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RIAA Wins In Court Against UW Madison
Billosaur writes "A judge has ordered the University of Wisconsin-Madison to turn over the names and contact information for the 53 UW-M students accused of file sharing over the university's networks by the RIAA. 'U.S. District Judge John Shabaz signed an order requiring UW-Madison to relinquish the names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and Media Access Control addresses for each of the 53 individuals.' The ruling came as no surprise to the university, which had previously rejected the request of the RIAA to hand out their settlement letters to alleged copyright violators on their campus. The school feels the RIAA will have a hard time tracking down who did the file-sharing anyway, as the IP addresses the RIAA has for the violations may be mapped to computers in common areas, making it difficult to determine just which people may have made the downloads."
They didn't "win in court". They filed suit, which UW Madison said they'd have to do before they'd give up the records.
The school feels the RIAA will have a hard time tracking down who did the file-sharing anyway, as the IP addresses the RIAA has for the violations may be mapped to computers in common areas, making it difficult to determine just which people may have made the downloads."
The moral of the story is if you download illegal music; do it from a university and with a forged MAC. Of course, who's mac is it anyway? Are they going to get a subpoena for every single person that uses the university's network to supply their network cards so the mac address can be examined? That should be fun...
It was an ex parte proceeding. It was not a "win". There was no one else in court. No one to oppose it.
It was not against University of Wisconsin. It's against the "John Does".
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
It's directed more at Universities and parents. They know full well kids wont take the moral high ground and stop pirating. They are aiming these suits at the kids to show parents who the boss is. I know several parents who've taken action against there kids for fear of the RIAA knocking on their doors. My father, when this all began, even took time out to come talk to me about whether or not I was pirating songs on his cable modem (I was 25 at the time and staying with them while in college still).
Lawsuits are rarely profitable on a corporate scale. They are more or less used to scare a certain segment of the population, in this case, parents and gaurdians. This in turn puts pressure on the actual offenders. They aren't looking for compensation for the theft which is what lawsuits were supposed to be for to begin with. Instead it's being used as a message which, to me, is an abuse of the system and the judges and lawyers involved should be taking action to stop it as it significantly reduces the credibility of their own system.
How is that going to help them find anyone?
Hey RIAA - read this first.
And everyone else too. Never hurts to know stuff like this, y'know. Just in case. Yeah. That's it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Part of the problem was that while the importation and exportation of slaves was interstate commerce, the existence of slaves already in certain states did not involve interstate commerce.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
For reference:
"UW-M" = University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
"UW" = University of Wisconsin - Madison
Whoever submitted the article mistakenly used the wrong abbreviation.
This often comes up in stories about UW-Madison. The University of Wisconsin is a big system with many campuses. UW-M refers to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. UW alone (pronounced "u double-u") refers to UW-Madison. By contrast, UW (pronounced "u dub", as I understand it) refers to the University of Washington.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Warner (Bros)... as in Time-Warner
> I thought that when the RIAA comes calling, what happens is that you get a notice saying you've already lost a court case some out-of-state court, because the judge rubberstamped their claim that this IP address is you, and now it's up to you to either a) pay a lawyer, go to court, and try to prove your innocence, or b) pay the nice RIAA their reasonable thirty-five-hundred dollars and get on with your life.
/settlement/ price the RIAA offers; that is, they offer to drop their lawsuit against against you if you pay them that amount in damages. You could fight them, and possibly recover court costs and lawyers' fees if you won, depending on the jurisdiction. Most people just don't because they're guilty and didn't cover their tracks well, so probably wouldn't win. Another unfortunate factor leading towards settlement is that hiring lawyers and fighting a lawsuit costs money and time, so paying $3500 looks like an easy way out of the hassle.
You're 100% wrong. You can't just "get a notice that you're already lost a court case in some out-of-state court". Our legal system requires that one who has been sued be served with notice of the lawsuit so that the sued person can prepare a defense. And then, unless the parties mutually agree on a settlement, there is a trial, where the two parties argue their cases, almost always through lawyers.
The $3500 you refer to is the
That said, if the RIAA sued me, I'd fight it. I know what my behavior online is, so I know that they cannot have valid evidence that I have downloaded copyrighted music. And I'd definitely have the opportunity to fight it: our legal system may be broken, but it's not so broken that you can lose lawsuits without knowing about them. I don't know where you got that idea.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.