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RIAA Adds 23 Colleges to Hit List, Avoids Harvard
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has added 23 new colleges and universities to its hit list, but deliberately omitted Harvard, apparently afraid of the reaction it's likely to get there, having been told by 2 Harvard law professors to take a hike. 'Under the new scheme, the RIAA sends out what it calls 'pre-litigation' settlement letters. Actually, they're self-incrimination documents and they're designed to extort preset amounts of around $3,000 from students with the empty promise that by paying up, they'll remove the threat of being hauled into court on charges of copyright infringement. In reality, all the students are doing is providing the RIAA with personal and private information which can conceivably be used against them ...'"
You know what? If you all actually cared, you'd be spending less time on WoW, and more time writing your senators/organizing festivals to educate the public/burning crosses/whatever it takes. It is obvious the court system doesn't have a clue about the whole picture... how many of them do you think read slashdot a day? Probably -2. They need to get the info from somewhere. Make it common knowledge.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
As a student at one of the named universities, I can only hope, for their sake and for the students', that the schools take a good hard look at their situations and view their internet account holders as paying customers and not criminals upon first accusation (looking at you, University of Kansas!). Throwing their own students in front of the RIAA bus would only lose them potential (and maybe current) students, and all the revenue they represent.
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
Extortion sure does sound like the right word for these "pre-litigation letters". Makes me glad I'm Canadian. We just have to pay a ridiculous levy on our iPods and CD-Rs because we're bound to use them to pirate music.
Just like how they "deliberately omitted" the 5,673 other schools not in the list of 23 they didn't omit?
Seems strange to assume that the RIAA is scared just because they picked other targets. They're choices in every other instance seem completely random, why would this one be any different?
This is like saying that MIT is "conspicuously absent" and claiming it is because MIT refused to log traffic for the RIAA on their internal network because of the sheer technical insanity of the request. Correlation != causation.
"A couple of law professors are not representatives of the school"
Heh. Charlie Neesan is not just "a professor". He's a law professor that started the Berkmen Center for Law and Technology. He's the last guy in America the RIAA wants to annoy. Where do you think Lessig got his ieas on coyright from? He was a student of Charlie's. Charlie is way cool.
Neesan's point is simple and quite legal: the RIAA should not outsource their investigation to universities.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Metal detectors, guards, security cameras, random searches for contraband, and you don't have a choice whether or not to be subjected to all of this... Sounds a lot like prison to me. If anything comes of the VT shooting hearings I'm afraid the same thing will eventually happen to universities.
Our young people are growing up being conditioned to accept police-state behavior. God help us, as a country, a couple of generations from now if this continues.
> The RIAA has added 23 new colleges and universities to its hit list, but deliberately omitted Harvard, apparently afraid of the reaction it's likely to get there, having been told by 2 Harvard law professors to take a hike.
So I lawyers trained at Harvard Law Degree are pretty sharp. All it took from them was a sternly written letter back, presumably quoting the L.A.W..
Colleges that cave-in should consider, what sort of a message does it send prospective students? "Get your law degree with us, and you too can learn how to fold like a wimp" Probably not the best places to learn about Constitutional Rights.
Only if we're surprised to think that people can lie, cheat, threaten, and extort college kids, generally one of the poorest demographics around, for the sake of a couple thousand dollars when they already make millions/billions.
In other words, as much as I'd like to be, I can't say I'm shocked in the least. At this point, the MAFIAA is little more than an extortion ring, trying to squeeze money from wherever you can. "Well, Mr. Dean, you have such a lovely list of students at this college. It'd be a SHAME if a dozen of them were to suddenly drop out because they were sued into oblivion, all because you wouldn't cooperate..."
This isn't about copyright anymore. This isn't about Intellectual Property anymore. This is about a group of thugs in suits trying to use the judicial system to make a quick buck wherever and whenever they can, regardless of the legality or morality of it.
