were of those you are trampling over the constitution to get.
Next you'll be arguing the police should put cameras in our homes or listen in on every phone call, simply because somewhere out there there is a dirty old man molesting a child or someone contracting a murder for hire.
"Do it for the children! Stop Crime!"
What you suggest is the digital equivelent of a camera in every home and a wiretap on every phone, and it has no place whatsoever in a free society irrespective of what crimes a few idiots (or a billion idiots) may be committing.
Constitutional safeguards and legal procedure is there for a very important reason: to afford all of us protections regardless of our guilt or innocence. A damn good thing, too, as with the current laws on the books every single one of us is guilty of breaking some law, somewhere, nearly each and every day we get out of bed. Want private thugs in pin stripe suits enforcing all those laws against you, and breaking down your door to do so?
No?
Then stop advocating unconstitutional and draconian behavior, merely because the target of your particular ire threatens your outdated business models, or offends your notions of right and wrong. Because I guarantee you, somewhere, sometimes, you are offending someone else's notion of right and wrong, and once you open up that door you too will be on the wrong end of someone else's personal or business "enforcement action," and civil government accountable to the people will have been replaced by corporate, plutocratic fascism accountable to only a few CEOs and shareholders as they trample over the rest of us.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You're doing something illegal (copyright infringement), you are then caught, and you are then identified
How bout this, the MIT student is getting sued for DOWNLOADING MP3s. What if he/she already owns the CDs in question?
Mega beers for the first person to get a subpoena form the RIAA for downloading thousands of MP3s of CDs they already own. If had any balz, I'd do it myself.
Those two Universities are at the forefront of Intellectual Property Law. If they get their faculty on board, I can assure you they have more legal firepower than Verizon. In any case, this point is moot since they don't seem like they're trying to fight it.
At least, they delayed the intrusion and they gave their students ample notice that they were going to be raided. That's not bad.
So what about the rest of reality?
.torrent file out and dealt with the central tracker issue, finding people becomes that much harder... Is the person unknowingly distributing the information, or do they do it on purpose... It puts an interesting twist on the questions. It's like in the article where they traced a IP to a room, but they don't know which machine was using it, so Oooops! my hard drive had a catastrophic failure that involved my trading it with a friend and losing it somewhere... Now who do you sue?
I'm sure that most people want to know what is happening with respect to the DMCA and the RIAA being annoying to all of us... But what is the RIAA or equivalents doing in the rest of the world along the same vein? I live in Canada and use random P2P utilities often. What are they going to try up here?
And that leads to another issue, if they don't bother people in other countries, what happens when people figure out how to use locations in other countries to hide their actions? Hackers do it, I've seen that plenty, what happens when the P2P downloaders figure out how to do it and automate it. Or create zombie programs that basically turn any infected computer into a P2P forwarder, like the spam virii that are out there these days?
And then there will be the day when something like waste or freenet will be common... what do they do then? I may chose to let the software and network store a certain amount of information on my system, but I don't know what is in there, and cannot find out. Will I still be liable?
This random collection of (possibly badly placed) lawsuits will definatly lead to people just finding a way to stop the lawsuits. Lawsuits are annoying, and people find ways to avoid things that annoy them.
As I said about BT, if someone started to get a good setup that used Freenet to get the
Anyway, just my thoughts...
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
Before the ISP's just get fed up with this and lobby congress to have some sort of protection clause against these lawsuits. I remember reading a while back that all these subpoenas are costing the ISP's a fair amount of money since they have to use there own employees (that should be doing other things) into spending a LOT of man hours and money in getting the info that the RIAA is demanding. Considering that the lawsuits and subpoenas are getting more numerous, there has to be a point where they say the hell with it and brib..er give campaign contributions to there own congressman.
And you're posting as an Anonymous Coward, why?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I think it is time for SlashDot via The RIAA in a good 'ole fashion class action law suit. Surely there is some SlashDot reading Laywer with that has an itch to sue the living pants off RIAA. It is probably a fair assumption that some of the Slashdot members are potential RIAA targets, why not? With 45 million Americans as file swappers, and as potential targets for RIAA, then a class action law suit on behalf of the 45 million Americans to get the DCMA struck down by a court would be in order. If that doesn't work, perhaps the Slashdot developers out there could be kind enough to make a really sweet kick butt program that would wipe your hard drive of an evidence of Kazaa, Kazaa Lite, etc, and clear out any evidence of MP3s?
