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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.'"
Finally some one with some integrity speaks on the matter.
Money is the root of all evil?
If this gets out all over the media, people would start fighting back more since a Harvard law professor is advocating resistance, and we all know that Harvard has brand power that is rivaled by only a few other high-grade universities. If Harvard does resist, we can have a new slogan: "Fight the RIAA because Harvard's doing it."
We should be deploying our clinical legal student training programs to defend our targeted students.
Ooh, this raises some intriguing possibilities. If a university's legal faculty 'n' lawyers-to-be rally around the students, a whole body of experience will quickly build up. By the time they become fully-fledged lawyers, a whole bunch of students will be familiar with the xxAA and their tactics.
Could lead to some interesting exam projects, too; "Find a granny being sued by the RIAA and prepare a suitable defense. For bonus credit, find a granny who doesn't have a computer but is being sued by the RIAA."
Nesson's daughter Rebecca (http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nesson/) works on a PhD in CS after going to Law School. Hence, you can be sure that he is very well aware of the discussion inside the CS community. Rebecca won Google's Anita Borg Fellowship 2007 (http://www.google.com/anitaborg/) and I remember here as a very nice person all around.
At the beginning was at.
Thank you NewYorkCountryLawyer. Keep doing your thang!
Speaking of the RIAA, I think they've been cribbing business plans from the ad for wall-size maps on the back of my granola. It says "Buy USA at retail price, get the World Free!"
Tough guy, huh?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Yeah, considering you can go to Borders, buy a cd, and bring it back. Oh, the policy is that you can't return open cd's, but if you whine a lot and ask to speak to a manager, you're good to go. The RIAA doesn't even go after them, so I can't figure out why they go after moms and kids.
With all the talk about this recently, I'm surprised someone hasn't mentioned this sooner... Granted I'm not a lawyer, but last I read, copyright law explicitly states that it is perfectly legal for students attending an educational institution to make a copy of any copyrighted work for educational purposes. Who's to say the students in question weren't doing so for this exact purpose?
I met Charlie Neesan once when the icann stuff was getting started in Cambridge. He's (very) good people. He also taught Lessig, Edeleman Molly "babe" van Howling and Zittrain.
Need Mercedes parts ?
i believe there's 2 things they tell you in law school 1. never sue a church - they are exempt from just about everything 2. never sue a university with a well stocked law faculty - you'll become the target of the best legal minds in the world who will have 100's of students working for free.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I am also not a lawyer, but I don't believe what you are positing would fall under fair use. In 1989, Kinkos was found guilty of copyright violation for copying substantial portions of textbooks (up to 100 pages at a stretch), and fined $1.9M plus court costs.
;)
Basically (as I understand it) there are several factors that fall into the test for fair use. First, is whether the use is for commercial or non-profit use. In this case, copying the music would probably pass the test. The second test is whether the work is "creative" or "informational" in its origin. In this case, the deck would be stacked against a student copying the average RIAA CD for "educational" purposes, as the work itself is probably of a creative nature. The third factor is the scope of the portion used. Simply put, the less you use, the more chance it is fair use. So copying a whole CD wouldn't pass this test. Copying a whole "hit" song probably wouldn't either. There was an actual case where a church choir director was found guilty of copyright infringement for copying essentially all of the lyrics (or something like that) from a song, arranging it to his music, and distributing copies to his choir. It was found that despite his good faith desire (not to infringe), he was still infringing. I recall the famous instance of Gerald Ford's memoirs as well, where only a few hundred words of his 100,000 word work were reprinted, and the supreme court found in his publisher's favor.
So.. in summary, I think you are mistaken. It (copyright law) doesn't state what you think it does, and the test for fair use definitely isn't "explicit" (as you said).. it is rather subjective. Nice shell game, though. Anyone who is a real lawyer, feel free to respond and repudiate my whole post
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
It is fantastic and the right thing that was needed. A reputed university such as Harvard propagates the fight against the RIAA. Why does it make such a difference when Harvard does it? Well, we all know that University of Wisconsin (Madison), albeit respected, does not match to the global reputation and brand recall that comes with an Ivy league university such as Harvard. Harvard's name is familiar to everyone around the world. Students in India, China, Pakistan the UK, everyones knows of Harvard. Even the crowd that isn't aware of the education system in other countries (the US), knows of Harvard.
So, Harvard fighting the RIAA, if publicized correctly by the media, will get the attention of everyone around the world. Take the MIT dean issue that came up recently, for example. That was splashed all across the news channels everywhere in the world!
I am currently in India and it was quite a talk here when the MIT news came out. I'm talking about local news channel covering the story! If the same happens with Harvard's move, is could almost be certain that people can will be educated more about the problem and its impact on internet downloads.
I'm not sure if you're trying to be funny, or cynical here... My father in law passed away a week and a half ago, and I was tasked with setting up a website in his memory... My wife wanted to use a few songs for the site, which needed, or was intended to be up before the funeral (this coming tuesday)... I said that I could only use Creative Commons, or Public Domain music without permission.... the hard part was finding music suited to the event and the person... A few letters were sent out to the commercial artists she had wanted to use.
The licensing cost wasn't so much the issue (something like $30/year (USD) on a given example. The hard pill to swallow, is it required a bunch of paperwork, with two weeks to review, and decide if to grant or decline license for the song. But worse still is that it would take up to and beyond 8 weeks to actually grant said license.
