Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
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.
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.