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University of Washington Will Aid RIAA
Several readers let us know that the University of Washington has announced that it will pass on RIAA settlement offer letters to students identified, presumably by IP address, as suspected file sharers. "The notices say offending students have 20 days to settle with the association by paying it about $3,000 to $5,000 or be taken to court without possibility of a settlement." The Vice Provost for Student Life sent an email to all students saying, "The University has been notified by the RIAA that we will be receiving a number of these early settlement letters. After careful consideration, we have decided to forward the letters to the alleged copyright violators."
Most universities will do this sort of thing, forwarding along the letters so that the students have an inkling of what's going on if/when they get their subpoena.
Those of you calling colleges "spineless", would you rather the kids were blindsided by the legal system instead?
--saint
that they identified the correct students? If I were a student who is struggling just to pay tuition and rent, I'd panic. And if the University misidentifies a wrong student, then is it liable for harm done to the student? This seem highly irresponsible to me.
So its pretty clear that going after individual copyright violaters is looked down upon on slashdot. I also remember back when napster was big everyone on here was upset that they were getting sued because they werent actually breaking the law, it was just the individual users.
So is it just one group who thinks that indivuals shouldnt be sued and a different group who thinks that the companies should be immune? How should the RIAA protect its intellectual property rights? Is it just a fundamental belief on here that copyright holders should have no recourse against violaters?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Or perhaps the folks at the University of Washington simply don't feel comfortable using their network as a haven for illegal filesharing. Seriously, if it was my network I would do the same thing. I'd send out a flier to all of the students telling them that the University would cooperate with the RIAA and then I'd watch network utilization drop. There will be some students that are so ridiculously retarded that they continue to use the university network to distribute files on unencrypted networks, but they aren't likely to be the sort of folks that you want graduating from your institution anyhow. No screening process is perfect, and this simply adds one more failsafe in the UW's screen processing. Think of it as one of those signs keeping small children off of rides ad Disneyland.
You must be at least this smart to graduate from the U of W.
I can sort of understand why it is that the ISPs shield their customers. After all, downloading illegal content is one of the primary draws of broadband connections. To a certain extent ISPs profit off of illegal filesharing. Universities, on the other hand, aren't selling bandwidth, but are instead paying for it.
Don't get me wrong, I personally think the RIAA is evil. However, I don't think that distributing the RIAA's copyrighted material illegally is the best use of the University of Washington's resources, or even the best way to bring down the RIAA.
Actually the students are the ones paying for it with their insanely high tuition rates. They pay more for that access than John Q Public pays for their broadband.
No students = No Money = No School = No Bandwidth.
Schools should have a backbone and tell the RIAA to fuck off. After all the RIAA wont sue something that has money and resources to dedicate to a fight like a school or big company (like schools or the RIAA)
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Said students perhaps shouldn't be pirating music then, hmm? There's lots of ways to get DRM-free music (often of high quality too) for cheap or free legally.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
by Microsoft. Of course they'll play along. Otherwise it's biting the hand that feeds them.
Perhaps this is a good lesson about the perils of privatized funding?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
You are kidding right.
The University of Washington is heavily subsidized by the government. The students aren't paying for bandwidth, taxpayers are paying for bandwidth, and I can guarantee you that they aren't paying for the bandwidth so that college students can distribute the latest pop albums.
Besides, why precisely should the schools get tangled up with the RIAA. The University of Washington has copyrighted material that it wants protected, why should it aid students in distributing someone else's copyrighted materials illegally? I can't believe that *all* Universities, or at least all public Universities, don't do the same thing. When you consider the wasted bandwidth, and the increased likelihood of viruses and other malware that invariably follow online filesharing it is a wonder that this isn't the status quo.
I don't like the RIAA either, but I protest by not listening to its copyrighted material, not by trying to make their material even more popular by distributing its wares.
Given that a typical college student has zero cash to spare for a settlement, let alone to fight back and proclaim their innocence if they do get accidentally snagged? It's a disaster waiting to happen, and woe betide any Uni who not only finds that an innocent student was hit, but that said student fights back... because now (IIRC) the RIAA and UW may wind up on the wrong end of a lawsuit. (Unless the Uni would be willing to help defend any provable innocent students who accidentally get targeted).
* yes, I said notoriously insecure. When one can literally sit across the street from a major university in Utah (I won't mention which) with a Pringles Can rig and get full Internet access in no time flat, it can't be secure... and odds are VERY good that they aren't alone in having such gaping holes in their network.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Your right they should not be pirating but do they deserve to get what the RIAA is going to do? Do we as a society chose to chop off a hand of a thief? No way. Do we as a society want to punish extremely harshly for what is a small crime? No way.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Not to mention that I'm pretty sure that all the people who donate money to the school for grants, etc., would prefer to see their money actually benefiting eductation rather than funding the university's pissing match with the RIAA. Is copyright violation theft in the same sense as stealing a tangible asset, not really, but should it be illegal, definately. I have no problem at all with U-Dub forwarding these letters to the offending student providing that appropriate processes are followed - the sooner that people learn that their actions have consequences, the better.
A One that isn't cold, is scarcely a One at all.
> I simply would not be on the campus network unless the school provided privacy
... well, that'd be problematic, to say the least.
> to its users.
This is hard to do. I used to work for a university - they didn't habitually identify users, but for various purposes (hacked computers, viruses, people running misconfigured DHCP servers, finding stolen computers, broken equipment), we needed to be able to identify, at least, where a computer is physically on campus.
In order to do this, we used a number of techniques. If a computer is plugged in to the LAN, then we could see its MAC address. There was a database of which switchport goes to which wall jack and where that jack is. Many times, this is a dorm room - and at that point, it's pretty easy to ID the user, if necessary. Most of the time we didn't - we'd instead filter their MAC so that when they tried to use the internet they'd get a notice (i.e., 'You have a virus. Please reformat your computer.').
But for those times when it was necessary, if we couldn't pin it down by room, we also had a tool which would keep records of where people logged in to common campus servers from. If you're claiming that that MAC isn't yours and we could see that you'd logged into the mail server daily from there
I'm all for universities protecting their students privacy - but in order to keep everything running, certain measures need to be in place. Sorry.
Let's say Focus on the Family writes a series of letters to the University accusing a "John Doe" embryonic stem cell researcher at the university of violating federal restrictions on the creation of new lines. Mind you, they've shown no real material information that any individual has violated the law, just blanket accusations with flimsy identifying information.
They say to the University "give us personal information on every human embryonic stem cell researcher at the University or we'll subpoena that information."
The University replies: "Well, we can't roll over that easily. Send us letters demanding that the recipient contact you or suffer severe legal concequences, and we'll forward them to everyone working on human embryonic stem cells here. Then you'll get your identifying information, and we'll be off the hook."
Let's be clear about what's being done here. From the original e-mail:
Whether the University is directly identifying students to the RIAA or indirectly does so by sending the students a letter directing them to contact the RIAA, the net result is the same.
Do people not understand why academic institutions MUST behave differently than this?
What if the coal industry threw letters at climatologists?
What if the junk food industry thew letters at obesity researchers?
The University has access to a massive collection of very personal information, including detailed financial, academic and medical records. It is essential for the primary mission of the University to protect its members against angered outside forces. Without this commitment to protect academics, we'll never be able to get honest answers to questions.
The proper course was to:
1. Not save identifying information in the first place
2. Tell the RIAA to come back with their own damn identifying information.
3. Send letters instructing students to not self-incriminate themselves
4. Provide proper legal services than (borderline negligent) legal advice to settle to any and all demands.
a page out of Duke University's book, "tell the students that they have the power to make change, but if it breaks then law, they you're F*&^$#". Diming out the students to serve "THE MAN"...and he is Billy Gates and his loyal minions of technocrats and byatches.
"PowerPoint Sucks!" Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense
Obviously, I can't speak for everyone here -- but my own belief is that government went wrong when they first started treating these infringement cases as *criminal* vs. *civil* matters.
.... not relatively "fluffy and intangible" losses due to intellectual property "violations"!
There's NO reason an association the size of the RIAA really needs the government's assistance to get "justice" against infringements on the musical works they hold rights to. The people sharing these songs via p2p, web pages, ftp, or any other electronic method are doing so without any financial compensation whatsoever.
