Slashdot Mirror
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."
...free speech, protect our rights and the war protests at the UW. Ii sort of saddens me to see the management, who must have been in those protests, now lookig for the easy way out. How times have changed.
To the folks who made the Nazi analogy: It is a historical fact that the Nazis were greatly aided by careful records on religious affiliation kept in the countries they invaded. That's why most European countries (namely the ones invaded by the Nazis) do not, in fact, are legally prohibited from, keeping track of the religious affiliations of their own citizens.
They were also aided by the careful records on gun ownership. The blitzkreig motorcycled up to the local cop shop, grabbed the records, and went house-to-house collecting guns. Then any resistance movements had to start from scratch with stolen or air-dropped weapons. That's why many gun owners - especially those who were involved in WW II or know its history - are so dead-set against gun registration databases.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
At my school, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MAC spoofing was rather common. The reason for this was that university housing gave us 10mbps links, but only allowed us to transfer (up+down) 750MB per floating 24hr window without our bandwidth becoming significantly reduced (That's 10 to 15 minutes of full pipe transfer, FYI). Details here. Of course, this limiting was tied to MAC Address, as each room only had one port to the router. So to circumvent the limiting, people would look up MAC addresses and IPs on the network and spoof their network card to them. This caused weird things to happen when two computers with the same IP and MAC are on the same network, but in essence you could steal someone else's bandwidth. With such a practice in use, how can they possibly say that one person or another was the person that IP+MAC combo belonged to? They have records of what room the MAC was in use in when, but how can they be sure that it wasn't your roommate spoofing your MAC address?
I'm not sure they can defend themselves, frankly. I guess I differ from most of the most vocal Slashdot people in that I believe P2P file sharing (specifically a subset of that - theft) is hurting the music and movie industries, and I believe that stealing content via P2P is morally wrong. That said, I oppose their suits on a number of grounds (possibly more than I can recall off the top of my head); to name a few:
- Even in the worst case scenario - that the downloader and everyone they uploaded to are truly stealing the content (morally wrong), the suits they are bringing are orders of magnitude greater than the theft committed. $3k-$5k out-of-court settlements are nearly universal; tet most people will not upload much more than the amount they downloaded, and even in extreme cases not more than several times what they downloaded. So, if they downloaded a music CD worth $15, they have (assuming all parties are stealing) stolen (or willingly facilitated stealing) 2x-5x that (5x is a bit arbitrary), or $30-$75. Even at the high end of theft ($75) and low end of damages ($3k), that is *40 times* the value of that which was stolen; the other way around ($30 and $5k), it's almost 200 times the value. Can you honestly tell me that you support that? No, really, I want you to type in your answer and click "submit".
- The RIAA has been using downright illegal tactics to bring these cases (see Beckerman's site for details about this). And I'm not throwing the term "illegal" around lightly, like many Slashdotters. I mean they are literally defying direct orders made *by the courts* in order to bring law suits that they would not have been able to bring using purely legal methods.
- The RIAA has been using legal but immoral tactics to bring these cases. Most commonly, the RIAA picks people who they believe do not have the resources to defend against the suit, making the outcome the same, regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent (and short-circuiting the justice system entirely): they have to settle, because they can't afford a lawyer to defend themselves (and if they do hire a lawyer, the RIAA lets them accumulate a sizable bill, then drops the case, so the people will usually have to pay more than the settlement would have been). This is done to build fear by maintaining a perfect prosecution record, to discourage others from sharing files or hiring a lawyer to defend themselves. I know of not a single case the RIAA has won - that is, the case has gone to verdict and the verdict was in their favor; if you know of a single case, click "reply" and link to it, right now. And because they drop cases once it becomes obvious they cannot win them, they have just the same never suffered a loss (though that tide appears to be slowly turning). They care so much about their perfect record that they will continue suits against people who they either knew from the beginning or learned during the trial are innocent, because dropping the case would show that they don't have absolute power, and diminish the fear they seek to create. Do you support each and every one of these methods? Again, that is not a rhetorical question; I am expecting a real answer.
- The RIAA needs to preserve their undefeated status because they cannot possibly catch all of (or even enough to save their business) the true P2P thieves out there, let alone distinguish the thieves from the ones who have not immoral uses (such as seeing if they want to buy and album/movie legally). This is a painful exercise in futility. Their only (false) hope is to try to generate enough fear to make everyone they don't have resources to sue stop sharing. This is *not* working, and cannot in theory work. While it's true that they may be able to reduce (not stop) theft via P2P in the US by going after web sites and individual P2P users, where they have the power of law suits, such suits cannot be brought in a majority of the world because they do not have jurisdiction (let alone the resources to sue that many people), meaning that even fear is outside the
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
University of California campuses are subsidized by California. However, we still pay for our bandwidth with our HOUSING costs. I've actually read the budget, have you? I'm sure University of Washington is about the same. Maybe if they used their Computer Labs to download illegal content (which, btw, I think would be a minority) that's subsidized. But ten to one odds the majority of these letters will go to students living in Campus Housing where THEY pay the costs (or their parents, if you want to nitpick).
From TFL: "The University is unable to provide legal services to students who have violated copyright law through illegal downloading or sharing. If you receive a letter from the RIAA, we encourage you to engage a personal attorney."
The University will be busy enough providing legal services (and temporary network admin staffing) to itself. AFAIK, any student who says "sue me" can claim "it wasn't me" and depose the university staff who identified them to pick apart their methodology. And if they find any flaw in the methodology, they can sue the University.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic