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Judge: Schools Don't Have to Help Music Industry
peg0cjs writes "www.canoe.ca reports that a federal magistrate has ruled that two North Carolina universities do not have to reveal the identities of two students accused of sharing copyrighted music on the Internet. U.S. Magistrate Judge Russell A. Eliason ruled that the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University do not need to cooperate with the RIAA in identifying two students accused of music piracy. The two unnamed students, who go by the aliases "hulk" and "CadillacMan", allegedly used University computer systems to distribute copyrighted material. The lawyer for one student said, 'We would never condone music piracy. What we're interested in is the rights of the individual -- privacy rights being protected.'"
Now only if ISP's felt the same way . . .
What about when you've only been accused. Innocent until proven guilty, or something like that? (US) Think before you post, Poindexter!
> "We would never condone music piracy," attorney Michael
> Kornbluth said. "What we're interested in is the rights of the
> individual -- privacy rights being protected."
This seems like a pretty weak legal argument to me. If the crime had been assault or theft of a laptop or breaking and entering would anyone with material evidence of the crime be justified in not cooperating with the investigation in order to protect the privacy of the alleged perpetrators?
But, it is a victory. It's a step in the right direction.
Hopefully, other people will follow suit. But, I fear that this ruling will be overturned quite soon. The **AA are very powerful, and this is a major setback for them.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
finally some sense. If the university breaches your privacy by handing over your details without a search warrant/appropriate court demand/whatever then you have a case to bring a suit against them. Same goes for ISPs, phone companies, cable companies or whatever.
Isn't there something about probably cause? Surely I can't ring up MIT and say "One of your students who goes by the name Stud Muffin has been posting copies of my material online, take it down now" and expect to be taken seriously without providing some evidence?
IANAL
I didn't RTFA
I am a leaf on the wind
Since the RIAA != A local, state or federal law enforcement agency, the RIAA has no legal ground to demand student information. They need to go to court just like every other person or corporation in this country.
Yea for logic and reasoning in the legal system!
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
That's all well and good, in North Carolina. But, how is it going to play as a precedent in other courts? Particularly of interest is the federal level. I haven't kept up on the various decisions lately, but I believe other court rulings have supported the MPAA/RIAA.
I sincerely doubt that a judge in California will see things the same way. Of course, I've been wrong before.
Additionally, what's the motivation for organizations (schools or ISPs) to fight for privacy versus just rolling over? I don't hear much of an outcry from the public over this bullshit, so it's not like they're really trying to protect their images. And, we all know that corporations don't go to much effort just on priciple (schools are a bit better in this regard).
In terms of "selling piracy", the MPAA/RIAA have won. The public really buys into the idea of it being stealing (as opposed to copyright infringment), and doesn't seem to get too pissed off over the draconian punishments that have been handed down. Even people who are fairly technically literate, or well versed in law, often don't see the distinction between theft and infringement. It's pretty sad. Who else is up for forming a non-profit, whose mission is to educate the public on intellectual property issues? Lastly, if the public doesn't understand the issue all that well, can we really expect much better of the judiciary? In an ideal world, the judiciary represents the populace (of course, I'd hope them to be much smarter than the average asshole on the street though).
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
The civil liberties crowd will be happy that we're back to innocent until proven guilty -- "there's a large chasm between suspected and convicted" after all.
"We already stole music and have done something wrong."
The school didn't steal anything, the student did. If they wanted to avoid legal trouble, they'd simply hand him in and be done with him.
"Derp de derp."
As long as the *AA's have the bank accounts and the lobbyists, these cases will just be a bump in their road.
And that really really blows.
What I meant by 'felt that way' was the schools' eventual willingness to take it to court to fight for the students and their privacy. I was rather unclear about that.
This isn't a criminal charge, it's a civil action. Also, it's generally one based on rather weak evidence. The RIAA has companies that work for them that scan the filesharing networks for people sharing lots of files. They don't download and check them (at least not last I heard) they just get a list and assume it to be true. They then file a John Doe suit against the person behind the IP they supposedly came form and try to get their name.