Every time they pursue one of these cases in criminal courts of law, they cost the American taxpayer large amounts of money, using the time of prosecutors, appointed judges, etc. They *could*, of course, opt to "do the right thing" and go after these individuals in strictly civil cases. But that would put the effort squarely on them to build their cases - rather than relying on "boilerplate" complaints and standardized tables of penalties/punishments for criminal copyright infringement that federal courts already devised.
Criminal prosecution should really be reserved for tangible crimes against persons and property
My belief is, if businesses and individuals had to resort to civil remedies for these violations, we'd see much more reasonable and logical outcomes. (EG. A starving college student sharing copies of his/her purchased collection of CDs wouldn't be pressured to "pay back" tens of THOUSANDS of dollars for doing so. Instead, you might see the punishment actually fit the "crime". They might be charged a few hundred bucks, making them rethink how wise it was to offer copyrighted musical works to any and all takers, free of charge. People wouldn't be rushing to condemn the RIAA like they do now, if THIS was the norm.)
Yes they would, strictly speaking. The RIAA has apparently very little concern for whether or not it hits actual copyright infringers, and everyone it hits still has to show up in court and in the press, or settle out of court for an amount of money they very probably don't have to spare.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Its a trap. Don't fall for it. The RIAA has no legal recourse since they don't actually own the rights to the intellectual property. By deciding to comply and pay the RIAA, you do NOT receive protection from being sued by the actual intellectual property owner. Ergo, if you pay, the RIAA will turnover any relevant information to the appropriate owners who may then file suit against you. This is all a ploy to get you to confess that you've done something wrong and provide them with the information they need to ensure that you lose any subsequent cases.
"I have the right to find out who you are and confront you about it."
No, you do not. You have to right to say whatever you want in response. Just because I say something does not give you the right to determine who I am through any means that would otherwise be unlawful.
The "easy way out" remark was made because the UW is giving into the RIAA which is using questionably unlawful means to obtain information about UW's students. It is not unreasonable to expect the college to protect your rights when someone is trying to violate them through the college itself.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
You hit the nail on the head when you said BANDWIDTH but everything else is irrelevant.
Likely, the school is pissed abotu how much of their bandwidth is being used for piracy and is stringing up a few students in order to curb the activity. I don't think they care the slightest for the students, it's just a matter of cutting costs.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
If a student had an once of sense he would want to be prosecuted under the standards that apply in criminal law.
Criminal prosecution should really be reserved for tangible crimes against persons and property .... not relatively "fluffy and intangible" losses due to intellectual property "violations"!
Intangible property rights are woven so deeply into the modern world - the world since 1492 - that it is difficult to know where to begin with an argument like this.
The short answer is that we all own intangibles, we all know these intangibles have value and that value must be protected against all comers. Your pension fund. Your health insurance. The corrupt Enron exec goes to jail. In China he would have been shot.
A starving college student sharing copies of his/her purchased collection of CDs wouldn't be pressured to "pay back" tens of THOUSANDS of dollars for doing so
The starving college kid with his cell phone, Mac PowerBook and $400 iPod. The kid sharing his music with 10 million or so of his closest friends on the P2P nets.
You cannot be a player in this game without substantial disposable income or outside subsidies - your "free" connection to the university LAN.
The settlement is a debt. Debts can be structured. It's a lesson worth learning.
What's to stop the RIAA from randomly picking a hundred IP addresses and then sending them the "pay up or else" letters, and then collecting a few thousand from some random people who thought they got caught?
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
The UW admins keep this information because otherwise it is hard to find the guy that trying to DOS your mail server into oblivion. Student networks are notorious for having internal attackers of all different kinds. If you were an admin you'd want to be able to put a finger on the students too.
That's crap from start to finish. Network administrators have these systems in place due to federal wiretapping laws and clueless pressure. All networks have a DoS problem and you won't get a finger on it with half ass tracking to catch supposed file traders. DoS and spam attacks come from widespread use of insecure client software like Windows. Finally, co-operating with this blatant shakedown is pathetic. The evidence is flimsy and the University should be giving their students sound legal advice and defense in what's really a civil dispute. Don't try to tell me that co-operating with this scam has anything to do with punishing criminals. It's about stripping people of their rights for money.
Take away the anonymity and people start to behave in a civilized manner. That's just how things work.
