Slashdot Mirror
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.
Who didn't see it coming? It was bound to happen.
You just cant keep 100 TB of files "hidden" for all that long. Considering all the press it got last year, I'm surprised it has even lasted even this long.
Also, don't forget our friends in the MPAA. In a short post by the author of the news.com.com article: "According to the RIAA, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) will be announcing similar action later today."
In case you don't read the article, here are the universities in question: Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Drexel University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Princeton University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkeley, University of California at San Diego, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, University of Pittsburgh and the University of Southern California.
Go RIT!
...RIAA was concerned about that Internet2 wasn't used for research only, and 'decided to help'. How kind of them...
well screw you, I'm gonna go make an Internet3. With gambling and hookers.
There is also an official press release from the people at i2hub, here: http://press.i2hub.com/i2hubpressrelease-4122005.p df.
i2hub doesn't host any files centrally, nor do they keep any indexes of files on the network, so they should be fine. P2P lives on another day.
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
Is there a second internet, or is it something like bittorrent or some small group that runs on top of the internet? Is it like what the french have?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
"This is Lars Ulrich, drummer of Metallica. Last week, he purchased a gold plated shark table to be installed in his basement club. But because of file sharers, he has to wait another week. This is the home of P. Miller, his wife, and his 4 year old son. All little TImmy wanted was an island in French Polynesia with giraffes and wild horses running free. But this year, he'll have to settle for his own island in the Bahamas with white Siberian tigers." -South Park, changed a bit. The students did do wrong though. 19535^13 megabits per second should not be used to share One Night In Paris.
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?
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.
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.
Time to tear it down and start working on Internet3.
Unknown host pong.
Does anyone have any invites for Internet 3?
Slashdot Headline, 2010: RIAA cracks down on all network protocols.
/bin/cp binary on unix systems, CD and DVD burning devices, pens and pencils, and the freedom to hum and whistle tunes. The RIAA is working hard to enforce a mandatory cutting of vocal cords of all new babies born in the US, and the amputation of their arms so as to make their ability to infringe on Holy Copyrights more difficult.
In their everlasting and Glorious Crusade against music piracy, the RIAA has successfully lobbied congress to make the entire concept of networking illegal, as it has the potential to violate music copyright. Also covered by this broad new bill passed by congress are all forms of LAN protocols such as NFS and Samba. Computers will no longer be allowed to exchange information in any way.
Also covered by the bill is the
RIAA expects total victory over the human race within ten years.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
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.
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.
Not necessarily. I don't see any reason why i2 couldn't be used to develop secure, anonymous, and impervious to lawsuit P2P networks, a lá freenet (but maybe with a more "gnutellish" interface). But then, architectural issues aside, I'm sure that no publicly funded research is undertaken for the sole purpose of copyright infringement. Here's hoping that there is other stuff on that hub that (legally) justifies its existence.
On a related note, anyone who hasn't read Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" and has strong oppinions on the topic of filesharing and copyrights owes it to themselves to read this wonderful book. It really gives alot of background to the debate, and puts to rest alot of myths that the major copyright owners would have you buy into. More info at Lessig.org.
...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?
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.
BTW, I also see Harvard and Princeton. I like that. Those are the guys who are damn good at shit like Law and turning a simple argument into a 5 year long case.
Harvard Student: "But your Honor, we have not examined how this law relates to the 1892 Kapskern case"
Judge: "Kapskern??"
Harvard Student: "Yes, it set a precident about if the tomatoe is a fruit or vegitable, and there are many parallels between that question and the question of sharing music".
Judge: Irrelevent, find something else.
Harvard Student: We motion for a continuance so we can file an appeal to this decision.
Judge: Case postponed for appelate review, we'll recovien in 4 months.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
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'm not doing all the work for you, click the link.
For context, click Parent.
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.
anyone know if this is actually effective?
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.
Here is an article about the issue that was published in yesterday's edition of The Tartan, the student newspaper of Carnegie Mellon, one of the universities targeted by the RIAA. There was also an editorial written about the issue. (Note: The Tartan's website cannot be rendered in Internet Explorer. Please use a standards-compliant web browser.)
Also, below is the full text of an email that was sent to all students on April 4 from Carnegie Mellon's Chief Information Officer Joel Smith.
-------- Original Message -------- To: The Carnegie Mellon Community
From: Joel Smith, Chief Information Officer
Subject: Illegal use of copyrighted materials on Carnegie Mellon's network - your *personal* liability
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 22:33:47 -0000
We are writing to remind the entire campus community of the University's commitment to the protection of intellectual property and copyrighted material. When it comes to illegal copying of digital materials - whether music, video, text, or pictures - the University imposes its own penalties (disciplinary action, loss of network connectivity) on anyone who is found to be using Carnegie Mellon's network for such purposes.
Moreover, the trade organizations that are charged with protecting copyrighted materials, e.g. the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), are aggressively searching for copyright violators on the Internet and *will take independent legal action against such violators.* Peer to peer file sharing activity using the Carnegie Mellon network is accessible to their monitoring. Past actions by these industry associations have resulted in substantial monetary penalties imposed on the individuals involved. See:
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2003/05/ 02/news/8154.shtml
In fact, according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, penalties can range from $750 to $150,000 per song if songs are the items being distributed illegally.
Please be aware that the target of these actions is not the University, but rather the individuals engaged in the violations. As an Internet service provider, following the results of court rulings last year, the University is obliged to respond to subpoenas from organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA requesting the names of individuals who operate computers illegally sharing copyrighted materials. Do not be misled by the fact that Verizon, as an Internet service provider, won its case for not providing user names in response to certain kinds of "John Doe" subpoenas. The ruling allows the RIAA and the MPAA to discover the identities of copyright violators from Internet service providers (including universities) as long as they follow certain legal procedures.
Simply put, if you are engaged in illegal use of copyrighted materials (usually done by peer-to-peer file sharing using programs like Kazza, LimeWire, BitTorrent, and others) and the University receives a proper subpoena asking for the name of the person who registered the computer being used for such purposes on the Carnegie Mellon network, we are legally obligated to supply that name. The result may well be that the RIAA or MPAA will take legal action against *you*. There is nothing the University can do to shield you from such action.
Since your identity on the network is based on the match between your name an the IP address and *MAC* or *hardware* address of your computer, it is a very good idea to be sure that all and only the computers you physically control are registered to you. You can check the list of computers you have registered to your name using Computing Services' NetReg system. Go to http://netreg.net.cmu.edu, click on the Enter button at
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Considering that UMass is indeed listed, I have to wonder if you're a product of that institution. :)
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.
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!!!