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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.
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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".
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
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.
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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.
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!
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.
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
(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
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.