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RIAA Cracks Down on Internet2 File Sharing
Daverd writes "Hundreds of students at 18 universities nation-wide have had lawsuits filed against them by the RIAA for filesharing over Internet2." The official RIAA Press Release and commentary at MSNBC is also available. From the article: "i2Hub has been seen as a safe haven, and what we wanted to do was puncture that misconception," said Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA. "This has been a subversion of the research purposes for which Internet2 was developed."
Yes, we all hate the *AA's but they were breaking the law, and bastardizing a research network.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
How did the RIAA get access to Internet2 to begin with?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Uhm, 1999 called and they want their bullshit excuses back. The general concensus on /. for several years has been that individual infringers should be punished and not the technology. Here, you have the RIAA doing just that, instead of trying to get I2 banned or restricted.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I remember back during the lawsuit when slashdotters were complaining that the RIAA wasn't suing the actual infringer. Now that they are suing the actual infringers, why is everyone complaining.
And no, the RIAA isn't going to sue you for making and mp3 rip of your friend's CD (although they would be within their rights to do sue). They are going to sue those who are doing the largest amount of copying. That used to be bootleggers, but it is now everyday Joe college students sharing hundreds of gigabytes of copyrighted material to everyone else on the Internet.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
I believe you meant to say:
"Yes, we all hate the *AA's *AND* they were breaking the law, and bastardizing a research network."
The RIAA is not an academic/research institution, and therefore had no business being on the I2 to monitor file sharing activity in the first place. They were abusing the network and probably breaking laws governing access to restricted computer systems to be on there at all.
But of course we all know it's perfectly all right to break in to other peoples' private networks, as long as you've got plenty of money and lawyers and lobbyists to back you up.
From the article it said that they weren't divulging how they got this information.
I don't think that the schools are ratting people out because of liability reasons (if the school is monitoring the network, then they have to report EVERY illegal action they see. If they don't monitor the network, then they don't have to report anything... )
The RIAA is certainly not a research institution, and if they are trying to get access to internet2 to "test" it for content delivery, then I can see an argument, but I think the (obvious) real motivation is just to catch filesharers. And that is morally wrong. Even if the filesharers are breaking a law, two wrongs don't make a right.
I'm not sure who is in charge of internet2, but I sure would like to hear that organization tell the RIAA that they're not welcome on internet2 if they're just going to spy on people. If the RIAA starts spending money on new (open) technologies and provides test services for students and researchers, etc... then that might be something. Until then, the RIAA should stay off internet2.
...when no matter how hard they try, no matter how many laws they buy, no matter how many sleazy tactics they pull, the amount of music shared over the internet keeps *increasing* rather than decreasing. From 12-year-old girls to 72-year-old grannies, everyone seems to be getting in on the game and no amount of whining/threatening/suing by the RIAA is making so much as a dent in the traffic.
Seems it's time to re-evaluate the situation and see if the law - and perhaps someone's business model - is in need of change.
(cue RIAA apologists)
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Huh?!? What's wrong with games, porn, and sharing of non-copyrighted files? No, sharing of copyrighted data without permission is the only muck they should be trying to clean up.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
for which the Constitution's copyright clause was conceived?
IIRC it was mainly one to make people create, not litigate...
If the founding fathers had imagined industries suing hundreds of students into oblivion (with copyrights extended into eternity), they would have scrapped the clause altogether, straight from the drafting board, back in the 18th century...
Catch: What if there is a band signed to a label that you like. It doesn't matter if it's U2, or Bon Jovi, or Def Leppard, or Jethro Tull, or Rush. They're signed. And if they put out a new album, you're frelled.
That's the whole problem with the whole "ditch the RIAA and all their artists" thing. Some people like some of the bands that have been signed.Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
...*AA don't belong on I2. They aren't researchers, they aren't proper party to its development, their desires aren't germane to what I2 is for.
In addition to avoiding spending a single penny on any of their crud, sooner or later, they are going to go upgainst one or more people who will fight them tooth and nail in court in a to-the-death legal slugfest of attrition. All they are doing is making themselves look like greedy bastards.
I'm not paranoid that they will eliminate file sharing whether legal or questionable, or wipe out fair use altogether. I'm confident they'll lose in the end. It just amazes me that they can be so dense as to think lawsuit frenzy will win them converts to their arguments or make enough people fear them. They ain't the government and don't have its police powers, no matter how many suits they file.
How did they get on I2 and why? Is there an action that can be taken against them being there? Fine, supposed IP was being shared. Shotgunning lawsuits was not the answer. And to attack universities where the ratio of anti to pro corporate/ip-Nazi sentiment is so lopsided? They need to receive a Darwin Awards Lifetime Achievement trophy.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Isn't "file sharing" the reason we have Internet2? Or, Internet1 for that matter?
Nowhere in the article does it say that the shared files were copyrighted or pirated. Or music, or movies. It's only said that the I2 could allow super-fast doing so, but it does not say what was actually shared, or how the sharing was discovered.
I'm sure that there must have been illegal activity. However, unless it's clearly stated in the corporate media, people might start thinking that any and all file sharing is illegal, and this is simply not true.
