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RIAA Campaign Against Students Hits Stormier Seas
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "It's been astutely observed that the RIAA's "ex parte" campaign against "John Doe" college students seems to have run into much stormier waters than its campaign against regular folks. Discovery motions were thrown out by the judges in cases involving the University of New Mexico and the College of William and Mary, and motions to quash have been made by students at Boston University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of South Florida. The RIAA might find it particularly troubling that the students are coming in armed with substantial expert witness declarations attacking the entire underpinning of the RIAA's case, that the students are finding each other and banding together, and that the Chairman of Boston University's Computer Science Department went to bat — as an expert witness — for the BU students."
Can't beat that for practical life experience.
12:50 - press return.
The resources available at a university should help counter the RIAA's unconscionable tactics.
you people think you have reason, science, fairness, morality, justice, and freedom on your side
ha!
we have LAWYERS
lots and lots of LAWYERS
platoons of them!
fact: there is no problem we the RIAA have faced that couldn't be solved just by throwing LAWYERS at it. a problem? sue someone! PROBLEM SOLVED! don't you people get it?
in fact, the entirety of human technological progress, in the form of the internet ruining our business model, means nothing. we can stop progress itself by just suing people
sue! sue! sue! there: it's all gold and honey again, no more problems
don't you silly college students get it yet?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Few people have the time that students do, or the drive, toward activism of many types. They're such a powerful demographic that presidential candidates solicit them. Attacking them aggressively is risky but if the RIAA wins this one, everyone else is going to be gravy.
technical writing / development
The RIAA has to grow up and realize that DRM free music is a great marketing tool!
school without a backbone. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/26/20 36211&from=rss
The problem the RIAA is facing is that college students - as a demographic - have a combination of passionate beliefs, raging idealism, little to lose, and nothing but time. I saw this one coming a mile away.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
RIAA: "...and I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for those MEDDLING KIDS!!!"
Saruman didn't factor in the ents....
At some point, decent people get riled up over injustice and finally do something about it. These RIAA lawyers have been bullying pre-schoolers long enough. "I'm telling my big brother" is coming home to them.
Use the market RIAA. Learn to compete. Give up on old technology and old ways of distributing music. Nobody wants to buy your 5 cent disk with 9 bad songs for highway robbery prices just to listen to one song you should allow to be downloaded at a cheap enough rate so that folks will stop bothering to pirate (not steal; remember, pirates are simply a form of entrepeneurs).
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
"...In addition, Shutovsky is directed to provide the names and addresses of all people who have used his PC in the three years prior to his being sued. According to his response to the RIAA's requests, those who may have used the computer include his wife, an unspecified list of "short-term house guests," and eight other people who live in Russia, Ukraine, or the UK. The RIAA says that it would like to contact the Shutovsky's houseguests to see if it would be "reasonable" to take depositions..."
And so continues the witch-hunt for dear ol' 162.83.177.207.
I hope the new generation of musicians refuse to sign record labels with major companies. Considering how powerful a home studio can now be, it's a whole lot more feasible than it was 30 years ago..
Forgive my near-total ignorance on matters of copyright law and my failure to RTFA, but if these college kids' cases are attacking the basic underpinings of the RIAA's case, is there a chance that this will benefit the regular folks who are under attack? It'd be nice if those darn kids did something productive for a change, instead of spending all their time at the Woolworth's drinking malteds, or whatever they do nowadays.
The problem with the RIAA is that it has very questionable practices in regards to its sending subpeona's and when it sues people not that piracy is right.
The problem is that it believes itself to be a police force with powers to investigate and aprehend criminals. It does not.
However that does not mean that piracy is ok. It only means that evil corporations are evil. While you may argue that information wants to be free and copyrights are badly flawed that does not mean your piracy is not against the law. It's the practice of the RIAA that are unlawful not its intent.
I've always been a huge supporter of the rights of these people that the RIAA is attacking - and I still am. But I'm realizing lately that I can't think of a better way for them to protect their rights, either. I was in a conversation the other day where somebody was asking someone to send them a copy of limewire, because they couldn't get it themselves for some reason. I made a joking comment about how ya know, installing Limewire on a work computer probably wasn't the smartest idea, and he could always *gasp* actually purchase his music (his stated goal was pirating music). Somebody else then said "why would anyone do that anymore"?