(Just for the sake ot argument, although I'm not arguing with you)
It didn't say downloading with the intent to share. It said downloading.
Define "distributing"?
Simply put, in this case, the law is wrong and needs to be changed. It is wrong for the RIAA to be able to sue someone $750 all the way to $150,000 for "supposedly" sharing a song. And theres the fact that in most cases they seem to want to go after the maximum amount. All the RIAA is doing is searching Kazaa and other services to see what everyone has available for sharing. They aren't checking to see if a file has been shared, or how many times its been shared. Remember, even when the college kids earlier in the year were sued, the RIAA gave a count of the number of files they were supposedly sharing, they never gave an account as to how many times each song was downloaded, etc. The amounts they are able to sue for are "perceieved amounts" in terms of financial damages, and have no basis in reality.
For example, lets say Billy Jo Bob, a newly signed country singer, makes an album. Billy joe sucks, and very, very few people like him. His album grosses, not nets, but grosses, $50,000. Now, lets say that one of the few people who bought it rips it, shares it, and is then sued by the RIAA. For each TRACK, not entire compilation, they can legally sue for $150,000. Now, lets say the album had 10 tracks on it, and the user puts them all up for grabs. That user can be legally sued for "costing" the record company $1,500,000, even if theres no proof that a single song was downloaded from him. All of an album that grossed barely a percentage of that amount.
To put it in terms that you might be abe to understand, this is the legal equivalent of saying that if you own a gun, and someone on your street is murdered using a gun, you're guilty. The police do not need to gather evidence beyond your owning the gun, for example, ballitics or checking alibis for veracity. Then, the family of the murder victim can sue you for wages lost, and the total they can legally sue you for is the same as if the guy became CEO of a Fortune 500 company and worked til he was 80.
Instead of adopting the holier than thou attitude, consider that this is a democracy. We are, at least in theory, in charge of this country, not the lawmakers. The rights of protest and civil disobedience are etched throughout the history of our legal system. And, from what I understand, the stance that MIT and BC are taking is that they're being polite right now, giving the RIAA a gracious way out, but if the RIAA still pursues the information, they will tell them to shove it.
As for file sharing itself, I'm not saying its right and legal. I do it myself, and I acknowledge I'm breaking the law. And I could care less. I have my reasons, none of which I will speak of here, but I do acknowledge it is not legal by any means. However, it is not the place of the RIAA to be creating so much FUD and irresponsible litigation. I imagine if the laws were changed to something somewhat sane, the universities would have no major issues with giving the RIAA the information. As of now however, I hope that they're seeing an abuse of the system, and an opportunity to protect their students from a ravenous corporate beast, while they deal with the issue themselves.
However, jusding by your apprent support for the DMCA:
Clearly central government don't have the resources to combat this problem effectively, which is why they pushed through the DMCA in the first place.
I expect you might need help in understanding all these big words.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
Of course "that road" is still being traveled by Verizon, but I would like to propose that this may be, in fact, an entirely different road.
Almost every college I have been to behaves a bit like a small city - sometimes it's own state - with it's own set of rules, regulations, and policies.
Most also have their own policing organizations and post office. What is the point?
The point is that this may be slightly a matter of juristiction, and I'm certain that at least the college that invented Kerebos sees it that way. They police themselves - watching their own networks, and work very hard to ensure that their citizens are protected, and that what is private remains so.
They also discipline them when they do something they shouldn't.
This may not be legal reasoning for MIT and Boston, but it sure is ethical grounds. It is not in either MIT or Boston's best interest to have massive file-swapping, and as tech-savvy colleges, they certainly limit it.
Does anyone know of any cases where students rights where protected from outside litigation because schools were taking care of the problems?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
And let's not forget the fact that there's no way to prove that _I_ downloaded anything, especially if my computer is in a dorm room with others, or even roaming on a wireless LAN. So you've got an IP address, a filename, and a time. So what. That's not jack squat on most networks.
If someone else commits a crime with my car, does that make me the criminal? Maybe so, if I knew about it. But then again, maybe not. My point is that there's just to much slack given to the RIAA at this point.