Well there's a lot of problems here. First, as noted, they don't really check to see if the files are what they claim they are. I mean just because they claim to be song X doesn't mean that's actually their contents. Second, not all file sharing networks, Kazaa in particular, are that good at reporting files on a computer. Sometimes you'll ask it for a list of a host's files and it'll give you a list for a different host. Now, even if it is the right list and they are legit, you have no idea what might be behind that IP. Maybe it's an open wireless access point, maybe the box was hacked. You don't know that the person who was allegedly in charge of the IP is actually responsable.
So this is a pretty weak case to ask a school to violate it's prvacy policy for. This isn't like a criminal investigation, where probable cause would have to be presented to a judge to get an order to have the school give up the information. The RIAA is essentially going on fishing expeditions, and then forcing a settlement because a trial is too expensive and scary. Big difference for a normal sriminal investigation.
This looks fishy. I would expect a "hulk001" or "CadillacMan512", something with a number.
So, no police turning up, no-one behaving like police to try to 'stamp it out', no-one going to jail even if they did do it. Taxpayers won't pay for the police or the jail, they have better uses for their tax dollars.
Go to a judge. Tell him about the John or Jane Doe. See if the judge will force John or Jane to come along and tell his or her side of the story --- for all I know, maybe their computer was broken into, or maybe their open WAP was hijacked.
Believe the judge. It's his duty to uphold the law as between civil litigants in the best way he sees fit.
Getting John or Jane Doe's details, and then intimidating them, well, that might be a crime.
How about no one 'stole' anything. Does the RIAA no longer have their copy of the music that was allegedly stolen? If they do, then nothing was stolen.
What they have is an allegation that copyright infringement took place. No mention seems to be made as to what proof they have, its possible they dont have any.
They dont get to find out who (may) have been at that IP address and ransack that persons computer looking for proof (or threaten to sue them then settle for $obscene_amount)
Given that iTunes sells music at $0.99 a track, you only need to share 1011 copies of songs to be a felon.
As it is the RIAA's Lawyer SWAT team stepped up and said "We want their names." The Uni refused. The matter was taken to a civil court and a judge decide that the Uni didn't have to cooperate.
Score 1 for justice.
Let me be clear. The issue here isn't whether hulk and CadillacMan stole/unlawfully copied/legally through fair use copied something. The issue is whether or not the Uni has to hand over confidential data just because some corporation says so. I don't care what side of the copyright debate you're on its hard to see this as anything but a good.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
What the music industry doesn't seem to understand is that they are going through a fundamental shift in their business. Things are never going to go back to the way that were before the MP3-P2P revolution. If the music industry succeeds in stopping file sharing of music recordings, they will end up shrinking their industry much more than would happen if they let file sharing continue unharrassed.
File sharing is critically important to the industry because it is becoming the only way that people can find new music that they like. The old method of music sales, which was a single song or group of songs unalterably imprinted on a plastic disk (or tape spool in the case of cassettes), enforced the perspective that the only 'natural' way to market recordings was to have every disk have the same price for every song sold to every listener. This seemed obvious and actually did work well for 100 years.
Then digitization hit. Digitization takes any media and separates it into parts in ways that were impossible and inconceivable before the medium is converted into a digital format. This happens to every media that becomes digitized. These separated forms are then recombined with other forms that have become separated from other media. All the wealth that is created from commercializing digitized media comes from the recombination of these separations into new formats that were impossible before digitization. Usually the new products are inferior in quality to previous pre-digital products, but this is ignored by customers because the new products have so much more utility than the previous higher quality but more expensive products.
Examples abound: the typewriter keys split from the printing of letters and combined with television to become the word processor. The piano split between the keyboard and the sound of the hammered strings to become the sampler. The light bulb split from the generated heat and combined with offset printing to become the LCD graphics display terminal....and so on.
Digitization split the recording from the disk. The recording combined with the telephone to become P2P and the disk combined with the telegraph to become the CD-R. The $15 group of songs on a disk became the $0.15 CD-R with 10 albums worth of songs. This isn't going to change back regardless of the draconian incarceration laws passed by the music industry. They're just going to turn ordinary college students into hardened criminals and dedicated revolutionaries. Just to attempt a vain effort to preserve an outmoded pop-music distribution method from its inevitable transformation.
