NC State Stands Up to RIAA

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Technician Online at North Carolina State University reports that its Director of Student Legal Services, Pam Gerace, has advised students to remain anonymous, and has indicated her office's willingness to challenge the RIAA's subpoenas. What's more, the newspaper urges students to take Ms. Gerace up on her offer. The fighting spirit of Jimmy Valvano lives on."

Comments

People are finally starting to get it

[280Z28]

It looks like people are finally starting to get it. Big fish can't be allowed to attack the little fish without facing risk.

Now, if only the general public realized they bring this on themselves by continuing to fund the **AAs with their purchases, maybe it'd actually make a difference...

Re:People are finally starting to get it

[frdmfghtr]

Now, if only the general public realized they bring this on themselves by continuing to fund the **AAs with their purchases, maybe it'd actually make a difference...

Now, if only the general public realized they bring this on themselves by continuing to violate copyright (remember all you GPL fans, these are the same copyright laws that give the GPL substance*), maybe it'd actually make a difference...

You want to make a difference? Simply voting with your wallet by not purchasing tracks isn't enough. That's only part one.

Part two is STOP VIOLATING COPYRIGHT by downloading the tracks. The RIAA and record labels are after your money. First they try to get your money via sales of tracks (physical CDs or downloads from online resellers). If you don't buy the tracks but download from p2p networks, they will try to get your money via lawsuit. Either way, they get your money.

Once sales drop AND p2p downloads ALSO drop, the labels will get the idea that the product they push is crap and need to change in order to make it worthwhile. They would have to, since both revenue streams (via sales and litigation) would dry up.

* I'm not implying that GPL fans are also p2p downloaders; I'm pointing out that laws that protect your rights are the same laws that protect others' rights, and cannot be applied selectively.

Re:then again....

[Anonymous Coward]

$3,000 == unlimited downloads.. hmm, not a bad deal... might be cheaper than 79 cents a track...

Maybe, until you realize that they could sue you for $3000 over and over again. Then it doesn't seem too good.

No Student Responses?

[rlp]

I'm surprised students are not rallying to deal with the RIAA. Traditionally, college students have been one of the largest markets for recorded music. And the RIAA is directly attacking their traditional best customer with law suits. I would have expected campus rallys to fight the RIAA. Students obtaining pledges to boycott RIAA labels and distribution of lists of labels to boycott. Just surprised that theres no organized effort on the part of students to counter this.

Re:No Student Responses?

[CowTipperGore]

I'm surprised students are not rallying to deal with the RIAA. Traditionally, college students have been one of the largest markets for recorded music. And the RIAA is directly attacking their traditional best customer with law suits. I would have expected campus rallys to fight the RIAA. Students obtaining pledges to boycott RIAA labels and distribution of lists of labels to boycott. Just surprised that theres no organized effort on the part of students to counter this. You're a generation late. Today's students are too caught up with Paris Hilton, American Idol, and beating Gears of War to protest anything of significance. They will riot (and burn couches in Morgantown, WV) over a football game but you can't get more than 20 or 30 to show up for a rally against an illegal war, grotesque violations of privacy, or any other more fundamental causes. Sadly, boycotting the major labels would require more sacrifice than these kids are willing to make.

Re:Get some sense?

[morgan_greywolf]

I thought that it was only against the law to distribute IP you don't hold the rights to

No. And most laws in European and other countries that have signed onto WIPO are basically uniform. A copyright holder has exclusive rights. These include:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

In other words, if we look at (1), then it becomes obvious: to download is to make a 'reproduce the copyrighted work in copies'. Literally, it seems, copyright is the 'right to copy'. Downloading a copyrighted work is against the law.

Now, there is a difference between willful infringement and non-willful infringement. Willful infringement means that you know you're making a copy of a copyrighted work, and non-willful means that you don't know what you're copying is copyrighted or not. It could be argued that because downloads don't carry a notice, that the downloader has no idea whether or not what he's downloading is copyrighted and not licensed for download or if it is licensed for free download, or public domain or what.

It's somewhat of a specious argument -- you'd almost have to be half stupid to think that a song labeled, say, 'Smashing Pumpkins - 1979' (what I happen to be listening to ;) is not copyrighted or is licensed for free download, since Smashing Pumpkins CDs are sold in stores and carry a copyright notice and the RIAA has been reminding us all for sometime that downloading their studios' music is illegal.

But -- I've seen stranger things being believed by courts and juries.

IANALBIPOOGL

(I am not a lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw)

NC State Graduate, class of 2001

[BeeBeard]

I used to live both on and off the campus, connected to the university's blindingly fast network. The wholesale violations of copyright law that I committed, that my dorm mates and fraternity brothers committed, that everyone within my entire social sphere committed were about on par with what you would suspect from a major state university. I could snag most full-length films in 20 minutes or less, and most full mp3 albums in a few minutes tops. Stealing went on then, and it probably goes on even now.

It might be useful to prattle on about how draconian and unjust copyright laws may be--to decry business models as antiquated and unrealistic and so on. But it would be a jury argument, not a legal one. The fact remains that these students probably *DID* do what they were accused of doing. And they probably *DID* know they weren't supposed to, and did it anyway. To couch wanton lawbreaking as political speech, as many of the more articulate "fuck the RIAA" folks tend to do, is just intellectually dishonest.