I can say for a fact that UMass does that; when you connect a NIC with an unrecognized MAC to the network, it assigns you a non-routable IP and all DNS queries from that block are answered with the IP of the server used to register the MAC address. In order to register, you need to know two things: a student ID number (which is no longer their SS#) and the user's password. That process would probably be sufficient to demonstrate identity in court (especially in a civil case, where the standard's not "beyond reasonable doubt" but "preponderance of probabilities").
To be honest, I think universities and similar institutions should keep these records, if only because of the number of times I get portscanned or a flood of Code Red/Nimda scans from University IPs...
Denise Mattson, a spokeswoman for DePaul University in Chicago, said the school has been unable to determine who was using the computer listed in the subpoena.
Every university should follow suit.
I'm definitely one of those people who are cared about being caught! Lets *hypothetically* say I have about 2300 songs in my mp3 library (all of which have been taken off KaZaa's shared system) and I am caught. With the RIAA able to ask $750 to $150,000 for each illegally shared song thats 1,725,000 to $345 million! Now I obviously don't have either sum, neither do my parents, so in essence, I'm screwwwwed. And so are you, unless you made Forbes billionare list. I know what I'm going to do: lay low until the legal dispute is resolved.
Speaking of a legal loophole, think about ex post facto for a second. If most of these songs have been downloaded prior to any ruling stating that downloading copyrighted music is illegal, wouldn't ex post facto be a viable arguement. Ex post facto basically states that if you can't be tried for doing something if it was not illegal at the time you did it. So downloading songs wasn't illegal a year ago, so...most songs in my library can't be used in any arguement by the RIAA. Correct?
You don't have to worry about DMCA-style laws up here. Check out here for why. Basically, we have bill C-6 (The Privacy Act) and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act to protect us. To boil it down, when the last stages of these laws come in to effect in jan2004, any non-journalistic/artistic business has to have a court order signed by a judge (not just a stamp from a clerk) to release any information about an identifiable person. So if an (RI|MP)AA-type organization sends just a subpoena to your ISP, your ISP is then supposed to tell them to go screw themselves. Gotta love it!
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
How does the RIAA find out who downloaded these files anyway?
Or to take this one step to far. :-)
What's the difference between:
I own a CD.
I put the CD in my CD player.
Someone else accesses that CD via Cat5 cable.
and
I own a CD.
I put the CD in my CD player.
Someone else accesses that CD via 1/8" headphone cable.
They're both sharing. Will the RIAA come hunt me down because everyone I work with can listen to my CDs using headphones? Will they also hunt down the person using the headphones?
I have a fairly newbish question. Why dooesn't MIT and such just, NOT log ips, or at least not log them in a way that connects them to some user. Then it will be impossible for them to comply with any such request.
Since the nature of "sharing" on Kazaa is one of offering your files to anyone who may care to download them, including the RIAA and their agents, there is no "reasonable expectation of privacy." This is not breaking and entering to find out your identity. This is logging the IP address of a computer, at the behest of its owner, offering up files to anyone and everyone.
This is the digital equivalent of them marking down the license plate number of someone with a bumper sticker that says, "THUG FOR HIRE." Or something like that.
Many unsigned musicians provide free downloads of their music on their websites as a way to attract more fans, for example my friends the Divine Maggees. Many such musicians, while relatively unknown, are as good as any major label band and certainly an improvement over the pablum they serve up on ClearChannel.
You can find many more examples in my new article:
-
Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads
The article also explores some of the historical and legal issues behind copyright, and suggests steps the file traders can take to make file sharing legal.If you're a musician who offers downloads of your music, I can link to your band's website from the article. Please follow the instructions given here.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I've got a better idea. How about lowering the price of cd's from 17-18 dollars to 11-12 dollars.
I think one step further would solve it.
If I could walk into a record store and pay $12 for any 18 songs of my choosing, I'd buy CDs like they were going out of style.
The RIAA would never go for it because the dime-a-dozen-created-in-a-marketing-department boy/girl bands would never sell complete albums, nor would people be forced to buy complete albums just for one decent song.
To which I says, if it's shit and no one wants it, it's still shit. put out better material and I'll spring for complete CDs once in a while.
What the RIAA will never get, even after it's last dying breath is that Kazaa and the like provide people with what the RIAA can't: customization of their listening preferences and experience. Offer that same thing, and you're golden.
