Harvard Law Professor Urges University to Fight RIAA

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Distinguished Harvard University Law School Professor Charles Nesson has called upon Harvard University to fight back against the RIAA and stand up for its students, writing 'Seeking to outsource its enforcement costs, the RIAA asks universities to point fingers at their students, to filter their Internet access, and to pass along notices of claimed copyright infringement. But these responses distort the University's educational mission. ...[W]e should be assisting our students both by explaining the law and by resisting the subpoenas that the RIAA serves upon us. We should be deploying our clinical legal student training programs to defend our targeted students.'"

Comments

"Defenseless" is no excuse for infringement

[frdmfghtr]

I can't believe I'm about to refute a Harvard Law prof...

One can easily understand why the RIAA wants help from universities in facilitating its enforcement actions against students who download copyrighted music without paying for it. It is easier to litigate against change than to change with it.

The RIAA would not be threatening the students if the students weren't violating copyright. Stop violating copyright, and the RIAA has nothing to go after.

If the RIAA saw a better way to protect its existing business, it would not be threatening our students, forcing our librarians and administrators to be copyright police, and flooding our courts with lawsuits against relatively defenseless families without lawyers or ready means to pay.

Being "relatively defenseless families without lawyers or ready means to pay" is not justification for violating copyright. I don't have the an attorney on retainer or the means to pay, but that doesn't mean I can speed or violate traffic laws with impunity. "But judge, I can't afford the ticket so I shouldn't be prosecuted" won't fly very far in court. People in this country need to start taking responsibility for themselves.

We can even understand the attraction of using lawsuits to shore up an aging business model rather than engaging with disruptive technologies and the risks that new business models entail./blockquote)
If a software house violates the GPL and the EFF calls them on it, is that considered "shoring up an aging business model?"

Dislike the RIAA's tactics all you want; the trend is to file dubious lawsuits against defendants who seemingly don't have the technical prowess to violate copyright on the alleged scale nor have the prowess to know if their spouse/child/whatever are doing it on their hardware and bring highly questionable evidence. I dislike the tactics as well. However, copyright is copyright, ignorance is no excuse, and if you break it, do so with the knowledge that you may be called to the carpet for it someday.

If you feel that violating copyright is an act of civil disobedience in protest of overbearing, overextended copyright law, then fine--continue with your act of civil disobedience. Remember, though, that one of the responsibilities of civil disobedience is the full acknowledgment and acceptance of the consequences.