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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."
They should stick it to 'em as hard as the riaa is sticking it to everyone else!!
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
For wasting my time with all these frivolous lawsuits I have to read about...
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Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
I think that we are seeing that people are finally getting fed up with the RIAA. Their tactics are quasi-illegal, and their manners are boorish. Maybe 2007 is the year that people finally get wise and stand up to the RIAA. A few losses in court, which IMHO are pretty much a slam dunk, and I think we will see the RIAA have to stand down this attack on music consumers.
What has disappointed me was the fact that no one has stood up to them before to finally beat them in court. There has to be a first case and once there is, it will set the precedent.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
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.
Coming soon, federal legislation giving the University a need to hang onto that information.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Nice to see the MAFIAA taking a beating in three stories today. Maybe the tide can finally turn and this bullshit will all end.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
While I applaud the move, Nebraska is but a minor annoyance to the deep pockets of the RIAA. For this to have the fullest effect, a large proportion of the colleges/universities in the country would have to band together and make a class-action case of it, IMHO. Individual schools can score points, but they won't score a clean enough victory to stop this nonsense.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Such good things happening lately are cheering me up in the middle of a workday when i come to slashdot at chillout breaks.
Read radical news here
Then maybe they will set a precedent such that I can sue coworkers who invite me to meetings as "required" that I don't have any reason to be at. That will make them thing twice when creating the invitee list.
Are you seriously suggesting that that is the only thing preventing or keeping students from altering their grades?
is that the RIAA is going to start suing schools. And that is when I pop the popcorn.
I'm surprised they ever picked up on this Internet thingy.
bunch 'a' dinosaurs.
dismiss it all with prejudice and stick RIAA with the costs. serves 'em right.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Here's the letter I wrote to the president of UNL, the chancellor, each of the regents, and the CIO (Mr. Weir):
I got several replies of agreement, and I think that the school will be holding its ground.
GO HUSKERS!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
UNL's network is open on the student side. You can run servers, game servers, web cams, whatever the hell you want. The thing is though, if you get caught, and they can prove who you are, they toss your sorry butt to the wolves. The student side is much more open the the restricted faculty/staff/admin side. A student plugging their machine into that side is likely to get caught pretty quickly.
I'm also pretty sure that the IP is kept longer then they admit. I have friends attending UNL and they have had the same IP all year. It did not even change when they went home for x-mas break. I think they have the ability to help the RIAA if they want, but with all the bad press, and Nebraska's need for recruiting out-of-state students, this is the perfect publicity stunt. "Come to Nebraska and leech without fear of being turned in".
Overall, I think they are no more a haven for hackers than any other large University. Most seem to have the attitude of "do what you want, but don't get caught".
They said they don't keep the IP logs for very long, not they don't keep logs at all.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
If they did track the IP, all they would get would be the machine where the attack came from which wouldn't really be all that helpful at a university anyway. They probably keep track of the username.
I think y'all oughta introduce some of those mafiaa lawyers to your livestock ... "squeal like a pig".
your cynicism belies a lack of heart. even if your cynical jibe were actually true, it would be a call to arms against our representatives about whose interest they are serving in washington. not a call for snide sarcastic comments that, in the end, betrays the fact that you accept your fate as a citizen in a corporatocracy
is it right the riaa can give away money and create legislation that screws the citizens of a country? of course not. does it happen all of the time, corporate interests trumping the interest of the citzenry? of course. but i say that people like you, who just comment on that reality cynically, are part of the problem.
because in your cynicism is acceptance
wrong: you should be angry, not cynical
so i ask again: who are you rooting for? the riaa? if not, then drop the retarded cynicism, please
sarcasm and cynicism are the hallmark of the weak mind, not the intelligent mind, contrary to popular belief
cynics need to shut the fuck up, and grow a heart, cynicism != intelligence, as many of you think you are showcasing when you say something sarcastic. you are simply showcasing your own weak will
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
if the RIAA didnt force absolute fucking garbage down our throats through the likes of networks like Clear Channel, they might have better CD sales. In the last few years it seems to me like the RIAA is trying to make the absolute worst fucking music it could possibly ever make just because they know 16 year old girls will buy anything they think is supposed to be popular. the bottom line is that they arent selling the CD's they used to sell because popular modern music from every single genre is studio manufactured dogshit with no originality or artistic merit whatsoever, and as stupid and lame and tasteless as the average person might be they all arent THAT stupid.
