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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.
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
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.
is that the RIAA is going to start suing schools. And that is when I pop the popcorn.
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".
I think y'all oughta introduce some of those mafiaa lawyers to your livestock ... "squeal like a pig".
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.
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
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!
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.
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?
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
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...
ha! I apologize for not including the sheet music to accompany the lyrics.
(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 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!
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
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. :)
Ants 'milking' aphids. Very common survival technique. Will never win against a lawn mover though.
What?
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.