It's a matter of keeping the public perception of the actual problem unmuddled.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Copyright infringement occurs when you copy someone else's protected work.
Really?
Audio Home Recording Act of 1992:
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
Emphasis mine.
Why is this modded insightful? Every time one of these threads comes up, someone says this. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. If anything it should be modded "Redundant".
Anyhoo, a lot of the stuff the RIAA puts out bites, but there are some geeks, some of whom post on Slashdot, who like some of the music on an RIAA affiliated label.
Likewise, just because music is independent doesn't mean it's good. 99% of everything is crap. That means music that's on the radio. That means independant artists and labels too.
Besides, I haven't heard about any local "independant" group that isn't metal in some form or another (Death, Christian, Heavy, whatever) or punk. Frankly, I don't like metal, I prefer something with a melody. And I can't find it in the independant scene. And I don't particularly like punk (With the exception of the Ramones, the Clash, and "I Hate You" from the soundtrack of Star Trek IV).Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Any number of reasons exist for a student or an employee to know that the school's facilities are being used to traffic music on the I2. Any number of reasons also exist for someone to pass the information on to the attornies representing either the RIAA or the school.
In fact, I'd wager that a condition of employment at the school is to not engage in or facilitate illegal activity. It would be pretty hard for a network admin to learn that some kid was illegally moving tens of thousands of files through his servers, then keep his mouth shut, and not be vulnerable to charges of aiding a criminal activity. Fear of getting caught covering that up would be a strong motivator to report the activity to the school.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Anyhoo, a lot of the stuff the RIAA puts out bites, but there are some geeks, some of whom post on Slashdot, who like some of the music on an RIAA affiliated label.
I agree with you on this one. There is some stuff on RIAA labels that is good. My guess is some people don't even know just how many damn labels there are in the RIAA. There's also stuff on non-RIAA labels that I like. But in the end, I agree with the "Don't buy it" attitude. If you are really pissed at the RIAA for all their idiotic actions, boycott them. No, a boycott is not always going to be fun - sometimes it hurts to stick to your morals. For example, I really started getting into Bad Religion about a year and a half ago. I loved every album I could get my hands on, but since a lot of their stuff is from Atlantic, I won't buy it.
Go ahead and rip on the Slashbots who spew the "Everything indie is good, everything RIAA is crap" line over and over again. However, don't demean the message that a true boycott sends. I vote with my dollars because that's what I believe in.
But you see no problem with taking resources that I (and others) payed for for your own purposes. In the eyes of the general public, illegal P2P slid by most people because it wasn't affecting their pocketbook....
Sorry that'll never justify illegal P2P activity on Internet2.
I guess we'll just have to wait for the Supreme Court to decide MGM v. Grokster to see if there is such justification. Lower courts have already ruled in favor of Grokster.
As for your money being wasted, society stands to gain a great deal if a truly anonymous P2P architecture is developed and implemented. Think freedom of speech issues - think human rights and the great firewall of China, etc... Internet2 is the perfect host for such development. The parent poster argued that P2P was not a legitimate use of Internet2, I showed that it could very well be. I also denounced copyright infringement.
Your position seems to be that because the technology can be used to commit acts of copyright infringement, then your tax dollars should not go to funding its research. That position is so short-sighted as to be absurd. By your reasoning, we should not even fund research into new types of higher density writable media, as they might (and inevitably will) be used by some people to make illegal copies of things. Imagine the losses that society might suffer were we all to believe as you do.
for faking a crime with the intent to make it harder for authorities
How would anyone be able to prove intent? You could say the intent was to punish people illegaly downloading music (and you could say as much in all the files downloaded). In fact I would say a few honeypots would be a great money-making scheme for an industrious student. Hmm, perhaps it's time to go back to grad school...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Try Dispatch.
In all this endless discussion about law and who 'owns' music, let us not forget that RIAA has no moral right to own music anymore.
By indefinitely extending the copyright period by paying off the politicians, the RIAA companies stole the public domain.
This is the biggest theft of artistic work in history.
As a result, they have no longer any moral right to claim to own music copyrights.
Copyrights are based on the principal that there is finite period of copyright ownership for artistic material. Since they broke this fundamental legal pricipal, we have no moral obligation to accept their claims of ownership of any artistic material, regardless of how old or new it may be.
The rule of law is a balance: destroy the balance and you have destroyed your legal protection.
Download all you want!!!
Except that he's not distributing copyrighted material. He's time shifting publicly broadcasted material, which is a right explicitly granted under copyright.
He didn't. His source might have (or not). But his source does not have the distribution rights (the right to create a temporary stream to the reciever's computer). A copy of an illegal stream/copy is still illegal. For example, many countries require a back-up copy to be made from your copy. If your friend owns the same CD, 100% identical, you can't make a back-up from his.
Also note that timeshifting is explicitly deemed legal by precedence (sony vs betamax), not directly in copyright law. Note that this is not the same as a right. If it were to fall under another paragraph (e.g. DMCA-protections) which prevented you from doing so, the Betamax decision does not negate that.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And this would make any difference because?