"I've got it right here, Mrs. Bueller! he has been absent nine times."
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
"altering" != "trying to alter". Of course they probably won't be able to alter them, but it would of course be useful to know who's trying, since that's probably punishable as well.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
The RIAA so far has been playing the "We've got deeper pockets and more lawyers than you" card.
Schools should play the "We've got law students galore, just itching for something to work on" card.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Heaploads of love and support for ya from other end of the world, Turkey.
Read radical news here
If they really want to make the RIAA go away, they need a better data retention policy.
A month is way to too to keep IP address (I assume DHCP) records.
At an ISP where I used to work, we kept RADIUS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RADIUS ) logs far too long too. I think it was realized that a data retention policy was needed when the RIAA started sending their lawyer letters (that was back in 2001).
In most cases, the logs are only need for a few hours. In rare cases maybe a day or two. Longer than that, the only reasons are not related to network or system administration. If your security is so poor that you need IP address logs from a month ago to see who was on what server, you have serious security problems.
If I ran an ISP (or a university network), I would retain the logs for one day. And maybe I would not retain full logs at all, for any length of time, if they became a liability.
1. The RIAA is the entertainment conglomerates "bad cop."
/.'ers feel better, but don't take the entertainment conglomerates head-on. The entertainment conglomerates are quite happy about that by the way because /.'er's are a bunch of copyright criminals in an online echo-chamber with their crazy ideas about "free media."
2. The point is to make consumers deathly afraid of doing anything with digital media without checking for their approval. This makes DRM look like a great solution if you are a consumer afraid of being sued.
"Stick it to them" and haha posts may make
How about organizing an annual no-drm day? Don't by any DRM'd media on that one day each year. That's right no DVD's, no iTunes.
Oh, wait that means we would have to DO something though. Nevermind.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
they flatly say in the 2001 document that they are a carrier, and students had better assume that they are visible and not protected if they hink around the law or educational propriety.
sounds like my alma mater has nicely insulated themselves and told everybody just how the cow eats the cabbage (and wrecks two crops in the process.)
I'd say that it's time to play The Rouser, folks, another touchdown for good ol' Nebraska U!
http://www.nebraska.edu/about/exec_memo16.pdf
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Repeat after me, copyright infringement is not theft.
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.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
Repeat after me..
Sucking the filling out of hostess fruit pies at seven eleven and then putting them back is not theft.
It'd vandalism.
Semantics are fun.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The RIAA has, until fairly recently, gotten pretty much a free ride for two reasons:
1. They've been suing "little people" who frequently cannot even afford a lawyer and for whom even ONE loss in court would wipe them out financially.
2. A court system in which computer-clueless judges have taken the RIAA's word that their "evidence" is valid and who have forgotten or overlooked the "innocent until PROVEN guilty" which is the basis of our entire legal system.
Now they're starting to wade in against people and institutions who DO have lawyers and aren't afraid to use them and who CAN carry on the "protracted struggle" the modern over-lawyered legal system demands. In the meantime, judges are getting more educated about what computers can and can't do, and are being reminded of the presumption of innocence.
So instead of "show me the money", of which the RIAA has plenty, they're about to hear "show me the evidence", of which they have little or none.
Game, set, and match!
Instead of the current icons used for stories about RIAA let's use parody versions of the music company logos. It's only fair that the real villains get the credit they deserve.
It looks like the RIAA will have to think about it next time they sniff the slightest little tidbit of music piracy, I feel compelled to say that their just protecting their investments, but there's a line between protection, and fanaticism.
destiny, chance, fate, fortune; they're all ways of claiming your fortunes, without claiming your failures. -gerrard
So does that mean you think the difference between petty theft and copyright infringement is only semantic?
If so, does that mean you think the penalty for copyright infringement should be the same as petty theft?
Because if so, I agree. Hell with this hundreds of dollars per song crap.
1. People know the actual terms of licenses and what Fair Use is.
2. Many many lawyers and soon-to-be lawyers looking forward to massive p0wnage of RIAA that will give them credit and make a name for them in future work in the law are studying at the universities.
3. Many faculty lawyers looking to publish papers to prove how good they are at p0wning RIAA - publish or perish!
4. Lots of grads willing to donate money to their alum funds to help p0wn RIAA.
5. It's just plain FUN!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I worked at UNL for a few years, and this strikes me as ironic.
:p
Until somtime in the first half of the decade, UNL used to give everyone real static IP addresses. This let students easily host their own servers, including one server that, rumor had it, had one of the biggest collections of pirated music on the Internet - the server was pre-Napster and survived and thrived post-Napster. (Rumor said it was run by a woman who just loved music and liked to listen to everything that was uploaded... I'm not sure if she went to class much because they said she was in her 6th year or so when I was there.)
This was before the RIAA was very active online, and to my understanding was fairly unaware of servers like this. When UNL went to DHCP everywhere, one of the effects was to make it harder to run servers like that. So, it's funny that a move that a few years ago was percieved as hurting music piracy is now seen as enabling it. (The move to DHCP wasn't done for political reasons, but the students didn't see it that way.)
PS. I never visited the server and don't know who ran it, so don't bother subpoenaing me, RIAA.
I don't know about everyone else, but the college I went to only had a few outside IP's. So, at any given time there were 100's of kids sharing outside ip's. How would RIAA expect a school to be able to track down which of those hundred had supposedly shared or downloaded illegal content?
Presumably, the same security that prevents people from breaking into those servers that aren't originating on the U of Nebraska student network.
I would say nothing. But if a student is good enough to hack into the registrar's office servers, they are good enough to cover their tracks.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
When we hear this news...the state breaks out into the familiar "Go Big Red" chant that the HuskerNation is famous for.
To be fair, Clear Channel is a corporate entity, and it's RIAA backing and conservative morals can be flipped in a second if consumers push for it. In the Madison, WI market a clear channel station (92.1) picked up Air America/The Mic and a number of left wing talk shows. After 3 years, Clear Channel was about to pull the plug on it. As soon as word got out though, consumer pressure on the advertisers drove a number of advertisers to go to clear channel and threaten to pull their adds if the station format changed. The end result, we still have a left wing radio station in Madison.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
No, that is theft. You have taken property from another without permission. It might also be vandalism, but its still definitely theft.
They should pay me for the time I've had to waste dealing with their DRM schemes, trying to listen to music on my MP3 player.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Never heard of it.. oh wait .. thats where all the coastline yuppies are moving to! Lets move there with whitey and damn the man!
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" - Doctor Who
it is better to deny reality, and fight it, if reality is wrong
;-)
it is not superior to deny reality, and fight it, if reality is right
but plenty of people have different ideas about what is right and wrong. and so results the conflicts we see every day in politics and society
you need to accept... this reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i have no problem with you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's a flawed model really. Historically, suing oneself into success has never worked. The wright (right?) brothers spent their last decades suing anyone who made anything that flew -- yea that went well. The maker of the gun carteridge -- who partenered/sold out to S&W -- did the same thing, and spent his entire fortune made on the invention in court, died broke.
The RIAA missed the boat, failed to innovate, didn't see or care to see the j-curve in technology and are thrashing in the water trying to force people back to music listening circa 1990. The genie is out of the bottle. Pandora's box is open. You are not the next american idol. The answer was D. and now regis is waiting for you to leave the stage. Move along RIAA. Game over dude....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
They do keep the IPs, just not for months and months.
So if someone's trying to get into the registrar's records, they could be detected and possibly tracked down. They'd presumably start investigating that fairly soon after the incident, not wait for 31+ days for the records to get erased.
sometimes you need a
-1 no shit
and sometimes you need a
+1 no shit
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Who will be the ones in charge in a few years? Who will be the biggest consumers of media? Who will buy their DVDs/Blu-Rays or whatever later?
Attack Universities as a whole and you make the next generation of deciders pissed off at you...
Oh and college guys think they know better (I know, I am one of them), so they tend to not bend over that easily....
Bad move, really bad move...
(Please note: IANAL...)
Innocent until proven guilty only applies to the Criminal Justice System.
Civil law operates under the preponderance of evidence standard- and unless you invalidate the evidence the other
side is presenting, if they've enough of it, you'll lose the case. That's how the RIAA is getting these things
through- shock and awe. And pretty much every one of the cases so far that have actually gone to court have been
a loss for the RIAA.
I wish that one of the courts would twig onto the fact that the labels and RIAA are very probably acting
as a vexatious litigant and punish them accordingly.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I believe that the article says that they keep records for one month. Enough time? I don't know, but it must be for them. In any regard, I doubt they tell students about this policy.
