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RIAA Targets New Colleges, Still Avoids Harvard
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Billboard reports that the RIAA has filed its eighth round of 'early settlement' letters to twenty-two colleges. Continuing its practice of avoiding Harvard, the RIAA's new round does not include any letters to that institution, where certain law professors have counseled resistance to the RIAA and told the RIAA to 'take a hike'. The unlucky institutions on the receiving end of the 403 new letters include Arizona State University (35 pre-litigation settlement letters), Carnegie Mellon University (13), Cornell University (19), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (30), Michigan State University (16), North Dakota State University (17), Purdue University — West Lafayette and Calumet campuses (49), University of California — Santa Barbara (13), University of Connecticut (17), University of Maryland — College Park (23), University of Massachusetts — Amherst and Boston campuses (52), University of Nebraska — Lincoln (13), University of Pennsylvania (31), University of Pittsburgh (14), University of Wisconsin — Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee, Stevens Point, Stout and Whitewater campuses (62)."
insight through the mind
If the RIAA really had a case, they'd talk to kids from Harvard too. And since the Harvard kids were told to say no, the RIAA could sue the Harvard kids to oblivion. This only means one thing: the RIAA letters are extortion, plain and simple.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
This wouldn't exactly do the torrent community any favors, but if I were running a torrent client from a campus LAN, I'd block inbound connections from IPs not on my campus. If they cant see me sharing, they cant sue me.
Kinda find it interesting that one of the best law schools in the country isn't receiving these threats.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
Music and movies are being traded on Freenet under a 'culture freedom' movement. You shouldn't be able to be caught if you don't want to be, it's all a matter of your risk tolerance.
UMASS Boston doesn't even have dormitories, so how do they expect to be targeting specific students?! These blanket accusations to "set examples" and try to deter file sharing is absolutely despicable, and more colleges need to take hints from Harvard and not be intimidated by baseless claims that are already crumbling in the courts. All colleges that don't stand by their students and hand them over to the pack of lying dogs at the RIAA are complacent with the same absurdities and the students ought to wonder what they've been paying for at their respective colleges. The insanity continues, Fight the RIAA, Fight for your Rights!
Wonderfully, it seems the RIAA is picking a bunch of colleges with both the money and the staff to assist in defending their students. With other colleges already taking similar stances, I expect that many of the current round will do so as well. Thus, I expect the RIAA to soon learn that this method is fraught with enough reasons to ensure they fail.
My only worry is their attempts at creating circumstances and/or laws that "coerce" the colleges to give up their (possibly) innocent (or not) students without due process.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
If The RIAA were an ice cream flavor, they'd be pralines and dick.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
...that the RIAA is run by Harvard grads.
Figures, corrupt lawyers and all...
Different group of guys. Just because they all have Slashdot accounts doesn't make them the same.
Personally, if it hurt the RIAA I'd be all in favor of distribution of their copyright works. Unfortunately, I don't think it does, it only exposes you to risk (not much, but some). As such I think it's stupid. (OTOH, you'd need to pay me large sums to listen to most of what they release as music. $100/hour might do it, if it weren't too loud...and I could play computer games at the same time. So my opinion of relative worth vs. risk may not be normal.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Harvard professors receive 22 requests for counsel about 403 RIAA letters ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Simply enable file sharing on your computer drive, irregardless of your intent, and they will come after you suing for everything you have, just to make an example of you, even though you shared nothing and broke no copyrights (case of the cleaning woman that was near a computer with a shared drive). They assembled task forces to go out impersonating police officers using force to intimidate people into stop sharing anything. This is the out-of-control RIAA people are dealing with. Do you want to have a lawsuit like that around your neck for enabling file sharing on your drive so perhaps people on your own network can have access to whatever files you wish them to, personal mp3s or otherwise? Do you want to live in a world where these type of Gestapo tactics are accepted? Don't be so complacent, Wake Up to what they're doing to ordinary innocent American Citizens before it's too late and you're their next fodder to set a deterrance example.
* Don't listen to artists from member labels. Well, at least not new artists
* Don't buy their product. If you MUST buy, find a way to buy directly from the artist, or download artist-authorized bootlegs and send your money to the artist.
* Don't download RIAA product. Downloads only help them to justify their whining.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If Harvard's professors really do have a valid defense that is intimidating the RIAA from suing them, they should do some pro-bono work for the other schools that ARE getting sued! Help out your fellow institutions for the betterment of everyone!
Perfect life lessons in this one...