OK, this is probably off-topic, but I have to point out that lots of people seem to be in favor of handing over what we think of as governmental duties to private industry. The current administration is paying off big corporate contributors with lots of juicy contracts for what were once thought of as government jobs. Take that most governmental of duties, collecting taxes. The current administration wants to give away fully one quarter of our (that's you and me, the taxpayers) delinquent accounts receivable to private contractors to collect the money. The simple idea of just hiring more government employees whose job is to collect taxes (and who do so umpteen times more efficiently than private industry) just doesn't occur to the powers-that-be. To top that off, all your computerized records at the IRS will soon be controlled by private company employees because the Office of Management and Budget has recently (illegally) revised the rules (a document named Circular A-76) for contracting out work so as to make virtually no government job safe from easy privatization. For references, just google on NTEU (one of the unions fighting this crap) and A-76.
Yes, law enforcement is being handed over to big corporations in lots of ways these days. Any suggestions for how to stem the rising tide of government-by-corporation?
just a small nit. I do agree with everything you say. But the constitution does not protect one citizen from another. Thats what laws and law enforcement are for.
The constitution is layed out in a way that states 'the goverment shall, or shall not'.
However the problem with the DMCA and its flotila of ancilary laws. Is this, vigilantizim? It basicly creates the corp version of a vigilante.
Law enforcment is usually fairly unconcerned about small time jimmy copying a few files. They are more concerned about the big time guy who is cutting 30k of cds and selling them out the back seat of his car. This is what the music industries beef is. They HAVE the laws but they are not being enforced. They got pissed that they were not. So they bought laws so they could do it. Now does this not make them a 'law enforcment agency' beholden to the same constitutional rights as the goverment? Thats the interesting question.
hmm The way I figure it is, its only a matter of time before they piss off the wrong combination of people. Then they will end up in a legal morass that will make watergate look like a fun romp through the park. And that was just a bit of B&E with some coverup.
As for the school telling them to take a hike without a court order good for them. They have the law to back them up. If not they probably can find a few alumni who will make SURE it is backed up.
However if I was a student there and had done this I would be sweating it. You can be sure they will go get that court order. Then more than likely those students will be on the bricks as those schools will see them as liablities and chuck em. They are not only breaking laws. They are also probably breaking an agreement they signed to use the school network. It probably says something like 'we can kick you out of school if you break the law on our network'.
This is all completely legal, and plausibly prohibits the campus officials from being able to identify anyone should they be approached
One reasonably expects one's communications to be private, whether it is by mail, telephone, or internet. Even large private meetings (private business teleconferences, etc.) have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
While you are correct when it comes to uses as e-mail, buisness transactions or internet telephones, I would say that posting in a public form or broadcasting your IP to a bunch of strangers for the purposes of swapping files kinda negates your expectation of privacy in this regard. The examples you described all have one thing in common, and that is they're point-to-point communications. Point-to-mass, as P2P is, is an entirely different animal.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
At least for me. Although I have not downloaded music in a while, if I wanted to, there would be no problem; I live next to Mr. Linksys. Mr. Linksys bought a "you plug I play" wireless dealie at bestbuy last month.
Anyone else want this kind of swank setup? next time you go apartment hunting or house buying, take a laptop, and scan for your very own Mr Linksys.
Unless you want to do your filesharing sitting in your car outside of the nearest CompUSSR, or any of the other 9000 unsecured access points in your city.
And yes, my wireless network is secured with a Code. Any hacker worth his salt could crack it in a few hours, but why worry when Mr. Lynksys lives next door?
My point? dont really have one but the RIAA cant really prove anything. They dont sell any good music anyway.
"I wonder how long the schools will be able to keep the RIAA's pack of lawyers at bay..."
The more pertinent question is, how much of the tuition money that gets paid to any given college ends up in lawyers' pockets? How much are MIT and Boston College going to spend fighting this legal battle?
Or, are they simply demanding that the subpoenas be proper and lawful? We all know the RIAA is not a government agency and has no legal authority over anybody.
Ah, yes, name-calling, exaggeration and patronising prose: the tools of defensive hypocrites everywhere. Why do you assume that because I disagree with you, I am stupid or ill-informed? I am neither.
On the contrary. If you had bothered to read any of my past posts before making assumptions about me, you'd have found that I wrote on the importance of constantly questioning laws just the other day. I also suggested that the way to see things changed for the better is to fix the broken laws, not to break the current ones.
Oh, please. The hypocrisy around this whole debate is staggering, and your "supposedly" above does nothing to help your case. One minute, going after P2P is an abuse, and they should go after the perps. When they do that, everyone's up in arms about invasions of this or that. Now the perps aren't really perps, they just happened to leave illegal downloadable copies of current tracks lying around their systems? Who are you trying to kid?
And yes, the astronomical amounts they can theoretically sue for are "perceived" amounts disconnected with reality. And how often have the courts awarded them those amounts?
If you insist on using emotional and disconnected analogies, then at least be sensible. It is more akin to saying that if someone points a gun at me and I genuinely believe they're about to shoot me, I can shoot them first and it's reasonable self defence.
I'm adopting a holier than thou attitude? Now that is funny.
And no, you don't live in a democracy such as you describe. Think about it, and if necessary, check what the word "democracy" actually means.
That's an interesting understanding, which appears to differ from the understanding of almost everyone else here. What do you know that we all don't?
Perhaps at some point you should consider that copyright laws used to be sane. Then people like you abused the system on a massive scale, and the system responded. You don't like the response? Maybe you should have thought of that before you were abusive, instead of naively believing that you could get away with it forever.
And no, I don't like the DMCA, nor did I say or even imply that I did. I simply look at it from an impartial outsider's point of view, and recognise why it was proposed and allowed to pass successfully into law.
I've noticed that people from the US usually cry "Unconstitutional!" under two circumstances. One is that a law has been passed that is a genuine violation of their rights or a real threat to their liberty. Another is that a law has been passed that prevents them personally from doing something out of line, a
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
...May 2002 to see if my company would continue to invest in the Media Lab as we had for the past 5 years. During the main Q&A session, I asked in front of about 500 attendees if the Media Lab was worried that legislation such as the DMCA would effect their ability to innovate and what they were doing to protect themselves. When I stood up and asked the question, a good portion of the audience let out a laugh. They thought it was a funny/silly question. I was probably only one of the only research-types there. Just goes to show how out of sync with reality corporate money spenders are...
All your base are belong to us!
This is the letter to my senator... feel free to proof and send a copy to your own.
Senator_______,
I am appalled at the way the US Federal Court system is being hijacked by corporations. The Recording Industry Association of American and others are using the US Civil Courts as a way to punish both the wrong doers and the innocent. In all cases brought by the RIAA, the deck will be stacked in favor of the RIAA simply because they have more money to throw at the problem than an individual and better lawyers than anyone can afford. I do not support copyright infringement, but I do not support big corporations bullying around citizens because they can, and I definitely do not support proposed legislation that would make distribution of electronic copyrighted material an automatic felony, because, it would hurt many more people than the few that benefited, and it does not require that there be material proof (a list of IPs and such) that the file was downloaded. The sad fact is that the current legislation supports the copyright holders far more than the rights of the people. Right now both the RIAA and DirecTV are suing people for alleged infringements without any Due Process or conclusive proof and without a judge watching over their actions (as of right now it only takes a clerk's stamp to subpoena an individual). They have become their own police force, without all the restrictions that the police have, and without the assumption of "innocent until proven guilty". Now it's becoming like "You might already be a Millionaire" but in reverse "You might already be sued for Intellectual Property/Copyright Infringement". More legislation does not help; it only gives more rights to the corporations, and less to the US citizen. In the end it looks and smells like extortion, especially by DirecTV (pay us $3,500 now and settle out of court, go to court and pay us $10,000 to settle, or take your chances with a judge) just for buying a smartcard reader! What is the reason why corporations can do this? It's a simple question with a simple answer: Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law with good intentions, but with major flaws. According to the EFF (EFF.org/share) there are more that 60 million Americans that use file sharing networks. The RIAA (and friends) is trying to make everyone who has copyrighted material a felon (proposed legislation "AACOPS"), and you can bet everyone has copyrighted material on their computer. They could not shut them down because they do have legal uses, so they are instead going after the users instead. Also, why hasn't the RIAA been under investigation as a trust? It is an entity that its members control at least 80% of the current US music market. Not to mention those same corporations have recently been ruled against in a price fixing class-action lawsuit, yet they have not reduced the price of CD's. Not only that they try to bully out smaller independent means of distribution (one reason why the hate file sharing).
FYI - The attorneys filing all of these subpoenas on behalf of the RIAA are Yvette Molinaro and Jim Trilling according to United States District Court for the District of Columbia documents available on PACER.