Slashdot Mirror
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 . . .
Good: 1
Evil: 42
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
BS. You have a right to fair trial and a right to privicy at the very least.
What about when you've only been accused. Innocent until proven guilty, or something like that? (US) Think before you post, Poindexter!
Note to RIAA: Not ALL our base belong to you.
Yea Biotch!
I own this school! wooo! Party on Wilmington St tonight! gonna get LAID!
Booyakasha!
I don't think your implication is accurate here. Nowhere in the summary or FA did it say the school "felt that way." On the contrary most colleges unfortunately have been all to eager to help the RIAA in whatever way they can. There is nothing preventing them from simply turning over the information anyway. There could be any number of reasons why they may still want to (they don't approve of the activity, they wish to avoid further legal problems with the RIAA, it's part of their network service agreement, etc.).
> "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?
Wait! Aren't we all supposed to be on the same Team here? There's no "I" in "SCHOOL"
I'm sure most people in the music industry at one time went to school, right? Therefore schools should be helping the music industry. It's plain and simple "IF A THEN B" logic, people.
Oh won't someone PLEASE think of the children!
Or at least think of how Chewbacca, living on Endor would gladly give up his privacy rights to help out the music industry.
(yeah, yeah...mod me either off topic or funny)
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
anyone care to explain?
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
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.
ehm... Obviously it is h2G2 :(
All government funding to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University was suspended today for failing to trample all over students right to privacy and bowing down to commercial interests.
Unnamed sources were quoted as saying that individuals attending any organization receiving government funds have no expectation of privacy.
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?
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
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.
If the RIAA had a court order, the school would have to comply, if not, why would the school open itself up to legal action from the student if no charges have been laid?
The RIAA is dumb, but then they have shown that over and over again.
"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."
yeah! it absolutely is! I will start holding my breath... NOW!
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
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.
Really? When we start executing people on the streets for Jaywalking, then I'll buy your line.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Even in a civil case, you must have probable cause to go into someone's bank records, medical records, phone records, search someone's house.
The school said, we are going to require you to have some basis to invade these student's privacy -- nothing is wrong with that. If this is a criminal case, the police would have to get a warrant from a judge. Here in a civil case, the school is saying get a judge to order us to.
This test has already come up in many courts. The plaintiff (RIAA) has to show that there is a likelyhood that they would be successful, before unmasking these people.
This comes from many cases where employees or investors have commented about companies and the company files suit only to unmask the people, then drop the suit. One of the early decisions was released in 2000.
Fight Spammers!
Did America actually start standing up for their citizens rights?
The rights of one are the rights of all.
Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on!
KFG
Like lawyer/client or priest/parishiner. I don't think the student enjoys the same sort of privelege with the school.
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.
I think quite a few students might think twice about a university if they read a story about it turning people in to the RIAA. Unfortunately the RIAA have no need to worry about publicity because they don't deal with consumers.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I would not want to see wooden dolls of the MPAA and RIAA jumping up and down against each other -- too many splinters.
Fight Spammers!
If you think that a subpoena is invalid, you can challenge it and ask the court for a protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c). That's what the attorneys for the students/universities in this case appear to have successfully done.
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.
But I'd bet this was one of the expedited subpeonas the DMCA allows - the ones that are complete and utter bullshit, and are routinely struck down by courts.
If the RIAA were to actually file John Doe lawsuits, they could get a real subpeona, and this wouldn't be an issue at all.
But filing a real lawsuit costs more than filling in the boxes on a form.
It's true that School/Student isn't a legally priveleged relationship. But all previous pair you mentioned were at a time not priveleged. It is through legal precendences, which later codified into laws, that they become a legally priveleged relationship (the priest/parishoner is more or a tradition that got codified). The current situation is that schools are trying to established the same level of priveleged relationship with its students.
Furthermore, all the above relationship stem from the need to have near absolute trust. I believe the same holds true for school/students.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
The students didn't steal anything either. They made unlawful copies.
Or maybe not. The RIAA isn't exactly known for gathering accurate evidence. I doubt they could prove any infringement - at most, they might be able to show the students offered files named after popular songs (which could be trademark infrigement), but how could they prove the students actually distributed the files, and that the files really contained the RIAA's copyrighted work?
Judges should make the RIAA provide some real evidence (like sniffer logs) before they issue any subpoenas.
I'm glad someone's standing up for pirates
They're standing up for the school and the student body as a whole.
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?
Well, you'd have to convince a judge that. In that case it wouldn't be the RIAA going to a judge, it'd be law enforcement, because that'd be a criminal case instead of a civil one. Plus, you'd have to be able to argue that the right of privacy was more important than the rights of the children.
- 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)
Here's a page describing the type of Subpoena being used by the RIAA:
Subpoena Defense Alliance
If even one of the defendant's lawyers calls file-sharing "piracy", you know the intellectual war is nowhere near won...
I think that the university has the right to not divulge information of its computer users. However, I believe that the people who did use the computers agree that their activities can be reported. After all, they're using the university's bandwidth, and ultimately their money. Personally, if I owned a company with Internet access, I would make sure that no excess bandwidth is used on illegal activity.
INACTIVE ACCOUNT
Here is your summons to appear ... in Record Court!
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
My freshman year of undergrad was during 1999. The height of napster and all that. A month into the first semester the network was all but done. We were the first class (or so I was told by a network guy) to have a signifigent majority have their own computers. My sophmore and last year on campus I might as well have been on a 56k. Moved off campus and got cable and havent looked back. What im trying to say is that im suprised that more schools networks havent gone down. I know alot of schools cap bandwith now Good for them for protecting their students though. Colleges basically rape their students for money and do little else.
It seems to me that the RIAA can still just go file John Doe suits against these students, and it's pretty clear that the school can identify them, so I'm not really sure how much of a difference this makes...
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
That's why they don't actually take cases to court. They just threaten people with lawsuits claiming $50 billion in damages to scare them into a $5,000 settlement. This way they don't have to prove shit. And a mere listing of available files, with or without actual traffic logs, will probably be enough probably cause to get a court order.
How is safeguarding the names of two students who are accused of illegal file-sharing justified in any way? Is this what you would call a technicality? "Oh, we're sorry. They might have broken the law, but...hey! privacy! yeahh!"
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).
And thus, the police would get a warrant, and they would recieve co-operation. Why does somebody always have to make it a "please think about the children" issue.
The RIAA is fully capable of persuing this manner further, through the proper channels, just like everyone else. We're not "standing up for pirates," but rather standing up for the rights that we all share.
Since we are talking about criminal law here, the relevant concepts are "aiding and abetting" and "conspiracy." It's pretty clear that you are seeding a Bittorrent with the knowledge and intent that others will share further copies of what they download from you. In fact, the entire Bittorrent system is based on the implicit agreement that those who download from the seed will then share with others. Thus, the criminal law is likely to hold you responsible for those subsequent copies (under aiding and abetting or conspiracy theories) just as if you had made them yourself.
If you seed a Bittorrent with copyrighted material and at least $1,000 worth of copies eventually result, you are probably a felon under U.S. law. It is a harder case to prove than the direct p2p case, because it depends more upon your precise mental state when you set up the seed, but I think you are still likely to be found guilty. Whether you should be or not is, of course, another question.
With new legislation here coming across Bush's desk in the next little while, I'm getting a little tired of all the attention given to the RIAA and the MPAA. My brother was killed by a drunk driver five years ago. Where are the corporate sponsored programs to educate kids in public schools not to drink and drive with the hyped up press coverage to match? Where is the new federal legislation to make stiffer penalties for drunk drivers? Obviously, everybody has a cause, and I'm simplifying matters to make a point, but the overemphasis on the poor RIAA and MPAA is really odious.
I read so many anti-Bush comments on this site, and certainly Republicans like Hatch helped make this mess, but Democrats drink from the RIAA & MPAA Kool-aid too...as well as the ignorant press. All I want is a little balance.
