University of Wisconsin-Madison Bucks RIAA

stephencrane informs us of an interesting development at UW Madison. The school, along with many others, has been sent "settlement letters" by the RIAA with instructions to forward them to particular students (or other university community members) that the RIAA believes guilty of illegal filesharing. The letters order the assumed filesharers to identify themselves and to pay for the content they are supposed to have "pirated." The university has sent a blanket letter to all students, reiterating the school's acceptable use policies, but has refused to forward individual letters without a valid subpoena. This lawyer's blog reproduces the letter. The campus newspaper has some coverage on the university's stance.

Comments

in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

University of wisconsin's enrolments skyrocket.

That's nothing!

[erroneus]

I was singing in the shower the other morning and I was greeted by a lawyer with a letter before my nipples had a chance to harden in the cold post-shower air. (In my defense I contend that I was not in violation because I don't actually know all the words and I was just singing the chorus parts that I was reasonable sure of...)

Re:That's nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

the big question now of course is are you male or female....

You must be new here...

Re:That's nothing!

[Farmer Tim]

I was singing in the shower the other morning and I was greeted by a lawyer with a letter...

You can only be prosecuted for a public peformance, which raises some interesting questions about your bathroom...

Re:That's nothing!

[LarsG]

..and of the lawyer.

Re:That's nothing!

[beadfulthings]

I think you'll find that the RIAA has that covered:

1) If you live in an apartment building or townhouse, or if your house is sitting on less than a half-acre of land; or if you share your domicile with roomates who are not part of your immediate family;

OR

2) If you are showering in a locker room, dormitory, or other public washroom facility;

THEN your bathroom is deemed to be public and you are subject to prosecution. If your house is situated on more than a half-acre and is shared by members of your immediate family (defined as your spouse, parents, siblings, or children under the age of 21), your bathroom is deemed to be private. HOWEVER, you are advised to make provisions by not singing in the event you are entertaining houseguests.

I understand they're working on sensing devices for shower heads. You should check with your local Home Depot to arrange to purchase your retrofit kit. New shower heads will be sold with the device already installed.

Re:That's nothing!

[brian0918]

"You can only be prosecuted for a public peformance"

The RIAA will simply argue in favor of Cartesian dualism - that in fact the mind is a separate entity/observer, viewing the performance of the body, and is therefore an audience member, thus making it a public performance.

Response to a subpoena

[Technician]

I think instead of the blanket statement that they will submit to a subpoena, they should have narrowed it to a subpoena for an alledged violator. Anything less may open the university to full access to student and campus network server logs in a driftnet subpoena. That should be fought tooth and nail.

Madison is UW, Milwaukee is UW-M

[Gus]

In Wisconson, "UW" refers to Madison. "UW-M" usually refers to Milwaukee.

Re:Madison is UW, Milwaukee is UW-M

[Gus]

Actually, as someone from Wisconsin who now lives in Seattle, I can tell you the difference is in the pronounciation.

In Wisconsin, it is "you-double-you"
In Seattle it is "you-dub"

I have no opinion on why Washingtonians are too lazy to pronounce abbreviations fully.

Additionally, as a proud alum, the University of Washington was still a mud pit when the University of Wisconsin was shaping the minds of influential thinkers.

Re:Madison is UW, Milwaukee is UW-M

[stupid_is]

I have no opinion on why Washingtonians are too lazy to pronounce abbreviations fully. Additionally, as a proud alum

Is it as lazy as a Winconsonian not writing a complete word? Shouldn't that be "alumnus" or "alumna"?

well

[User 956]

They're not so much "Standing up to the RIAA", they're merely asking for due process in the form of a proper subpoena. The RIAA has enjoyed a remarkable level of convenience up until this point with regards to their university settlements, it will be interesting to see if they actually bother to take the time to get the required paperwork together. All of their other cases that have shown up in the media have seemed pretty slapdash, at best.

Re:well

[McFadden]

why did they send the notices to the university, if they knew the exact students?

From the tone of the question I'm sure you already know the answer, but presumably because they think:

1. universities will cave-in rather than risk any involvement in a law suit
2. students will be forced to pay if the university is involved, because the few thousand dollars settlement is nothing compared to the tens of thousands at risk if the student gets kicked off their course.
3. because they're a bunch of fucking thugs with morals that make Hitler look like a guy you'd want to marry your daughter.

Oh fuck... I think I've just Godwinned myself.