But you won't do it, because downloading music, as opposed to stealing, doesn't harm them.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Think about the bazillions of open unsecured wifi routers out there that people also often use as a network switch. Someone could easily connect to them and download something 'illegal'--meanwhile the externally visible, internet-routable IP that the RIAA identifies is associated with a customer. RIAA then sues said customer, who had nothing to do with the alleged infringement.
it's mindless idiots like you that make legitimate music collecting all that more difficult for the rest of us.
Thanks.
the significance of a signature is insignificant
Where is that oft touted liberal element in the US university system?
In the minds of wingnut Republicans, that's where.
Wish I could mod you up for that. What good does it do to spread the RIAA's top-40 tripe around and give it free publicity? GP(AC) does little more than two favors for the RIAA:
A. Free advertising for their artists, and by extension their cynical business/art model.
2. Support their sue-everyone campaign by showing that everyone has their music, and no one has paid for it.
So we have more people getting sued, more outrage from the clueless and influential over all this 'rampant lawlessness', and a bunch more terrible music coming out of speakers. hooray.
What happened to all those engineer-type people who used to hang out on slashdot? They tend to be more rational than this bunch I see.
Let's think about this logically.
RIAA has a right to sue anyone they think has committed copyright infringement against one of their members. This is because there is a _law_ that was passed by _congress_ supported by the _constitution_ that gives them this right. Unless you completely reject our system of government, you can't argue that a company is evil for suing someone who violates their rights in this manner.
If you disagree with the law, then the _logical_ thing would be to argue for or work towards a change to the law, not to vilify the company for asserting their legitimate rights under current law.
So if they can rightfully sue, they can certainly rightfully warn someone they're going to sue, and offer a cheaper alternative settlement agreement.
In fact, it's a lot nicer than just suing and making an example of someone. In any case, the courts routinely emphasize how great it is for parties to settle out of court, or use arbitration rather than the courts, because it saves everyone time and money, and reduces the load on the judicial system.
All I see on here and places like boing boing is this train of logic: I'm not a big company, I'm a hacker. I feel for other hackers. We all like hanging out and file trading on the net. It's fun. Therefore it sucks that people are getting sued for it. Therefore, those guys are bastards. Furthermore, what they are doing must be evil/immoral/illegal somehow. Or at least, they should just stop it 'cause it sucks. Plus, they can't stop us, nyah nyah.
This is purely emotional drivel.
What is it that the RIAA is looking for if we had a legal way to download music?
Um...money?
Maybe I'm not understanding the question.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I hope that the RIAA doesn't read ./ and that i'm not shooting several fellow alumni and students in the foot with this, but from what I've seen the RIAA has stayed far away from Berklee College of Music even moreso than Harvard. Juilliard too.
I hear about lawsuits and letters against students at many other area schools (BU, BC, etc), but Berklee has always been kept out of it. My guess? The RIAA doesn't want to cause more "real enemies" from their artists. Each year, Berklee kicks out one or two groups that are signed to a major label, and many more of us are signed to major publishing deals. I don't think the RIAA wants to get the alumni upset that they are attacking fellow alumni and students.
For those that don't know, Berklee alumni are a serious part of the industry. Between the back end business parts, arrangers, composers, engineers and the front artists that are all Berklee alums, I don't think they want to walk on eggshells with Berklee.
And seriously, the average Berklee student has 100x larger music collection than any Harvard student I've met. We also buy more CDs than most people, but many of us download a good bit too.
If you were the RIAA would you piss off big alumni like John Mayer, Jan Hammer, Susan Tedeschi, Paula Cole, and Quincy Jones?