Now, I'm sure most people have music that isn't theirs on their computer. But I really hope that most peoples attitudes isn't "why would we buy music when we can pirate it" these days. If it is, maybe the RIAA should be suing people. I think that people shouldn't be crucified for having some songs that aren't theirs on their systems, if they also buy plenty of music. But if you never or almost never buy music, and your entire collection is pirated, then by all means, the RIAA should go after you.
I oppose the RIAA on privacy grounds, and because the logic used (downloading is NOT piracy, if you own it, I believe), but if peoples attitudes really now is that they should pirate rather than buy, then I think the RIAA is between a rock and a hard place, and they can't simply ignore that.
And please, keep the arguments about RIAA music being not worth the money out of this - if you don't think it's worth the money, then you don't have a right to have it. You've made that choice.
-Daniel
It's been astutely observed that the RIAA's "ex parte" campaign against "John Doe" college students seems to have run into much stormier waters than its campaign against regular folks.
"I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
In the SCO versus IBM + The Entire Linux Community, Groklaw provided a full-time forum for commentary and suggestions, and Slashdot covered the subject often. Among all the First Posts and other chaff must have been more than a few nuggets of wisdom.
In the fight of The RIAA versus The Entire Civilized World, this is taken yet another step further. While IBM was as technically savvy as its opponent, lawyers (apologies to Ray), Judges (no apologies to too many of them still, but some are getting it finally), and most users aren't very knowledgeable about computers, software, the Internet, the law, and what it all means. Neither is the RIAA knowledgeable in these areas, as they are too often making very evident.
Because of widespread interest in the subject, along with a general dislike of big business in general, there is a collaboration here the likes of which couldn't have ever happened even a few short years ago. The RIAA has thousands more enemies than they've yet sued, all of whom are willing to contribute what bit of knowledge they have to bring that lying (we're only doing this for the poor starving artists) colossus down. And because of their identical, boilerplate cases, they only have to lose on one point to lose them all! And its the Internet that's making all this possible. People communicate in ways they never could before.
Students, among other things, also have a lot of time on their hands, and a great ire when they think they've been wronged. That's a volatile mix that the RIAA may soon wish they'd left alone. Suing grandmothers (unless it happens to be Neville Longbottom's Gram) is safer than motivated students just looking for the next cause celeb.
All in all, I'd say the RIAA has made yet another major misstep. Maybe this will be their last one, since if successful, the students will provide the roadmap to kill all of these cases where they should be killed -- at the illegal, unethical, ex parte stage. If so, the world will be a better place for you and me (lyric used under Fair Use provisions).
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...lots of Universities also have a Law Faculty as well, and these are the guys who taught those lawyers.
Ahhh, but that's the whole point. Privacy is important, thus the RIAA must be defeated. Nobody wants to *steal* music, but everybody wants the *freedom* to steal music.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
That's the thing. Universities have lawyers too... they're called the FACULTY. There's tons of them, and given that they probably taught the RIAA lawyers, they're pretty dangerous.
They're also academic in their understanding of the law, which means that given the shaky ground RIAA lawsuits are standing on, they are unlikely to win.
College students are an inherently problematic target for what the **AA's are doing. One, they are not yet "mature" enough to "conform" to the adult status quo -- that usually takes place later on when paychecks, taxes, and family brings them back to Earth. Two, they are sowing their wild oats and see file-sharing as a minor pecadillo (if they see it as wrong at all) on a par with using their fake ID to drink when they're 19. Finally, they are still much more idealistic and full of that youthful vim and vigor that makes them believe they can change the world -- they haven't yet become jaded enough to just throw up their hands at injustice and take that "well, what can you do/that's the way the world works/you can't fight city hall/etc." attitude. If the "syndicate" were smart, they'd stick to extorting single mothers, low-income workers, children, the sick, and the elderly.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Let's looks what students usually are:
-smart. Well, there are those and those, but usually, they got more brains than your average Joe.
-political. Not as much as they used to be, and certainly not "party political" anymore, but they do have agendas they believe in.
-young and thus enthusiastic. They didn't yet grow up into "meh, what can I do?" apathetics.
-free. Yes, there IS stress towards the end of a term, but hey, it's August! Many students still enjoy holidays, and few if any have papers due soon. They got spare time on their hands.
If you look around the world, you'll notice that pretty much every revolution, from political to social, contained students as a key element. Many social revolutions of the 60s have been driven by students, in Germany, in France, in the US.