Re:well

[richie2000]

Oh fuck... I think I've just Godwinned myself. If there isn't special dispensation given when discussing the fascist scum-sucking parasite nazi's that are the *IAA, there damned well should be.

Re:What a load of shit..

[JensenDied]

This is /. If you can't pick up where the breaks are in the thought from someone who forgot to change to plaintext, forgot to preview, or forgot to tag their quotes and paragraphs you haven't been around long enough.

Original Email Text

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't RTFA, but I did get a chance to RTF email!

Subject: UW-Madison copyright compliance notice
Date: 03/16/2007

The recording industry is threatening lawsuits against those who may have engaged in illegal file sharing. They are currently targeting students who live in university residence halls. Recently, UW-Madison and other universities have been notified that they will receive settlement letters that are to be passed on to the individuals whom the senders believe to be guilty of copyright infringement. Consistent with current network management procedures and our understanding of federal law, UW-Madison does not plan to forward these letters directly to campus network users. We will, of course, comply with a valid subpoena.

However, if the UW-Madison is given cause to believe that a student, faculty or staff network user may have infringed on copyrights, it will take action. University network policies empower the CIO to terminate that person's network access until the matter is resolved. The Dean of Students office (for students) or supervisors (for employees) will be notified and other disciplinary action may be taken, as appropriate.

Unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted works is illegal in many circumstances, and a violation of the university's Appropriate Use Policy. Please be advised of your rights and responsibilities under these rules. For more information, see: http://www.doit.wisc.edu/security/policies/appropr iate_use.asp

Fun stuff--Pretty glad I'm out of the dorms. Maybe I'll get one of these from Charter...

A good step

[btempleton]

But there is a vastly simpler way to stand up to the RIAA on matters like this.

Erase your logs after a short period of time. Don't keep a record of what IP address was allocated to what account at any given time.

Then if the RIAA shows up, not simply with letters, but with lawsuits and court orders, you still can simply say "don't have the info."

This is what librarians do at many libraries. After you return the book, they destroy the circulation record. There is no record of what books you have read.

Yes, this means giving up using the logs for your own enforcement activities done after the fact. You can have a live database, or even keep the records for a few hours if you want to respond to problems same day. After that, no luck. But why is that so terrible? It's not like people who want to be anonymous for something truly nasty can't find an open wireless node these days. Main problem is that IT admins can't bear the thought of giving up control.

However, this would save the universities a ton of money (no need for legal department to handle requests) and it would also save the students a ton of money ($4000 per student served, $3000 with the "discount") which they could be spending on education.

how it should be

[mastershake_phd]

This is how it should be. No company (or school) should give out anything just because they got a letter. A court order should be the only time they give anything up. Sadly this does not seem to be the case. It must be cheaper for them to just cave to demands than fight them. Customers just dont care.

Terror tactics.

[SharpFang]

How cost-effective are suicide bombings?

You kill 2-5 people, you destroy maybe $3000 worth of property. One would think this is hardly worth the effort and sacrifice.
But 5 or so such bombings costed Egypt a few billion dollars in lost tourism profits.

RIAA doesn't do this to profit from the lawsuits, but to stop people from using P2P. Create enough fuss around it, make people afraid of using it, show that no matter who you are, 8yo girl, mother of 8 kids, old granny, a guy after stroke, you're not safe. They don't care that you hate them, just like you hate the terrorists. They just want to scare you.

Long history of rebellion

[HangingChad]

UW has a long history of being a center of political activism, as far back as I can remember. Some of my oldest memories are the riots in Madison protesting the Viet Nam war.

Another incident I remember is a student body president who raided the student association funds to create a life size copy of the head of the Statue of Liberty and the torch and park it out on the frozen lake one winter. Instead of getting kicked out for wasting funds, they were re-elected by a landslide and followed that trick by covering the commons with pink plastic flamingos. The details are hazy but that's mostly accurate.

This is the school that for years had the Budweiser song as the unofficial school song. They'd play that song before football games and the entire stadium would shutter from tens of thousands of people stomping their feet in time to the music and at the end yelling, "When you say Wissss-con-sin. You've said it all!"

It's the town where a man got arrested for walking naked down State Street at 2 am. In those days he would not have attracted the attention of the police even then had he not been dragging a dead muskrat at the time. The cops said they stopped to ask where he got the muskrat.

The point is if there was going to be any place that would tell the clueless mofo's at RIAA to go stuff it's little surprise it would be UW.

So do people still go to the Stone Hearth (aka The Stone Hole)? Used to listen to this really loud little band there...you may remember then as Cheap Trick.