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
> Since we cannot save our own ass, we will bite yours. We already stole music and have done something wrong. But instead we will focus on how we can pick on something else to fight on.
I thought he was talking about the RIAA.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
You have to understand the entire system of the United States is to protect the citizenry from a violation of rights. If you're rights are violated in the gathering of evidence, then that evidence is moot, and is inadmisable in court. If the government is going to get you thrown in jail or put you at a disadvantage (in this case ruling in favor of RIAA) then they have the duty of due process. Just because some one took something that wasn't their's doesn't mean that the person doing the taking forfiets their rights. That is part of liberty and freedom. And the right to privacy is a protected right under the Ten Amendment as affirmed by the courts. If you do are doing something illegal, and the right to privacy shields the view of that act, then you can not be forced to reveal your identity if unless that act committed in private has public consquences (for example, the unenforceable sex laws that legislate what is legal or illegal in the bed room have been ruled illegal on the grounds that they violate the right to privacy and the acts committed do not have a public consquence. This principle is how a meth lab can be shut down or a child pornographer is stopped.) Anyhow, I would love to read the issues and how the issues of privacy came into play. I would be willing to bet that the reason the judge ruled in favor of the students was because of some agreement between the students and the school. However, the AUP of UNC reads, "Users have no Constitutional expectation of privacy in any information on the UNCP technology infrastructure. " With such an explicit statment I would be willing to argue that there are larger issues than what appears on face value.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
If colleges and universities allow themselves to be drawn into being the RIAA and MPAA's copyright cops, they will have to forget about educating anyone, because there will be no time for being anything but copyright cops. Higher education has always been about the free flow of ideas, not locking them up as property, and locking ideas up as property is what copyright does.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Copyright infringement is only a criminal offense if it is done for profit, or the work which is copied has a retail value over $1,000.
Law enforcement does not investigate civil cases.
So, it's more like:
1. The RIAA suspects someone has infringed on their IP and files a John Doe lawsuit in federal court.
2. The RIAA has to figure out who this person is before they can go much further in court.
3. The RIAA requests the court to issue a subpoena on the ISP to identify the infringer pursuant to 17 USC 512(h).
4. The ISP responds to the subpoena, and the RIAA now knows who the infringer is.
5. The RIAA amends their complaint to include the infringer as the defendant.
6. The lawsuit proceeds.
None of this has anything to do with warrants or the criminal system.
What?
Furthermore, all the above relationship stem from the need to have near absolute trust. I believe the same holds true for school/students.
A physician/patient privilege exists to encourage people to be open with their physicians so that they will seek medical assistance when needed. The legislatures decided that this was more important than allowing certain information to be obtainable in a lawsuit.
Likewise, an attorney/client privilege exists to encourage people to be open with their lawyers so that justice can be served fully and effectively.
I fail to see how a school/student privilege would serve to protect any interest of the student that outweighs the need for information to be available in our legal system for the just completion of lawsuits.
Also, don't get your hopes. There wasn't a patient/psychotherapist privilege in the federal courts until 1996.
What?
Yet with the wonderful American legal process there's nothing wrong with winning a case simply by outspending your opposition.
What irrisponsible university would honestly want to protect their students from years of court cases against a corperation with a virtually unlimited legal budget.
I meant probable cause for a search warrant in a criminal case.
Fight Spammers!
Look, the U.S. also has the highest per capita prison population. Wouldn't you agree that you can take the whole criminalization thing a bit too far? Using your example you'd make it an imprisioning offence to do 56 MPH in a 55 MPH zone. Hey! That speeding bastard is breaking the law! Kick his ass!
h tm
Seriously, isn't part of the justice system's purpose to be reasonable when considering punishment? Besides, I wonder if your example of breaking a window is relevant here.
Music piracy isn't so much about destroying someone else's chance to listen to it - regardless of the health of the music industry's outmoded business models. True theft or vandalism would involve that. True musicians do what they do for the love of the MUSIC - and people listen to it for the same reason. No, it doesn't mean musicians shouldn't be able to make a living off of it, but you know something? There was a time before CD's, tape players, vinyl, wax, and an organized industry that is looking to make music sharing of any sort a federal crime.