Yes, Harvard has several big lawyers and leaders as alumni, but pissing on Berklee is pissing on themselves- so they don't do it. Google "Berklee RIAA lawsuit" and try the same with any other school (harvard or BU) and you don't find any suits against Berklee students.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I'll agree with you that the arguments presented here, whether or not founded logically, often fail to present their logical foundation and end up sounding like emotional drivel. That being said, stating that a person or entity is 'evil' implies that what they do is somehow immoral. Morality and Legality are two very distinct concepts, and neither is entirely inclusive of the other. In a democratic society, it is true that we strive to make the legal system reflect our collective moral standards and expectations, but it does not take much review of history to find a plethora of cases where our laws don't support, and in some cases reject, generally accepted moral ideals. I will not attempt to recreate the moral arguments that have been presented in much more detail and eloquently elsewhere by people such as Lawrence Lessig, Eben Moglen, Alexis Rossi, and others. This is primarily because to establish a truly sound argument about the negative social, moral, and economic impact of current copyright and patent law requires more space and time then I have for this comment. Continuing to push for changes in legislation is certainly more productive than simply commenting on ones dislike for the current situation, and I hope people continue to vote and lobby for legal changes. There are logical reasons for believing that the actions of the RIAA are morally justified. However, dismissing an argument that has been made many times before as merely 'emotional drivel' simply because it is not restated in its entirety is not fair to the presenter and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the background subject.
Not quite. The RIAA has a right to sue anyone against whom they have evidence suggesting copyright infringement against one of their members. In the past, they've sued someone who didn't own a computer, continued suits knowing their target was not responsible, and deliberately target people who would be least able to defend themselves.
The RIAA doesn't have a track record of playing fair in their suits. They've sued people using very little evidence, and have persisted in their cases, often driving innocent people to settle to avoid legal fees.
I'm currently attending one of the schools on the list (not surprising, considering the rampant amount of file sharing that goes on there). I haven't shared music online since the ninth-circuit court of appeals handed down the Napster decision, but if I'm targeted with one of those letters, I suspect my parents will encourage me to pay up rather than face the stress and legal costs of fighting it.
If they send 20 letters to random college students, they'd probably get 15 settlements and 5 court cases - they would then drag out the 5 court cases as long as possible to drive up the legal costs for the defendants in hopes of reaching a settlement. Once it becomes clear they won't reach a settlement and have very little hope of winning their case, they'll ask to dismiss with prejudice so they can avoid paying the legal fees of the defendant. Of all of the 20 original letters, they probably got $45,000 from the 15 who settled right away, and another $30,000 or so from those who settled after going to court - a pretty good haul for random letters.
The reason I vilify the RIAA is not that they are enforcing their copyright, but because their approach does not necessarily target the guilty, and the innocent have almost as much incentive to settle as the guilty. They can rake in the cash by making it more costly to fight a bogus case than to settle, and it's very rare that they're made to pay legal fees. Now, if they were collecting as much evidence as possible and verifying it before pursuing settlements, you wouldn't hear me complain, but their tactics have been much less admirable.
If copyright terms were only, say, 20 years and the RIAA used normal legal means to prosecute file sharers for copyright violations, I would have absolutely no sympathy for file sharers. But, with life + 90 years copyright terms and RIAA's underhanded tactics, I say fuck 'em. They are the scum of the earth.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The MAFIAA (RIAA/MPAA) are nothing more than legal fronts for their members to do these unsavory acts. They're not selling services, they're paid to take certain actions that would be inadvisable for the individual companies to take. Can you imagine the backlash were Sony, Disney, or Universal to try one of these lawsuits on their own?
So, money is not the direct reason for the MAFIAA's existence in and of itself. It is, however, to allow their corporate members to continue to create a "market" wherein they set the prices. By stifling alternatives to their pricing structure, they lock the market. After all, if you want lossless music, they're pretty much the only game in town.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
In reality, all the students are doing is providing the RIAA with personal and private information which can conceivably be used against them ...'"
;-), and I never hear from them again. My gmail account gets about 1200 messages per month in its "Spam" folder, and roughly half of them are now phishing attempts.
Hey, I get one or two dozen phishing messages per day. What's one more? If the email filters don't catch it, I can flag it as "spam" (and wish they had a separate "phish" category
So what's the big deal here? Don't these college students know how to recognize a phishing message when they see it?
Someone should explain to them that if they reply, their info will just be added to an "easy marks" database that's sold to other companies, resulting in a flood of other such messages from shady companies looking for naive victims.
We really should be teaching kids to defend themselves on the Net. The first lesson should be not to reply to such solicitations, ever.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.