I recently received a court order to provide telephone records from my phone company to the FBI. In the (sealed) order, the Federal District Court authorized me to bill the FBI (and ordered them to pay) for my expenses in complying with the order.
Why should the RIAA be any different in their requests... after all - they don't even have the force of law behind them!
Let's see:
Two words: Copy, Theft.
Coping is defined as creating a new 'thing' which is identical, or nearly so, to an already existent 'thing.'
Theft is defined as the unauthorized procurement of the already existent 'thing' itself.
STB
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
I'll start by saying there are better proactive methods. How about a week. I personally take the time to notify ISPs of spam emails originating from their networks. If the logs were gone in hours then these would be of no use. I usually get the notification out within about 4 hours but then you are expecting them to act immediately before the log goes. To me a week is short but not too short that it is useless to keep the logs.
I hope the Univesity of Nebaska wins this battle. I also hope that this is a sign of othe colleges sticking up fo thei students as well.
But then again, it's all about who gets the money in the end isn't it? Looking out fo the paying custome seems to be in thei best inteest.
A stab in the back is OK, but seeing the RIAA cleaved asunder with a battle-ax would be an absolute hoot!
STB
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
accepting things like the corporate buying of legislation, is that it?
either that's wrong, and you get angry and fight it, or...
"There is too much anger and fighting in this world."
you accept it
welcome to reality. the human condition is constant conflict. that never goes away. the beauty of representational democracy though is that conflict is redirected to words and deeds, rather than physical confrontation
so work with what you got, and stop whining
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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ilex paraguariensis for all
but it's not because you like to support the artists instead of the middlemen. I go to show, pay the cover (unless a buddy of mine is the promoter in which case I still might pay if I like the band), and then buy the CD from the band at the show.
;-) I think most people would prefer the money go to the band.
I am a deviant, but I still maintain the two are unrelated.
No, that's not the Boy Scouts, it's the "Business Software Association", AKA Microsoft's enforcers. Of course they've got even deeper pockets behind them than the AA's.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Is that real? If I click on it, will it redirect me to a pr0n site?
Stick Men
Yeah, great, I'm sure we're all delighted that the underdog is sticking it to the RIAA.
But surely this will result in the RIAA lobbying in the future for departments such as this to hold on to the information they're after? I'm sure they have friends in high places that can cause a *lot* of hassle...
-1 not first post
when you try to annoy a University with a bunch of under-grad law students... would make for great real-life examples in class, or as a graduation project: Counter-suing of annoying companies.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Single Mothers
Dissabled Vets
Household pets
The Deceased
Newborn babies
People without internet And last but not least:
PirateNeal
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Here are the articles from the local paper (one town up that is).
2 3483532 351702
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2798&u_sid=
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2798&u_sid=
This article makes me so proud that my Dad went to the University of Nebraska. Go Cornhuskers!!
On the other hand, it makes me sad that I went to a college that was so happy to help the RIAA when I uploaded a home-made parody of a Justin Timberlake song that I'm now in debtors prison. Thanks a lot!
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Sounds like the RIAA needs to stop paying it's lawyers and start lobbying for faster movement to ipV6 instead. Then it won't have to rely on ISP's to cough up address-people relationships. They will be implicit in the registration of the IP block.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
The digg link was funny, but the /. link topped it. +2 Funnier.
Commenter #4 on the Tech Dirt article nailed it!
s html
See for yourself: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070320/171228.
... to let Godwin slip through the cracks. :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Keeping the same IP doesn't mean they keep record of who had that IP. Afaik, when using DHCP, you're assigned with a timed lease. When that lease end and you're not connected, then the address is released and when you'll log back, your system may ask for the old address. If it's still unassigned, the server will give it back to you, but if it was assigned meanwhile, you'll get a new one. That's why you can keep the same addresse for a year.
See chapter 3.2 of DHCP RFC for more info.
in the media on the subject.
2 348353 shows the university as the guilty party. If you would only read that article, you would think university is squirming uncomfortably.
For example, "Omaha Media Herald" http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2798&u_sid=
What is interesting tho, is the mention of "taxpayers' dollars", with Uni saying it doesn't want to spend them on purschasing expensive anti-piracy software or modifying network to keep records on DHCP addresses, and RIAA retorting by saying Uni is wasting them(dollars) via bandwidth costs the pirates are using.
If the RIAA was serious about actually doing something about piracy and not just PR, maybe they should not have waited so long before sending these notices? To my knowledge no law enforcement aganecy has ever had a problem with UNL networking's data retention policies. An law-enforcement agency has a warrant, networking complies with what data they have. And networking does pass along requests from companies like Sony for student to remove illegally shared materials from their computers.
I have seen a lot of interpretations of this story, but the tech side is not very complicated. UNL simply has no technical reason to keep detailed mac address/IP address data longer than a month.
I have no idea where the $11 per notice cost number mentioned in the article came from.
I am personally very happy however, to see someone bite back at the RIAA, even in such a small way.
My apologies for posting as A.C. but it is simpler this way.
All errors in this messagee are from me trying to do two things at once.
If they don't track IP addresses, what's to stop the students from trying to break into, say, the registar office's servers to alter their grades?
Presumably UNL's network department can request logs much more quickly than the RIAA's legal department can. And if the logs are as a matter of policy destroyed if they're a few days old....
You try reading legalise with all the vowels stripped out.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Where is Nebaska? In the USA, I suppose, since the RIAA is "wasting its time"... but the USA is a big place.
To
I guess that also means that residence hall rooms aren't assigned domain names that include either hall and room numbers or student names since everything is dynamic. I always thought that practice to be rather odious, broadcasting where people live to be recorded in the logs of every website they visit.
And what happened to the machine csealumni?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
... as hard as you stuck it to Florida in the 1996 Orange Bowl!
Very true, and you are correct. The thing is though, most of the time, the machine is still on when the lease expires, and it will just auto-request the same IP if it is available. Knowing this, they could at least make a half-hearted attempt, but I'm still proud of what they are doing. One of the few pieces of good news to come from the corn-husker state.
Also, in regards to the student side being "less restricted", what I meant, was that students have more options for what they can run/use, not how much bandwidth they have access too. For instance, Faculty/Staff are smacked down for running limewire, while students have free reign.
I guess the record companies would like us to all have ipv6 ip addresses printed on our foreheads if we want to listen to music. There aren't enough ipv4 addresses to do the job, so IPs will rotate, because that is more or less the point of DHCP, NAT, and other ways of conserving the IP space.
It's frustrating that the newsmedia do so much to encourage the public misconception that downloading music can get you in trouble with the RIAA.
That aside, (and this may be an unpopular stance) it seems unreasonable that the university should expect to be reimbursed for scolding students. As the gatekeepers, they're responsible for shutting anyone down who is violating copyright laws. They may have to penalize the offenders to discourage bad behavior, and they may have to suspend access for some student. That's what a responsible institution will do.
Here's an idea:
How about putting up a website with all the bands that are signed up to RIAA affiliated labels (and non signed bands, obviously)?
We then need to find out how to send money to those artists without the labels receiving any.
Then, if you like a band, and have (or want to) download some of their art, you can contribute as much as you feel is fair, for them to continue providing you with entertainment.
The website doesn't need to host any copyrighted work, if you dont know how to get that anyway, you have no business on slashdot.
According to Courtney Love, http://www.jdray.com/Daviews/courtney.html
the bands will end up making more money this way anyway.
Lets not forget the fact that Ethernet technology has absolutely NO security. Whats to stop someone from using raw sockets to plant themselves in the middle of someone else's connection, or writing their own MAC address. Trivial, unless you use XP SP2 which raw sockets were removed for your protection... But of course we all use Linux here ;)
Ethernet, No authentication, no security per say at this level 2 protocol. ARP poisoning is trivial to do.... Also a GREAT defense to use if you end up being one of the students in the law suit.... Or to protect yourself from a law suit, use someone elses connection....... That's probably why grandma is getting sued for d/l Metallica. Please... I can't even believe how many of my neighbors have WIDE open wireless internet with default passwords on their gateways. Of course I change the password for them, as a system that works with their laptop will probably not get messed with and I get to use their internet. If someone else gets in their router they would probably trash the settings then of course they will WEP/WPA it... Something really scares the hell out of the non-tech savvy to take an ink pin and jam it in the back of the router just because they "forgot" the password....
Shame on you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yeah, no kidding, I really didn't realize /. had ads.
Of the content /. chooses to provide to me, I choose not to view it all. I have zero interest in Internet ads, because I am secure in the size of my member.