This same industry sues the Girl Scouts for singing 'Happy Birthday' for God's sake!
LINK:
http://www.s-t.com/daily/08-96/08-23-96/b02li056.
Do you defend this sort of bullshit activity on their part too? Should the girls be sent to slave labor in Mississippi for six days and each get fined $5000 because they danced to the Macarena in a public performance? I would say that most people don't buy into this line of thinking and that *reasonable* limitations on copyright have been breached by greedy politicans and corporations alike.
The industry saturates the airwaves with it's crap and targets children as their main audience. Again, when ClearChannel covers some 70% of the airwaves out there - where does the ability to choose come in?
At the same time, they seek to put walls around their listener's expressions of the music they hear. I'm not talking about law, I'm talking about the very real emotional response that music evokes in the young. And you expect these kids not to share what they love? And then this same industry pushes the worst kinds of depravity and depictions of 'gangsta' activity right on MTV, saying in effect, "Yo, yo, yo! Check it - yeah, it's cool to be a gangsta but DON'T STEAL OUR MUSIC!" Laughable, yo. Talk about mixed messages!
Good musicians somehow made it way back when - maybe more so than now since it appears the 5 majors and ClearChannel drown out what they don't like. The music industry is not supposed to be some sort of musician's endowment (and if it is, it's a total ripoff for 99% of them), but that's what is happening due to the heavy handed legislation and 'education' the industry force feeds.
Sure, copying is hurting the industy, blah, blah, blah. They said that back in the 80's when I made mix tapes for my friends, or (Horror!) my dad taped songs off the radio. Back in the late 60's the industry did everything they legally could to stop cassette tapes from coming into being. In the 80's it was DAT and in the 90's it was CD-R's. Somehow the industry survived our blatant wrongdoing, somehow they will survive this.
And just how do they survive? Simple. CD sales are NOT the only selling thing for most record companies. It's all about licensing! Licensing for movies, for radio, for Muzak, whatever. If not another single CD was sold from today on, the industry would survive it. So in light of this, how about a compromise then? Why not decriminalize file sharing and give the corps unlimited copyright terms for other corps' use? After all, it's not like they don't ensure they get extended copyrights anyway and making music 'free' would ensure greater acceptance among the listening audience.
The above rant written by a musician and a believer in reasonable copyright law.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
The expectation of privacy exception means that the school reserves the right to monitor activity on their net. However, this doesn't mean that information regarding students (however tracked) can be given out without consent to anyone not listed in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Schools are as afraid of FERPA as health practitioners are of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
I think one of the larger issues is the extreme power of the industry. ClearChannel controls the most obvious form of 'free' music - radio. This is where most of the kids get their ideas of what music is all about.
Except it's not free after all. Most of the time, we're talking about kids when we talk about music sharing. To be sure, there are plenty of adults doing it, but for the same reason you don't see a lot of 80's music selections at Fry's, the push, the demand is in teen-based music.
And we all know how responsible kids are, right? Not that we shouldn't expect the most from our kids, but they do have difficulty with fine lines. Like the fine line between 'free' radio and an even freer Limewire.
Holding children responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars each isn't going to stop them from making these choices. After all, kids rarely think anything can happen to THEM, it always happens to those OTHER kids. The industry as a whole needs to take a hard look at what the trends are and find a way to capitalize on it.
It's happened time and time again in the industry and there is no difference except scale now (don't forget, they still control the airwaves).
I too buy from indie labels like CD Baby and Magnatune - but for the mature among us, it's also a political statement. The simple fact is: most kids don't care about that stuff - they just want to listen to what they saw/heard on MTV (they DO play MUSIC sometimes) and the radio and find the quickest way to get it onto their iPods...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Copyright infringement is only a criminal offense if it is done for profit, or the work which is copied has a retail value over $1,000.
