CMU Professor's Rebuttal Against RIAA Propaganda

jsc writes "On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an article by Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, stating that university students are hijacking Internet2 to pirate copyrighted works, and schools who don't actively combat file-sharing are teaching their students bad values like "acceptance of theft". The Post-Gazette didn't let Sherman get away with it, though... Today they published a letter to the paper from Roger Dannenberg, a professor of Computer Science and Music at Carnegie Mellon University, reminding everyone how past/present behavior of the RIAA and its members is an even worse model of values..."

Comments

Re:YAIA

[j-turkey]

Shut up, Hitler.

Not flamebait. It's a play on Godwin's Law and Internet argument "rules". I thought it was pretty good.

USENET

[HD Webdev]

I still don't know why people like P2P applications so much. They are begging to get busted due to them waving a 'looky here at my copyrighted files' flag publicly.

USENET is still superior: Anonymous uploading of files can be done. Downloads are usually extremely fast & won't be noticed by the RIAA or whoever else is interested. And, reviews ("virus!", "bad sample rate", "wrong file", "goatse.cx warning", etc..) of uploaded files are there to be looked at before choosing to download them.

P2P, bah. There are plenty of USENET front-ends that make finding files much easier and faster to get.

Re:USENET

[HD Webdev]

Also millions more: People who don't want to deal w/USEnet (I'm one of them).

EXACTLY!

That's one of the major reasons why the quality/quantity of good files is better on USENET.

People who won't bother to learn how to use USENET or download an application to do it for them get filtered out. Serious traders spend an hour or so learning how to use USENET and often keep quality sets of files on-hand so that they can post 'FILEFOO (requesting: FILEBAR)' and be assured that they will get the exact file they want in return.

OTOH, P2P is full of tons of crap that people don't even realize they are sharing because they can't be bothered to RTFM. Example: Search for NOTEPAD.EXE and then browse the users and you'll see that often you're looking at their WINDOWS directory.

Re:Robin Hood

[Xyrus]

I would just like to remind people that this is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, not THEFT.

Big difference.

~X~

Re:Robin Hood

[SnowZero]

Mod parent up!

Prof. Dannenburg never said stealing was ok, he simply said he's not going to help a group that refuses to do what it claims is its mission (help artists). The RIAA isn't only saying stealing is wrong, they are saying that colleges MUST help them, for the sake of all the poor artists. The professor is responding that "If you don't help artists why should I help you?".

P.S. Carnegie Mellon is already not very P2P-friendly: Computing services warns you in several places that if you violate copyright you could get in trouble with the law. There are people on campus paid (presumably by a certain industry group) to rat out other students on the network. It looks like they have all the tools they need, so why should I help them? It's not my job to police artificially low speeding limits or badly placed stop signs.

Re:Lacking Content

[renehollan]

The problem is, he wasn't writing an article, it was a letter to the editor.

Indeed.

I used to write many letters to the editor of the Financial Post (a right-wing national financial paper in Canada - I usually argued the libertarian position). I had a good record of getting them published.

Once I got a call from their letters to the editor deportment, saying, basically, "We like your letter. But, it's too long. Can you shorten it? In the next 5 minutes?"

I responded, "Just use the first and last paragraph. It'll stand on those". Silence for a few seconds, then, "Geez, thanks! That works!!" and "clik" as the line went dead.

The point is I wrote my letter to be edited. Most papers reserve that right, to edit for brevity, typos, and grammer. The desk editor was doing me a curtesy by asking, though the cut he was wanting to make was significant (about 70% of the content, most of which was backing my opening assertion).

So, yeah, letters to the editor are often statements of opinion, with little to back them up. The ones that have their substance back up often do get published in favour of those that don't, even though the supporting arguments are omitted in the final version. That this one had several of those arguments published says something of the importance the editor(s) gave it.

Re:I agree with the professor

[stealth.c]

Precisely.

The Internet makes them irrelevant. If the RIAA ceased to exist tomorrow, the knobs that run the radio stations, VH1, etc. would be confused for about a week, then realize the replacement already exists.

More people need to realize this. Maybe somehow, someone like Napster, Apple or Microsoft can get the typical mainstream distribution channels (radio, TV) to not think of the RIAA labels as their sole source. When that happens, well, we can watch what a free market will do. The thing the RIAA labels offer to budding artists is andvertisement and connections. If web-based distribution companies find a way to offer this too, in essence becoming labels themselves, then the RIAA is sunk.