- Bullies won't go after you if they are afraid that there's a chance of getting their nose bloodied.
- Don't have to run faster than the bear... just faster than the slowest guy running from the bear.
Harvard students are excluded from these notifications, not because of their innocence, but because of the fact that there are literally thousands of easier targets to go after that have no chance of fighting back!
God, I love this place. It is the best city in the northeast. Seriously, no one fucks with us.
I went to Harvard for college...
http://www.thecrimson.com/archives.aspx?SearchTerms=RIAA&SortField=0&PageSize=10&News=1&Opinion=2&Sports=3&Magazine=5&Arts=4
I hope the Crimson's servers stand up.
The RIAA frequently targeted students individually, and AFAIK continues threatening letters occasionally to individual students if they can figure out who you are. As you can see from the Crimson archives there was some pushback from the law school profs.
Back in the late 90's, your (fixed, non-DHCP) undergraduate IP at Harvard mapped to username.person.harvard.edu or something like that, making it trivially easy to see who was where, and you would 'magically' get spam for visiting websites, as your email was username@fas.harvard.edu. This was changed around '99 or so, now it is a roamXXX.student.harvard.edu I believe, and DHCP'd to a real IP address. This helps protect anonymity and individual student's activity, and Harvard does not give out the mapping to individual students.
Harvard internally sends curious emails reporting "excessive bandwidth" use to us, which also still continues AFAIK. Several of my friends received these, we think it was in the neighborhood of > 10 GB per day use. They basically said to quit it, or we might look further as to what you are doing, or bring you in front of a disciplinary committee. This was back in the days of i2hub (remember this?), and most of my friends just throttled their bandwidth with no further problems -- very scared of the hassle of defending yourself even if it is "legit" activity.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
My university is on the list. What slash /.ers want to give advice for what I can do about it?
Organize a protest.
Get everyone to pick a nice day and download something illegal and free. They are not going to go after 5000 students. Maybe even load up the profs computer with a few gigs of stuff.
Set the RIAA up. You download off of someone else's machine. Once they are about to convict has 20 students say they did it as a prank (maybe even true).
Lots of ways, your in college/university -- be creative.
The day I can use Mickey Mouse in my own work is the day I give a damn about the RIAA's "losses".
Shh.
The problem is that the RIAA has a long history of filing lawsuits based on little or no evidence, which is how they've ended up suing at least a few families that have never owned computers and a dead grandmother who lived a similarly PC-free life. We're up in arms because of their shotgun, witch-hunt style tactics, especially since the cost and difficulty of defending yourself in court over something like this means that many people end up having to pay for crimes they never committed.
Having seen many discussions along this line over the past year or two, I've picked up on a couple of different motivations from people opposing the RIAA/MPAA. Most opposition appears to fall into these (simplified) categories:
The first group is the "all information should be free" group, and seems to see all manner of copyright to be immoral, unjust, and responsible for the deaths of babies.
The second group seems to not mind copyright, but is bothered by the poor quality of the product (especially music) and the exorbitant costs associated. They just want to punish the RIAA for stupid pricing and turning out crap, or to "stick it to the man."
The third group doesn't care about the copyright issue as much, but is more concerned with the appalling tactics used by the **AA groups. Filing lawsuits without proof, continuing to press suit on little old ladies without computers, unlawful search, threatening letters, invasive computer code, purchasing of legislators, etc.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
It even rimes! Riaa... Mafiaa... can somebody please tell those morons to adapt and evolve their business instead of suing their customers? oh wait...
the RIAA legal eagles' new strategy... let toss some poop up against this wall and see what sticks.
Genius. Pure undeniable genius.
Hope is the currency of fools
This is a very wise, if obscure to many, comment that copyright law has been so skewed towards the big corporations that civil disobedience is more than justified. Study the history of copyrights and you'll understand why the Founders of the USA democracy specified that secure for a limited time was part of the United States Constitution. Unfortunately, Congress (Republicans), the President (Clinton), and most of all, the Supreme Court of the United States have totally let us down on this issue over the last decade. The RIAA is now hard at work to steal back what little of the Public Domain still remains.
At the very minimum, DRM should be legally required to expire on the day that the copyright for the work it's protecting expires!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Go to Ray's blog and read up on the legal motions filed by students at other universities to challenge the RIAA's misuse of the law and true lack of evidence. And them file similar motions for any students sued at this university.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Those who must address miniscule grammar mistakes (it is a real word, however erroneous) can formulate no real point to make themselves. Go worry about something else, like getting sued by the RIAA for accidentally sharing your personal porn collection that you hid in a BritneySpears.mp3 file.