That's the thing... the RIAA and MPAA have inflated values as to what they believe a song's / movie's value is. While the going per track rate is about a buck a piece... I believe the RIAA assume that each track = whole album @ $15 a pop. But even at $1 a pop and the user is sharing 1001 songs there would be a good argument that this is criminal copyright infringement. Whether a DA would prosecute or a judge would agree is another story all together.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
"You have been charged with two counts of Privacy. How do you pleed?"
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
By that time the data of the student's identity may have been deleted due to data retension policies.
This isn't an issue of privilege, it's an issue of privacy laws. The university is required *BY LAW* to keep your information secret under state privacy laws. They cannot divulge stuff like
>BR> * Your SIN
* Your Student #
* Your DOB
* Your class schedule
* Your phone #
* Your address
Also presumably the "reverse". e.g. asking who lives at a specific address, who has a specific phone number, who is in a certin class, etc.
Profit was removed as a condition some time ago. I believe it was at least 1996, perhaps in the copyright revision in 1976.
I wanna go here, where the school seems to repect their students and gives them the benifit of the doubt, instead of the otherway around. "Ha ha ha, now all your base are belong to us". "We screw students and could care less what gutter they beg on when they leave, TAKE ALL MONEY" Okay, Ohio state never said that, but they sure wanted to, I asked them when they let the feds storm our dorm rooms and ransack our computers searching for P2P. That sure screwed some people for life, thanks alot OSU.
The No Electronic Theft Act (or NET) of 1997 did that. In Short, "The term 'financial gain' includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.'." IE if you are using a P2P system that requires any sort of Sharing of materials (ie BitTorrent, Min Share DC hubs, etc.)you have a "financial gain" involved.
ObRant: It's subpoena, not subpeona.
/have seen this misspelling too many times in one form.
Program Intellivision!
All our base are bemoaning you.
> What irrisponsible university
That's pretty fucking ignorant. From your spelling, it appears you have never been to a university. So I'll clue you in. This university was acting in a RESPONSIBLE manner by not acting like a lackey just because some big company now thinks they have judicial power and tells them to roll over and take it in the ass.
This issue is really quite simple, but clearly most posters in this thread have no clue of the actual facts. The DMCA permits expedited subpeonas (those that require only a clerk signature, instead of judicial review) only in certain situations. The judge decided that these subpeonas were invalid because the school was acting as a conduit only. Just like the case that Verizon won over a year ago, the ISP was not storing any of the material on their network and thus the subpeona did not meet the guidelines of the DMCA. The RIAA attempted to argue that legislative intent was to include those who act as conduits, but the judge (just as in the Verizon case) did not buy it. If it turned out that the materials were actually stored on a University file server, the situation would be different.
Also important in this is FERPA. If a school revealed a student's person information in response to an invalid subpeona, they could be sued by the student for a clear FERPA violation. This university said that they do not support these kids' actions. I believe that like most every other institution of higher education served thus far, North Carolina State University will honor a valid subpeona. Boston College and a few other schools successfully fought ealier RIAA subpeonas based upon filing jurisdictions. Once the technicality was resolved and a valid subpeona issued, they complied.
One other FERPA-related concern is that schools must notify students before releasing their personal information. The RIAA subpeonas dictate such compressed timelines that compliance with them could cause a FERPA violation because the students couldn't be notified in time.
Once the RIAA's lawyers pull their heads out of their collective butts and issue legally solid subpeonas, colleges and universities will comply. We can only hope that a few will refuse on grounds of DMCA protests and force the courts to (again) examine the expedited subpeonas, or the RIAA will eventually give up on their shotgun subpeona approach.
Well, I was being sarcastic but I guess that didn't come through.
I was trying to indicate that the university has an obligation to it's students, not some government-sponsored rogue company.
PS. I learnt engineering at university, not how to spell. I blame a public high-school education (and personal apathy) for my excellent ability to spell.
I suspected that after posting and slapped myslef for it, sorry. I figured it was either that or a horribly-executed troll :)