The new method of music distribution will be centered on the marketing to the individual listener/customer instead of marketing individual disk recordings. The industry has to get used to the principal that in the new era, every listener is going to pay a different amount of money for each recording in their collection. Currently with file sharing, that cost is $0.00 with the listener/consumer having to do all the filtering of the junk and uninteresting recordings available on the Kazaa. (a new noun meaning the underground file-sharing network, as opposed to 'being in Kazaa'). The music industry will reap unimaginable profits off file sharing when they learn to filter the astronomical amount of recorded music to individual listener's tastes.
This is where their real future lies, not with harassing and alienating their customer base.
I'm glad someone's standing up for pirates, but couldn't you use the same argument (privacy) these schools are using to defend withholding the names of people running a kiddie porn ring or some other illegal activity? They should address the IP issues instead of using privacy as the standard by which their actions are to be judged. This could be an opportunity to take a stand and make a statement instead of a ruling that will be overturned. Thoughts?
I would THINK that anyone investigating a kiddie porn ring would go by the book rather than risk a judge throwing out evidence. For example:
1. Someone reports this to the School
2. School (this being very criminal) reports it to the police / tells the informent to contact the police them selves
3. Police investiate, supenea School
4. Ring gets busted
There is a long standing prodecure for criminal investigations, and no matter how much you feel an individual or a group are scumbags they do have rights.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
"We all must fear evil, but the evil we must fear the most is the indifference of good men."
:)
-Boondock Saints
(I get all my moral philosophy from movies with lots of guns and violence.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
withholding the names of people running a kiddie porn ring
Actually, I'd be more than happy if the University did this. Imagine if YOU were the one arrested. Everyone sees your name and picture plastered all over the news. Of course, you're not a pedophile, and after dismantling your computer, the charges are dropped, and nobody speaks of it again.
Then graduation looms. You start sending out resumes. Not a single response, not even a rejection letter. Deciding that your college town sucked anyway, you spread the net a little wider, graduation just around the corner. Graduation comes and goes. You go back to living with your parents. Finally, on the other side of the country, you get a nibble. You fly over there for an interview, they hire you on the spot. Over the next few days you arrange a year contract on an apartment, move in, and start working, then the Regional Manager drops by to see how everything is going. Of course he recognizes you, and two days later you're jobless again, your position having been downsized ("we're terribly sorry").
I'm all for posting signs in pedos' yards after they've been found guilty of screwing little kids or something, but face it... we live in a world where a lynch mob recently killed a pediatrician because their collective intelligence couldn't beat an amoeba. Innocent until proven guilty requires a certain level of privacy and delicacy for situations like this.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
- Your SIN
- Your Student #
- Your DOB
- Your class schedule
- Your phone #
- Your address
.Now along comes the RIAA saying "Please give us this private info on one (or two) of your students, because we think they've done bad things." What's the University to do? According to justice Eliason, not a damn thing!This is how it's *supposed* to work in our society:
- The RIAA or one of its members suspects someone has infringed on their IP
- They contact law enforcement personnel and inform them that a crime has taken place
- The state-recognized enforcement officers investigate
- They present their findings to a judge, who issues a warrant to collect private information on the suspects
- The warrant is presented to the University in question
- The University complies with the warrant and provides all your...errr...their info
- The D.A. decides whether or not to file charges against you...errr...them
The RIAA have short-circuited this due process through their lobbying efforts, and now the judiciary appears to be saying "Wait a minute!"At least, that's my take on it.
Karma: Excellent (Mainly due to Bill & Ted's Karma Adventure)
No, now you can sue your school and have hope of winning if they do not protect your privacy until there is a court order.
There is a process in place to get information, it involves subpoenas and other such legal things. This is expensive for the RIAA, much easier to just ask the school who either way will have to turn the information over. The difference isn't major, but it is critical to rule of law (as opposed to anarchy).