Actually irregardless is a nonstandard word meaning irrespective and regardless.
First post = troll. Cleverly worded post designed to enrage others = flamebait.
Now if only our Comp. Sci. department could work on ways to protect UMass students from the MAFIAA.
Like way can't we run our file-sharing over something like Tor, obscuring the source, destination and content of our packets?
Spoof the Dean's IP address LOL.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
What is the role of PeerGuardian in all of this?
I'm not sure I know how PeerGuardian works, but Wikipedia has an explanation: PeerGuardian 2 [is a] free and open source program developed by Phoenix Labs.
Wikipedia also says, "There are many trojan websites that look identical to PeerGuardian's website, but the installers come pre-packaged with spyware." Wikipedia also says Azureus requires the "SafePeer Azureus plugin".
Also, what about ProtoWall?
For me, it would be hard to choose, although my choices would probably be these (in this order:)
- They screw the artists with contracts which basically amount to indentured servitude.
- They screw the consumers with excessive markups (made possible by # 3 below)
- They have destroyed the integrity of radio with the ongoing practice of payola
- They engage in mean-spirited legal attacks against defenseless people
- They eat babies.
Well, that about sums it up for why I don't like major labels. Luckily, there are tons of great bands putting out their own stuff, so I can support the bands directly and avoid giving any cash to Their Satanic Majesties. Really we don't need these companies. We can support our local music scenes and independent touring bands. Do it for the poor little babies that the RIAA would purchase and eat if they got your money. That's right - think of the children!My truck is like a series of tubes.
... RIAA Radar to the rescue!
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
change #5 or add #6 and you might have something there:
#5) they ate cowboy neal
or
#6) they sued cowboy neal
or something.
I'm sure the computers 70 years in the future will have no problem dealing with whatever "DRM" we put on our stuff now.
Granted eventually Moore's Law will end and that principal will no longer be true. Hopefully the charade of DRM will be over by then though...
Hmmm, which one of these is the lower quality post? At least the OP was a coward on top of it all. If you're going to complain at least take responsibility and burn a little karma.
There's a reason that the jails and prisons of America are filled mostly with black and other ethnic minorities. White and affluent minorities have access to the best legal care that money can buy, for both civil and criminal matters. The RIAA knows this, and they're probably running scared, knowing that most of the Harvard students have access to good lawyers who can dash off a quick legal F you letter to the RIAA.
There are certain legal surnames that terrify greedy pigs, shysters and publicity hounds. Can you imagine the RIAA filing one of their bogus lawsuits against a child or grandchild of someone like Johnnie Cochran? He would have been on the six o'clock news, burning the legal summons with a match, telling the RIAA to stick their phony lawsuit.
5 isn't a problem if they only eat ugly babies.
Seriously, of the other four:
1 doesn't concern me because I have no sympathy for artists who sign with the RIAA.
2 bothers me only a little, because I very rarely purchase RIAA music anymore.
3 bothers me, but less since I got an MP3 player.
4 is the one that really pisses me off. They never seem to target people who can fight back -- and this case of avoiding harvard is a perfect example of that fact.
If they think they have a case why the straight up offer of a $2k settlment? This is protection money, nothing more.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The evidence strongly implies that Moore's law will end long before it becomes feasible to crack AES (and therefore AACS) by brute force. DRM is a social problem that should be dealt with - ignoring the problem because you think that it will magically get fixed in the future would be a very bad decision.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I've seen numerous high rated posts on to this article with comments about how universities are failing to protect their students from the RIAA. As a general statement, I disagree with that assessment. Read before replying... As a recent grad from a major university in Boston, I can attest that universities are not charged with protecting or providing legal assistance for their students. In fact, pretty much any news story that I see about a student or group of students breaking the law includes expulsion of the students involved. The exception is that minor drug and alcohol offenses are treated as addictions and resolved with some form of mandatory counseling. Sometimes students are expelled for being arrested off campus (nearby)! Universities largely take a cut-and-run approach to problem students. So, the way they are acting with the RIAA is NOT a surprise at all.
:-) ). It should be the same for every other bit of personal information I have on record with my university. Every school that receives a bunch of these letters should have their legal counsel reply with another letter stating something like:
When a college passes a RIAA extortion letter to a student that they believe is the intended recipient, the college has done nothing wrong. In fact, I think it would be a liability to not pass the information along. I know that I would never want my university to act as a legal threat filter on my behalf because in the end, it isn't the university being held responsible, its me! The bottom line is that everybody who receives a threatening letter - be it legal or other - should consult with a lawyer and respond appropriately.
