College Demands RIAA Pay Up For Wasting Its Time

An anonymous reader writes "We've already seen the University of Wisconsin tell the RIAA to go away, but the University of Nebaska has gone one step further: it's asking the RIAA to pay up for wasting its time with the silly demand to push students into paying up. The spokesperson for the University also notes that since they constantly rotate IP addresses and have no need to hang onto that information for very long, they simply cannot help the RIAA. They have no clue who was attached to which IP address at the time the RIAA is complaining about."

Comments

Re:uncle sam (will) say so

[daveschroeder]

Uh, CALEA mandates technical mechanisms for providing information to law enforcement when required by a court order, so that things like wiretaps of VoIP phones or intercepting electronic communications can, you know, actually be done when necessitated by a court order.

It was also passed in 1994 (i.e., not under Bush), and isn't new (though the deadline for compliance is May 2007).

Surprised This Is News

[MikeyTheK]

I'm a little surprised this is news. Generally speaking third parties are entitled to be compensated for their costs of complying with subpoenas in civil cases. Normally the receiving parties notify the issuer of the subpoena what the reasonable and necessary costs are of complying with the subpoena, and generally demand payment up front. I don't know why this is any different.

Re:Creating a Fearful Consumer Class

[Paradigm_Complex]

I feel obligated to point out that plenty of us ARE doing things, even while we laugh at the RIAA's losses. Simply because you aren't, and/or you know no one else doing such, does not mean its not happening. Would you rather I post my actions to against the RIAA every story? Thats absurd, but fine, here: I've not purchased a DVD or anything from iTunes ever. I've been boycotting DRM before it was cool. The last essay I wrote for my English class was entitled "DRM: Slowly Taking Our Rights." When I recommend VLC to a not-so-savy computer user, I always follow it with a warning about how in both the United States and France its not completely legal to use it to play DVD's. Complaining about lack of action (specifically in a manner which will not encourage others to action), is it itself no better than doing nothing at all. How about you start a no-drm day? Make a website and get it on /., digg, etc. Don't assume no one else is taking any action; we are.

Re:Good

[thegameiam]

I think cdbaby is a fantastic resource for unsigned bands...