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CMU Professor's Rebuttal Against RIAA Propaganda

Posted by timothy on from the down-to-earth dept.

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..."

4 of 542 comments (clear)

  1. USENET by HD+Webdev · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
    1. Re:USENET by HD+Webdev · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
  2. Re:Robin Hood by Xyrus · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    Big difference.

    ~X~

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    ~X~
  3. Re:Robin Hood by SnowZero · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.