Do you think people in jail are civilized? They lack anonymity, privacy, speech, freedom of movement and association, yet they still do horrible things to themselves and their guards. Do you think treating innocent people like criminals will make them any nicer? There is no free speech without anonymity, do you mind giving up your whole society's right to peacefully protest that way? Do you think societies like that are safe places to live? They are not, neither for the oppressors or the oppressed because a society without rights is one without laws, much like the one that exists within prison. It is selfish and savage.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"Lower class people may have a hard time defending themselves, but, they also have very little to lose."
Yeah, except, you know, their lives and freedom, the two things you are most likely to lose if you don't have a decent lawyer when you need one. Which, considering the comment was about the justice system . . . .
2) your opinion that copyright law violates the US constitution is not supported by any evidence. Certainly the legal expertes do not seem to agree with this statement. Now, you are free to have your own opionions on this, but independent of your beliefs you are still subject to the law as it stands. If you ignore that, you suffer the consequences. Tough luck.
Answer (and I most certainly don't mean this as a troll): They don't give a flying shit.
This is racketeering at its finest. I accuse you of something. You either pay me a large small sum, or I take you to court and you're stuck, win or lose, with likely more than the initial large small sum I would have accepted as a settlement.
I mean, I have a wireless network secured with basic WEP and MAC filtering. Not really that hard to break in, but hard enough to keep random idiot off my network. Who's to say that I don't have some super-brilliant high school kid (a school's down the street) stealing my wireless to download stuff?
Even worse, how do I even begin explaining WEP, WPA, MAC addresses, IP addresses, spoofing, and other aspects of network security to a judge and jury of my 'peers' who can barely manage to figger out one of them thar new iPads? Hell, in the case of the judge, he may be directly paid off.
Back to TFA. If I were a university, I would internally monitor, very closely, my students' bandwidth use. I would warn and then expel those who use university resources of any kind for anything clearly illegal or in the gray area. Then when the mafIAA comes knocking, I'd tell them to go get fucked. They need to build their own case. If they can't figure out who the 'John Doe' infringer is all by themselves, they can go pound sand.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
>>including libel/slander and fraud
All three of those have very limited definitions. All three are *very* hard to prove in court. None of those come into play when the RIAA calls your ISP and asks for the name and address of the person who leased a specific IP at a specific time and date.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
"Downloading music is a form of protest, and the school has given in to the enemy of the students' freedoms because it will save them some money on bandwidth, or so someone has convinced them."
Talk to some real protesters sometime. The people who marched against the Iraq War, or even the Viet Nam War. The brave people who participated in the Montgomery Freedom March. The people who defied orders and sat at the lunch counters in Selma. The ones who have had hoses, dogs, and rubber bullets unleashed at them.
There are two differences between them and you: first, they've chosen a real cause -- sorry, "I demand free music" does not even compare in the slightest. And, they took risks. They openly defied the law and welcomed prosecution. You, on the other hand, appear to be comfortable protesting only if your university helps protect you as you break the law. Take some responsibility for your own actions; don't expect a university or anybody else to do it for you.
"The fact remains that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution openly declare that GOD and God alone gave you your freedoms, they are only protecting them. This is a violation of those God-given freedoms, for the sake of profit."
Oh, so you're a Christian? How do you reconcile piracy with the Golden Rule? If you want others to respect your rights, then you must do the same. Musicians, songwriters, composers, and -- yes, even record company owners -- aren't exempted from consideration simply because you want free music.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Actually, they have the most to lose, because they will almost certainly lose the little they have.
Middle class people have something to lose, but most live little better than paycheck-2-paycheck. Very few have savings. Most are already heavily in debt.Another few thousand of debt could easily be enough to relegate them to lower class status.
The upper class have much to lose, but have no real reason to fight. Better to write a check and do away with the whole mess than to pay a lawyer.They have the least to lose, so they eat the loss and go on their merry way.
Those who have little, treasure what little they have more than any other.
Remember that a lot of college kids are listening to '60s and '70s music which should ALREADY be theirs to listen to if our elected officials wouldn't have sold us out.As it is now they might as well make "Mighty Mighty Dollar Bill" our national anthem.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'd like to hear you go on about freedom like that after spending a few years in the prison system. And losing your life doesn't necessarily mean dying. Going to jail, losing everything you have, that's another way to look at losing your life. Sure, you can "start a new life", but it's not the one you had.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild