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RIAA Quashed
FsG writes "According to an Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release, a Massachusetts district court has ordered that the RIAA subpoenas sent to MIT and Boston College be rejected. This ruling came in response to an RIAA request, filed earlier today, asking that MIT and Boston College be ordered to comply with subpoenas sent to them a month ago. 'We urge other colleges and Internet service providers to take similar steps to protect their users' privacy,' said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn." Following up on this story. Forcing the RIAA to have their subpoenas issued from the local court rather than Washington a) is legally correct and b) makes it harder (more expensive) for them to issue mass quantities.
I'm not arguing that the DMCA is a Good or Bad Thing, but it is law and it allows copyright holders to issue subpoenas without going through a court. Verizon was the test case and the RIAA won, hence there's a precedent ruling that their behaviour is "legally correct".
What's wrong with capitalism? Well, plenty, but that doesn't mean it's a decently good system.
However, it is not a magic bullet. It has weaknesses. So we've come up with laws to cover most of them: fraud, theft, intellectual property, collusion, illegal monopolies. All these things are products of our capitalist economy.
In my humble opinion, the RIAA and MPAA seem to have discovered some loophole between 'collusion' and 'illegal monopoly' by alternately shifting blame between the member companies and the associations themselves.
Capitalism is a system, and like any system can be abused. Whenever we stop one type of abuse, someone will discover another. This is what 'trade group associations' are doing, in my opinion. Illegal monopolies and collusion are both harmful to the free market, so there are laws against both. I think it's pretty reasonable to suggest that the MPAA and RIAA's obscene lobbying power is also detrimental to the free market.
Unfortunately, they are quite capable of using their obscene lobbying power to protect themselves from such accusations (at least at a governmental level). And it'll take a hell of a lot more than a bunch of people pissing and moaning on Slashdot to get anything to happen about it. As usual, the EFF has the right idea, but they don't have even a tiny fraction of the power of the RIAA, MPAA, or any other major lobbying group (Liquor, Tobacco, Auto manufacturers, etc). Money is power in a capitalist country.
Just my random thoughts. And yes, I am a bleeding heart liberal, thanks.
Random and weird software I've written.
If the DMCA allows a subpoena to be send without a court order, then lets set up the filesharing software to track RIAA transactions so that we can issue a subpoena to them each time they sniff around on our shared directories. Turn it around and bury them in a legal morass.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
The radio is free for the listening, and online file trading is the new radio. As for the teenyboppers, they could easily be driven to the counterfeit disc vendors at flea markets and street corners if the the discs at the mall won't play in a computer, but the pirated ones will. The RIAA needs to decide which side of the digital revolution to be on. Right now, they are on the heads in the basket side.
How ya like dat?
We should be able to rent the latest cd's from video stores and anything ancient, out of print or 10 years or older should be available in the public library.
In 1984, the U.S. Congress banned the "rental, lease, or lending" of phonorecords without the express consent of both the recording artists' record labels and the songwriters' music publishers. Find the details in 17 USC 109(b).
Will I retire or break 10K?