Now, you're suing smart people who believe strongly in their freedom and their rights and do care about it, with plenty of spare time to defend themselves. Could it be that this wasn't the smartest idea?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
What makes you think we give a toss about either the entertainment industry or it's consumers? Our gift economy will destroy your way of life.
Your tears are like milk.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
But I really hope that most peoples attitudes isn't "why would we buy music when we can pirate it" these days. If it is, maybe the RIAA should be suing people. You seem to think only the little guy can commit a crime. It is a crime for large companies to fix prices and kill competition. Agreed - so do something about that crime. Two wrongs don't make a right/etc. It is a crime to harass under-privileged children and the handicapped. Depends what you're harassing them for. If you mean by suing them... well, are they copying music they don't own? If so, it isn't harassing. It is a crime to take 1000s of dollars from common people who probably cannot afford it, who just may be downloading music because they can't pay the highway robbery prices charged for 5 cents of plastic and 9 bad songs. This is absolutely NOT a crime. If they can't afford it, they can't afford it. People can't afford cars, software, etc, should they then be allowed to just take those? RIAA music is not an essential life necessity. It is a crime to also harass artists (you seem to think all artists are actually happy with the record labels -- please read up on John Fogerty). It is a crime to force John Fogerty into court and him prove that he doesn't sound like himself in hopes of raping him for more millions than you've already raped him for (does the tune "Vance Can't Dance" ring a bell?). I in no way think that the RIAA is perfect, or that it does things the right way. I made no statement to that effect. But again, this has nothing to do with whether or not you should be pirating music. It is a crime to attempt to hinder innovation by forcing worthless and spent technology (CDs) just so you can keep a hold on your empire. Well, I disagree that the CD is worthless or spent. I see no better hard media out there? Digital downloads are nice, but they don't replace the CD. Regardless, that is not in any way a crime. It's their choice to release their music that way - they have the right to do that. Do you honestly think it will stop with people downloading music? Absolutely not. But what's the choice? For the RIAA to simply LET people download music for free? Like I said, I don't support the RIAA - but they are between a rock and a hard place. What's your method for stopping pirating? As more and more artists are able to create music outside of mainstream record labels, congress will be lobbied, somehow, to shut that down. The RIAA is a monster with money and they will use their huge reserves to continue to harass all sides, not just the evil people you seem to think represent the real villians attacking the harmless RIAA who, after all, care so much for the artists you mention.... I never mentioned an artist. And yet again, I never claimed to like the RIAA or their methods - but again, it is their (distribution) rights.
-Daniel
If you google you will see that the main arguments are:
* Simply having files containing potentially unauthorized copies of music is not a violation: the entity distributing the music is responsible for any copyright violations.
* That the RIAA has not shown that the defendants were aware they they were even potentially distributing the files.
* The only distribution that the RIAA has shown to have been performed by the defendants was authorized by the RIAA and therefore wasn't a copyright violation.
This is actually pretty solid, and while of course there are several things the RIAA can do to cover these gaping holes in their approach there's not much they can do about the current case if these arguments prevail.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
But luckily, they have entire universities full of professors (including those in computers and law) to help them out and keep them from losing touch with reality. No, college students couldn't beat the RIAA on their own. But college students plus college faculty? That's a different ballgame.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
You certainly sound like a paid troll. You'd have to be a well-paid troll to make such completely uninformed remarks in this venue.
... forever. From my perspective, our entire nation has been greatly wronged by the manipulations of Congress and copyright law made at the behest of the entertainment industry. Consequently, any losses they may sustain via illegal copying and downloading still have a long way to go before they can even begin to redress our grievances. At some point they (and their Congressional accomplices) must to be called to account. Treason is not too strong a word for what they've done.
... that's just so far out there I have no idea how to respond. Perhaps someone else here can properly bitchslap you over that one. If I'm going to subject myself to commentary such as yours I will need another beer.
The industry was well-paid long before Napster came along, is still well-paid (way past the point of obscenity) and will continue to be well-paid for the foreseeable future. Cash flow, as such, is not the problem here so far as the music studios are concerned, in spite of their tired old "{this or that technology} will destroy the industry!" mantra. God, I am so sick of these self-serving bastards and their extreme view of their own importance to society.
They're irritated that they've lost some control of distribution, and are upset because sales growth isn't what it once was. The music business is still strong: there are many factors that have influenced their overall profitability, of which downloading is only one, and by no means the most significant. Depending upon which study you believe, their current financial condition may very well have been bolstered by illegal downloading. Way to go team!
Furthermore, your presumption that artists aren't making any money due to people downloading songs from P2P is a. wrong and b. forgetful of the simple fact that they've never been paid properly. The studios have been ripping off their artists since, well
As for the Feds monitoring every connection in the United States
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Don't know where y'all get your information to make some of these outrageous claims. I've asked at my university how I should respond to those RIAA takedown notices and they were unwilling to put up much of a fight as our administration legal advisors don't see it as a wise use of diminishing resources to ignore the orders. Students who allegedly "pirate" RIAA protected material are clearly not in compliance with our campus computing policy. Personally, I'm in no mood to help the recording industry and I always wrote back to them that we would gladly comply with any DMCA-compliant requests. Their messages were more intimidating and never complied with the specific takedown notice requirements. We were quite happy they helped us identify network utilization hogs so we could cut them off.
To those of you who think our university should provide free and unfettered access so students can do anything they want might want to consider how that activity infringes on other educational and business activities of the institution. Those who want to collect and or otherwise make available MP3s are welcome to do so at their personal expense on their home networks. To date, nobody has come forward attempting to justify a bona fide educational need for collecting or sharing MP3s, et al.
signature pending slashdot approval
Has anyone at the RIAA been to a University? LOL.
They should have stuck to twelve-year-old girls and their terrified parents. They're going to get their asses handed to them on any campus, especially private schools. Anyone who can afford a private school education is likely to be able to afford one hell of a defense.
--
Toro
I love how you try to pull the retarded slippery slope allegation by claiming that downloading MP3s or tv shows will lead to loss of anonymity. Yeah, because the people who are pulling for the end of anonymity are doing it because of MP3s. Countries like China simply do not want any of it's citizens downloading ricky martin songs without paying for them. That must be really it.
You want to whine and try to sell the idea that the monopolization and capitalization of culture and education is in everyone's best interest? Please do so. Yet, at least try to argue with some facts and rational reasoning instead of trying to pull totally groundless "big bad wolf" and "slippery slope" scare tactics.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Which is why they still have souls. And ideals.
Burn the Land and Boil the Seas, you can't take the sky from me...
This reminds me of when I was in college and several classmates of mine and I received notices from the MPIAA for sharing movies on the Internet.
We laughed our asses off. If they took us to court we could do all sorts of things from claiming to have an unsecured wireless network to bringing up ip spoofing, to... you name it.
Prove I did it.
Well we have these logs with an IP address...
Yeah, but prove I did it.
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up involuntarily targeting lawyers too.
1. I'd imagine that any university would at least have a legal department, or a contract with some lawyer firm, or whatever. They may not be of the caliber of IBM, whose lawyers have been said to be like the Nazgul or darken the skies, but they have or can afford someone who knows whether a "bend over and give us your money and a self-incriminating confession" letter actually has any legal basis or not.
Basically it's not just that students are connected, it's that it only takes one university to feel targeted as an organization, to be a lot more organized in fighting back. When you target isolated persons or even some (incompetently-led) tiny companies, you can bully them around or pull a "stand and deliver" and scare them into actually giving you their money. When you target someone with lawyers, they'll ask those first.
2. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the universities actually had law one of the majors. So they'd have a lot of people whose whole job there is to learn about that kind of stuff, and, worse yet, some whose job is to teach it.
And the former can go ask the latter. I mean, it's not like Jane Grandma who'll be like "omg, where will I find a good lawyer, and can I possibly afford one?" If you have someone teaching you law courses, it just begs to go ask him about law.
3. Student connections run wider than just that campus. Even if you target a pure technical university, some of those students will be the son/daughter of a lawyer (Bill Gates was the son of a wealthy lawyer, for example), some will be dating a cute law student because those universities have more women, etc.
Basically, individual John Doe lawsuits/law-threats can be carefully targeted against people who statistically should be more likely to be defenseless. If your list of IPs includes one for the head of a famous law firm, you'd have to be a dolt to send him a pseudo-legal nastygram. But when you take a shotgun approach among such a big group as a university, you may well end up targeting the son of that same lawyer.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Apparently, because of shows like Law & Order, you might feel that only trial lawyers are worth a damn. Though, I would argue it's usually the other way around.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story