Upon reviewing several thousand songs over several hours from garageband.com, we found one creative commons song that was suitable. And got permission from the author of another, very appropriate song, for use of it... The songs are encoded, and embedded into flash files, and streamed at a lower quality in mono (mainly for bandwidth issues). As much as the system in play for online/internet radio sucks... it would be nice to have a better interface for licensing a song for playback on a website, without direct access to a higher quality digital recording... One shouldn't have to jump through so many hoops...
On a side note, at least now my wife, and a few relatives have a much better understanding of how F'd up copyright law is, between this issue, and trying to get copies of photos for use at the funeral.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
"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."
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This reminds me of something the ARIA wanted to/wants to implement in Australia. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21555941-2,0
"Under this system, people who illegally download songs would be given three written warnings by their Internet service provider.
If they continued to illegally download songs, their internet account would be suspended or terminated.
Those with dial-up internet could face having their phone disconnected."
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.
You'd think so, but the MAFIAA has also been threatening people without computers, dead people, and small children. There's really no evidence that any of the threats they've sent would stand up in a trial, since so far the cases that have gone to trial are going rather poorly for the MAFIAA.
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.
You may not be able to violate traffic laws with impunity, but police officers, judges, and politicians routinely do so. What does that tell you about the legal system and how people with money and power can abuse it? The MAFIAA has enough lawyers on retainer to simply scare normal people into settlements which cost less than a proper legal defense. It's pure extortion and racketeering.
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.
You presuppose that they are guilty, which is not the way the law works. Innocent until proven guilty, and these students have not been proven guilty. In addition, they have a right to defend themselves regardless of whether they are innocent or guilty. As things stand, they don't have the resources to defend themselves. The professor is proposing that they be given the resources to do so.
Even the guilty should be able to defend themselves in court.
Well, I'm glad to see more and more people taking a stand against the flagrant abuses of the RIAA - with luck, it will soon get to the point that the RIAA can no longer get away with any of it. However, one statement in the article really bothers me:
"We need not condone infringement to conclude that 19th- and 20th-century copyright law is poorly suited to promote 21st-century knowledge."
Now, I may not be a lawyer, but I am a professional writer, and an author, and part of my profession requires me to have a working understanding of copyright law. So, this statement bothers me for a couple of reasons:
1. It does not differentiate between copyright law and patent law. Copyright law is actually quite good at allowing for the promotion of knowledge, as you cannot copyright an idea - only the exact implementation of one. Patent law, on the other hand, has become very restrictive in regards to the promotion of knowledge, and you CAN patent an idea. (You can patent a tax strategy, for crying out loud.)
2. I don't know enough about 19th century copyright law, but frankly, 20th century copyright law based on the Berne Convention is quite good at what it does, and doesn't really need to be fixed. At best, it needs minor modifications.
Expanding on the second point, there seems to be a "shiny thing" reaction in the copyright industry in regards to the Internet, and it really does miss the point. The RIAA, legislators, and even some lawyers are spending a lot of time panicking in awe at the shiny new Internet and what it can do, and failing to notice that at the end of the day, a work is either infringed or it isn't, just like it was before the 'net. As far as the actual letter of the law is concerned, how it got that way is really unimportant.
(Think of it this way - somebody figures out how to commit a murder over the Internet by making his/her victim's keyboard deliver a deadly electric shock. Do the murder laws now need to be rewritten? Of course not - at the end of the day, it's still murder, plain and simple.)
If you look at the Berne Convention, you see:
1. Respect for the creator's wishes for their work.
2. Ability for the creator to transfer rights and copyright.
3. Allowance for fair use and the use of ideas, but not exact implementations, in derivative works.
4. Allowance for public domain.
5. A recognition that these rights and provisions apply to new media.
If you think about it, it's simple, covers all the bases, allows for everything from Creative Commons to the Open Source movement to a novelist receiving royalties in any media - and has been around in its current form since the 1970s. I wouldn't call it a broken tool at all. I just wish people would stop panicking because there's a new shiny thing and coming up with daft measures (Vista-style DRM anybody?) to protect against it.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Existing works had already been created under the copyright laws of the time. (28 years plus one extension of 28 more years). The laws fully served their purpose of encouraging the creative arts. No change in the law afterwards would change what had been done. These works should have moved into the public domain, where new artists could freely use them to create even newer works to enrich society. Instead, the content creation industry got Congress to enrich them by extending unreasonably the time of protection. Congress did not represent the people at large that day.
The President failed in his job by signing this bill, and The Supreme Court failed miserably in their job of understanding the intent in the US Constitution by upholding the unwarranted extensions. And the court system now fails even more miserably by permitting the RIAA suits to exist in the first place, and then be dropped in ways that cost never-convicted defendants tens of thousands of reimbursed dollars, the moment the RIAA might lose. All this while the RIAA tries to trick the courts into granting them rights never included in the original legislation. If the RIAA can fool uninformed judges into creating precedents to be used in future cases, they will have de facto created new law for themselves.
Filesharing should be viewed as an act of civil disobedience against an industry that has received out-of-proportion, and unconstitutional, protection from all three branches of the government.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You've got to remember, we're very early in the game....It is only recently that the real fighting back began, and court cases take time.
I expect we'll be seeing Rule 11 sanctions against them down the road....
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful