RIAA To Subpoena Univ. of Michigan Names

uofmtech writes "This morning's Michigan Daily is reporting that the RIAA will be subpoenaing the University of Michigan for the names of nine students suspected of file-sharing. University General Counsel Jack Bernard has said 'We are waiting to receive them ... (t)hese are very difficult subpoenas to refuse.' The RIAA had previously notified the University they were looking into this, but the University has tended to handle such matters internally."

Comments

Don't turn off sharing!

[TheSpoom]

I've said it before and I'll say it again... Please don't disable sharing on Kazaa or other networks. It degrades the quality of the network and makes you a leech, and many people will simply refuse to let you download from them because you're not sharing anyway. If enough people refuse to share, the network becomes *useless* because nobody is there from which to download. It kills the point of peer to peer file sharing.

If you're looking to be protected from the RIAA, there are other ways to give you a layer of security. Kazaa Lite K++ (download at OldVersion.com, v2.4.3 is likely the one you want) includes an IP Blocker extension built on the PeerGuardian database of blocked (read: RIAA) IPs, so the RIAA under normal circumstances cannot scan you. Admittedly it's not perfect, but it's better than using the spyware-filled, vulnerable official version.

Re:Don't turn off sharing!

[glassesmonkey]

so the RIAA under normal circumstances cannot scan you. Admittedly it's not perfect

This is just wrong & irresponsible to say something like this. Most of the datamining (to select your IP address as the next lucky winner) is done by subcontractors or other goons of the RIAA. They all know about the IP block list. How hard is it to gather IP addresses from a new IP address?? How hard is it to order a cable modem?? Hypothetically, if enough people used the PG database, they'd HAVE to find a new IP address in order to look for victems.

First of all, the PeerGuardian method is just plain silly IF you are already running a firewall. Why not just import the list of blocked-IP into ZoneAlarm, etc? Why have this code built into KaZaA? Do you have a special eDonkey version with the same functionality? Trust me, your firewall is much more efficient at doing this.

I'd recommend getting a wireless AP & leaving it wide open & hope that's good enough to say you "didn't know"... better yet, fake a MAC address & record the log of that computer "wirelessly using all your bandwidth"... Maybe, if everyone used bittorrent, it would be too much work for them to gather all the torrents (which are time limited) then sit on all the trackers to record all the IP & then all they get from you is one FILE (or CD)... This is still a few $1000 per song though, but they have claimed not to go after the person who d/l's "just a few songs"

Re:Don't turn off sharing!

[SillyNickName4me]

> prying eyes of those trying to protect their legal property

This is a slight misrepresentation, the works are NOT their property, never have been, and never will be. An idea, nor the expression of an idea can ever eb property.

What they do have is exclusive distribution rights. Note that those are RIGHTS, not PROPERTY.

Those rights are granted in behalf of the society by the government.
Now, due to cluelessness of politicians, the music and even more so movie industries have been able to hijack copyright law. Don't be surprised if society no longer supports the grantign of those exclusive rights as a result, the RIAA, MPAA and all their friends only have themselves to blame for that due to:
1. hijacking copyright law as mentioned.
2. refusing to deal with the wishes of their customers
3. trying to get rid of fair use.

The balance tipped completely to the side of the movie and recording industries and that needs a correction before they can go around screaming about how people dont comply.

Re:How?

[finkployd]

Regarding the legalities, unless there is some agreement that most folks unknowingly consent to, having the RIAA looking through "material" on someone's computer should be illegal whether or not they are engaging in illegal theft of intellectual property......right?

Wrong, you are publishing them for all the world to see. It is no more illegal for the RIAA to look at what you are publicly sharing than it is for you to look at their website.

I don't think the RIAA remotly scanning all the contents of people's harddrives (if they are, I want to know what horrible OS vulnerability is allowing THAT), just the materials they are making available for download.

Finkployd

Legal Services

[Daeyin]

I wonder how many will fight these suits in court? All enrolled students as UM get free access to a law office (Student legal services http://studentlegalservices.dsa.umich.edu/) who have helped me successfully sue two slumlords in Ann Arbor (and got helped resolve a work dispute at my non-U job). I know if I were sued by the RIAA (not that they would have any reason to) I would be totally f*%^ed since I've graduated and cannot afford a major legal battle on my crappy IT wages. But, if I had 4 trained lawyers for free, I might consider fighting for a bit of fun!

Re:How?

[agentZ]

You're getting mixed up here. In the US, the government must have a search warrant if they want to search your personal effects that are not in plain view. The fourth ammendment does not apply to private entities such as the RIAA.

Next, no search authorization is needed for anything on public display (e.g. anything visible outside of your house, things you've published in the newspaper, and IMHO, anything you're publishing on the Internet.)

Re:How?

[mdfst13]

"in order to search my house you have to get a court order"

Not if you invite them in (at least in the US).

Assume you murder someone and set the bloody murder weapon on the coffee table. The police come by and you invite them into the living room to talk. They see the bloody murder weapon in plain sight. They can then take posession of the weapon and later use it as evidence.

If you publish the contents of your hard drive over the internet (e.g. by sharing your files in a P2P network), then they can certainly come by and check them out. They can use that as evidence later. No invasion of privacy at this point, they are just using information that you chose to make publicly available.

Re:How?

[InsaneGeek]

Essentially all they are doing is they've written their own client for Kazaa, etc. Once they find someone running one of these programs they do ask the equivalent "right click, show all files shared by user" question and it then tells them all that they are sharing. Nothing really legally nefarious going on, basically doing what the programs are meant to do. It's not like they are cracking your box and going through the entire system, just whatever you have shared out in the P2P program you are using.

As to your point of having a collection of software/music wide open: how do you think you get to download those songs & programs to begin with? People do leave collections of songs & software completly wide open to the pubilc, that's basically the cornerstone of filesharing. If you aren't sharing then all you are doing is leaching, if everybody's leaching than nobody's downloading at all anymore. Contrary to the "I'm downloading songs from the Internet legally" commercials which make it seem like the download is what get's you. Nobody has been hit for the act of downloading, it's all about the sharing them out.

Is allofmp3.com A Legal Alternative

[jestill]

I've been a subscriber of Emusic.com for a few months now, but I don't like the limit of 90 songs per month. I am also not willing to pay $0.99 per song from iTunes, or even $0.88 a song from Walmart.

I've recently discovered the Russian website www.allofmp3.com that allows downloads from $0.01 per meg of mustic and it appears on the surface to be legit. You can even pay for content using paypay so you don't need to worry about the Russian mafia hijacking your account number. (Just your regular paypal problems).

A recent interview with the content manager makes it appear that this site is legal, and it looks like RIAA has nothinng to say about the site. A search on the RIAA web site for allofmp3.com returns zero hits, and doing some searching for the RIAA view of all0fmp3.com also gives no results.

Have other slashdotters had experience with this site? What is your opinion of its legality?

Re:Is allofmp3.com A Legal Alternative

[hackstraw]

I've done it and its not really worth it. I was drawn to it because it appears to be legal, there were whole albums, and I could pick my encoding. Well, I found that its not significantly different than going the "file sharing" route. I have a number of incomplete tracks (missing a few seconds, they are not incomplete downloads), I got some mislabled tracks, it was (relatively) difficult to download tracks. To download tracks, I got a mail confirming the encoding was complete. I wrote a perl script to parse these mails, and retrieve them with 5 concurrent wgets at a time. Their webserver limits donloads to 5 concurrent downloads at a time. I've also found the system to be really busy and it says to come back later.

Also, I felt really sketchy giving my credit card to a russian, questionably legal, site. And when I hit the "Yes" button to commit my order, my browser (Safari) said that it was about to give insecure data over the line, and asked me if I wanted to continue. I clicked NO, and tried it again with IE just to make sure it was not Safari being anal or somehing. Well, IE did the same thing. The funny part, is that I got billed both times? Aparently, the secure page redirected to an insecure or something, but my order went through (twice).

If the quality was better, I would continue the service. I think the price I paid for what I got is fine by me.

Re:It's the university they're after

[mrwonton]

I am currently a student at the University of Michigan. I also work for their Engineering Network (not the organization involved in this case).

I think that so far the UofM has handled itself quite well as far as file sharing is concerned. It's true that they have refused to block ports or obtrusive firewalls, and have refused to give up the names of students so far...

Sharing copyrighted material is of course covered in the AUP for the campus network, the main points of which are highlighted when every student registers to use the network.

The current way complaints about file sharing are handled is: 1) for the first offense, student is warned and forwarded the complaint. Student has 24 hours to reply to the University claiming they have stopped their illegal activity. 2) for the second offense, student is temporarily banned from the network for a week and fined $20. 3) third and subsequent requests result in longer bans and larger fines.

Re:How?

[Eskarel]

This is only vaguely true. It's true in the sense that evidence obtained by a private entity is not barred from courtroom use(under certain strictures as I recall IANAL, but I believe that if the government or one of the lawyers involved etc ask you to do it it can't be even if you're a private citizen).

However should a private entity do this you are fully within your rights to call up your local branch of law enforcement and charge them with breaking and entering or whatever the equivilant crime is for computers(I knew I just forget). Both of which are felonies. So the RIAA could charge you with IP theft, and even send you to jail, but you could do the same thing.

As has been noted however that this does not apply to things which are within plain sight/the public domain. Which is to say that if they log on to kazaa/bittorrent/etc and find you sharing their stuff they can probably do something about it, especially with the somewhat loose strictures on subpoenas for account information these days.

Re:DHCP????

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the University of Michigan typically uses year long DHCP leases that are associated to your MAC address. This happens when you register your computer to get ethernet access in the residence halls, after you sign the IT environment usage policy document, which by the way states that although they don't have a technical barrier to any network protocol, you are not allowed to do anything that breaks the law while on their network.

From: http://rescomp.umich.edu/Residential.Ethernet/NetG uide/Registration/Conditions.of.Use.php

I understand that the security of my computer system is my responsibility, and that I am responsible for all activity originating from my computer system, including but not limited to: a) traffic generated by viruses; b) the sharing of music or other media files; and c) other users who have gained access to my computer.

Re:RIAA apologies

[flosofl]

Yes, they actually did apologize:

CNET.NEWS.COM:RIAA Apology