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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."
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
I agree that this has been a subversion. What the heck was the RIAA doing on I2 in the first place! Find out how they gained access to it an remove thier hind end! I2 should be the sole domain of students and teachers and not accessable by industry.
March 28th
TO: RIT Students
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is sending notices to
RIT of its intention to subpoena the identity of specific RIT computer
users. This intention is a significant ramp up of the RIAA's efforts to
stop illegal file sharing. RIAA has targeted specific computer accounts used
to access and transmit such files, and issued subpoenas to the service
providers in order to obtain the names and contact information of those
responsible for the file-sharing.
The notices RIT receives are associated with students living in RIT
residences or using the wireless network at RIT. Such notices are in
preparation for a lawsuit against the individuals RIAA believes have
violated copyright law by illegally downloading and uploading music via
file-sharing programs.
RIT policy is not to release the names or contact information of our
computer users unless required to do so by law. Should RIAA pursue legal
action, RIT may be compelled to release the identities of these individuals.
To avoid legal action over inappropriate file-sharing, it is important you
understand the proper use of RIT computing resources. While some
file-sharing is lawful, some file-sharing is not. Some programs used to
download files from the Internet often, unbeknownst to the recipient, turn
the individual's computer into a file-sharing (uploading) server. Even
unknowingly uploading copyrighted works may subject you to legal risk.
Since when is it the RIAA's job to enforce the Internet2 terms of service (or spirit or whatever)? Has Internet2 actually complained about all the file sharing?
I'm sure the bribed/threateded/etc one of the I2 instutions to let them snoop traffic. What may be interesting is if someone chooses to fight these lawsuits. It may well be against the university's privacy policy to do what they did. I looked at ours, and letting any thrid party, except law enforcement with a warrant, monitor the network would be a violation.
UMass has, by far, the most users on the hub, but isn't listed as one of the schools targetted.
Oh yes, I noticed.
Those ~5-8 mb files are like shooting BB's down an aircraft hanger!!
Seriously, if I had "Internet2" at my disposal, I could most certainly find something more productive (6 CD Linux install in a few seconds? Yes please.)or at the very least more illegal to do with it than download a lot of crappy music!
I'm too lazy to enter a sig. Hey wait a second! You tricked me!
Back in November of '04 the RIAA petitioned to become a member of the Internet2 community. I don't know if they ever got their own network connection, but I remember them asking for one.
bastardizing a research network
Yeah right. Aside from using it to test some pretty fancy high speed protocols, the Internet2 in general is really nothing more than a fast pipe for college students to download music on, insulated from the original Internet by BGP. You never see an academic conference requiring "tests on the Internet2" because its geographic concentration is entirely in North America and its speed is totally beyond anything you see in the real Internet; that is why everyone wants PlanetLab instead.
- sm
I am a student at the University of Pittsburgh, and all traffic from residence halls, no matter what it is, is automatically routed over the Internet2 when it is to another university. We do not have an upload cap for this traffic. For all traffic to the "regular Internet", if a connection is made to us, our upload and download speed over that connection is limited to 500 bytes/second or slower. This makes tasks such as AIM Direct Connect useless, and even useful features such as SSH are almost too slow for use. However, any Internet2 traffic, even as an incoming connection to me, runs at several MB/sec upload and download (essentially the full 100mbps connection).
I2hub is used extensively here, and there has been no issues with bandwidth that I am aware of. If it was an issue, the university has shown they have the capabilities to put restrictions in place. Personally, I use i2hub to get legal files (such as Linux ISO images or the TV show that aired last night that I missed, though this is controversial) because the download speed is so fast.
This is not abusing the research network; rather, it is using a network with extreme amounts of bandwidth that would otherwise go unused.
From reading the RIT letter posted above, it looks like the sent subpoenas to the different universities and got the universities to provide the names of the students. I doubt that the RIAA actually got onto I2 themselves.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Music, unlike diamonds, does not rely on a natural resource. I've yet to figure out why the hell people just don't switch to independent music. You'd be amazed at how good this type of music really is. You can go to a show for $0.00 to $10.00, RECORD it if you want, TRADE it at will usually, and the MAJORITY of the money goes to the artists!
The key here is that the MUSIC INDUSTRY is SUING the people IN COLLEGE who should simply REVOLUTIONIZE the industry! Go to your local jam band concerts, frequent the college shows, screw the big labels, use your own mind and broaden it. If the money goes independent, then so will the artists. And the artists who want to keep making sixty cents for every ten bucks their parent company makes can go right ahead. They're done getting my money.
If I take a Maxtor 300GB portable usb drive, plugs it into my pc, loads up with movies, and ships of to a friend? Huge capcity, overnight, or in a few days at least. And besides, ??AA has no real chance of uncovering such transfers.
Well, realistically. What about VPN? Having hard encryption easily obtainable, it should be trivial to share files with friends. If a key is signed by a large enough number of friends, trust it. Otherwise, discard. If a p2p net included strong cryptographi, and trust levels and/or ratings to users, it would be far more difficult for ??AA to eavesdrop those connections. At very least, they'd have to build up a trust, which would probably mean sharing...
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
i've heard rumors (note these are only rumors) that they have recruited students at various colleges to monitor file sharing networks, probably giving them access to the tools they use and probably bribing them as well.
please me, have no regrets.
Considering that Slashdot even reported that this was happening, it is not that hard for them to file John Doe lawsuits and then subpoena the universities for the names of the students.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
And here's MPAA Looks to Sniff Internet2 Traffic for Sharers.
There was a really good comment in there about how some guy who was an admin on I2 kept getting bogus threat letters from the **AA's, to IPs that had never even existed. A mod up (next time I get points) to the person who finds it!
For context, click Parent.
I'm not doing all the work for you, click the link.
For context, click Parent.
I am curious about how the *AAs gained access to a restricted research network. Granted those people who were sharing non-research related files were probably violating the terms of use as well, but that does not excuse the unauthorized breaking and entry of the *AAs, if indeed that is how they got in, into a private research network. Couldn't the *AAs be busted too for breaking in or paying an insider? This is a legal grey area at the very least.
anyone know if this is actually effective?
What will happen is probably more like:
Judge: Motion denied, and here is an 11(c)(1)(B) motion for you to show cause why I shouldn't smack your ass around for causing unnecessary delay.
Yes, I know you were making a joke, but I'm taking Civil Procedure, and we just covered sanctions.
Completely OT: the Supreme Court declared the tomato a vegetable in Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893), in response to a dispute over the Tariff Act of 1883, which taxed vegetables but not fruits.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
It does not matter if the evidence is admissible in court because none of the RIAA cases ever make it to court. The students will settle with the RIAA like everyone else who they have sued in the past.
Is it a "crime" or just a civil matter?
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
What's very interesting is that many comments have been made for how P2P scales or doesn't scale, especially if it's partly decentralized, fully decentralized, encrypted, and/or anonymized beyond immediate neighbors.
Why is this NOT a legitimate use of I2? Sure, copyright violations are illegal either way, but, if I2 is not very efficient for me to snag Slackware via torrents, then perhaps bittorrent could be improved to function better over higher-bandwidth connections.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
How would you people feel if I would take Open Office (for example) and rewrite a part of it, so it could read/write .doc files with 100% relliability and then distribute that binary to all of my employees (say, 2000 workers). But I wouldn't provide the source.
I'd think
a) you're complying with the licence terms, as the
GPL doesn't require you to publish the source as you're not distributing outside your company
b) good on you for using open source to improve the lot of your employees
c) it's a bad example, anyway - because:
copying music is not stealing, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. Different laws, different penalties, different circumstances. Calling it theft won't make it so.
The goal of Free software is to spread knowledge rather than restricting it, using copyright to increase the public good rather than diminish it.
Sharing music is much the same principle - new music comes from a vast pool of existing melodies, riffs and lyrics, and I'd rather it was shared into the public domain than locked up with DRM for at least 100 years. Imagine if those who profited so much from selling other people's work had to give 49% to the artist, another 49% into the public domain (charity, maybe) and only got to keep 2%. Would they consider that fair? So why should we consider them constantly changing the copyright bargain to suit themselves fair?
Sharing music is arguably unethical, but so is charging students $15,000 a track (a penalty designed for commercial infringement) with no chance of them being able to afford to fight.
The RIAA are a private police force using the court system to extort money from people for the benefit of corporations. In addition, they've sued a 12 year old girl, a grandmother who couldn't have infringed, and someone who was dead. Personally, I hope someone accused by error goes to court, wins, and countersues the RIAA's members for a massive amount.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
It IS legal to tape a TV program for a friend and share it with them them . . . err, at least in the country I currently live in, Canada. It has certainly been legal for quite some time in the States to tape TV programs for yourself, so it's a grey area as to whether you can distribute them afterwards . . . yes, in the case of downloading TV programs it's currently considered illegal, however, enough various legislation that it would be a tough case to call, if someone downloaded a program that they missed and it went to court.
There are strong legal arguments to be made on either side; of course, our current society being corporate-minded and money-fuelled, it probably would end up falling on the side of Big Business. (Call me a left-wing liberal if you will, but try disputing that current law and judicial decisions tend to heavily favor corporations over individual consumers' rights -- whether you think that's okay or not is another question, naturally, as was noted in reverse of sorts by parent).
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Isn't that exactly what Overpeer is doing?
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
File-sharing software should move to ipv6. Perhaps that would be the kick in the pants the internet needs to go forward.
>A copy of an illegal stream/copy is still
>illegal.
Not being american, I have to ask, is possession really a copyright infringement? I can understand that the copying in it self of course is illegal. I can understand that a specific copy can have been made in a non legal way, but is possession of that copy an infringemen? Any use of such a copy, as long as it is not a copyright infringement itself, should be legal no? And if not so, do you know were in the law it is said so?