Many of the posts did recognize the *real* problem with some of these institutions: unethical cooperation with RIAA. Providing *any* information about a student, whether that information be an IP address, mailing address or name should be illegal. I know that recent laws have made it impossible for even my parents to access my student records and GPA without my express permission (which I have given
"This school acts as a neutral internet service provider. The intended recipients/users have been notified. It is up to them to respond individually. If you require any additional information, please obtain a court-ordered subpoena."
So for now, the real problem seems to be that many schools lack a fair and effective internet/data privacy policy.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
.. if that's a given it puts any school who actively collaborates with the RIAA in violation of privacy laws. Now that's going to be fun, and that's without the fact that most of the RIAA's methodology and so-called "evidence" has suffered some serious dents.
They almost make me deliberately start copying just for the hell of it. Nveer felt like that before..
Insert
.. I mean, if this is anything to go by.
Stupid idiots.
Insert
These suits have nothing to do with damages and everything to do with convincing schools to pay for crappy drm laden services like ruckus. Purdue wasn't on the RIAA's list of colleges with the most downloading, but as soon as they dropped ruckus(since no one used it) they jumped to the top of the list. From what I have seen less people download music for free today than they did 4 years ago(only due to itunes, not because of anything the RIAA has done).
extortionate - adjective: greatly exceeding bounds of reason or moderation. When the RIAA asks for more than triple damages (e.g. 3 x 89 cents each for *proven* infringements) or sues computer illiterate little old ladies who may be blind or may not have been alive at the time, I consider that extortionate and worse. I think that in a constitutional US, sometimes, clear civil sanctions or criminal review would be in order for some RIAA actions and cases. Also remember, one A. Hilter, on September 1, 1939, claimed to be a victim of Polish aggression.
What slash /.ers want to give advice for what I can do about it?
If you were one of the high filesharers, let us know if you settled or how the fight went.
If you are in school after that, I would recommend sticking to USB drives for a while.
The truth shall set you free!
But that's too much to hope for...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
If you're trying to extort money, it makes no sense to go after the ones that can fight back. The settlement amounts are roughly identical, so going after those who can fight back isn't the best decision. And think about it this way - isn't it more likely that a student at UPenn, knowing that he's going to be left hanging, will settle rather than a student at Harvard, who knows he's got the school's support?
I, in no way support the RIAA for its actions and I honestly believe that they really need to stop trying to prove how big their 'legal cock' is. The bottom line is this though, the music industry hasn't done much to release high quality music like it has in the past. Mostof my college buddies, and myself included, would much rather download a few songs from a cd before geting sucked into buying it because of one great 'bump and grind' track. If anything, we (slash dottas) should get together and throw a law suit against the music industry for giving us crap for so long and throwing a fit when we stop taking it. But in long run, I think all of us have used programs such as Limewire at some point in our lives.... however, most of my usage of software like that was when I was in college myself. Maybe if college kids had more money then maybe they'd want to buy more music, instead of beer and pot. Oh well, this is never ending battle that needs to just go away!
WWPD - What Would Picard Do?
English is not standardized, so what exactly is meant by "wrong" (aside from the obvious spelling, grammar or typo)? The language grows new words and evolves old ones all the time.
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
I realize I'm way late getting to this, but I had to comment for the record. You're not even close. Hopefully even if no one else does at least you'll read this.
The reason people oppose the RIAA/MPAA is because they are getting the government to enact and alter laws for the sole purpose of preserving a business model that has been made obsolete by technology and in the process are criminalizing technological advancement (DMCA, HDMI, internet radio, podcasting, myth TV, DVD player hardware restrictions) that encroaches on what is essentially their monopoly control over the entertainment industry. Their business model entails an oligarchy that in collusion has monopolistic control over the production and distribution of all forms visual and audio media. They were able to establish this monopoly because in the past the costs for production and distribution were prohibitive for entry into the market. Technology has reduced those cost to a level that democratizes the ability to produce and distribute media so they are changing the laws to retain their oligarchic control in the face of a democratic revolution. For some examples: An internet radio station has to pay large amounts of money to the RIAA even if they only play creative commons or copyright expired material. In Canada the government has enacted a tax on blank media that the government collects on behalf of these cartels even though I have never in my life burned a song onto a CD. They are trying desperately to get "fair use" which is enacted in law reduced or eliminated by propaganda campaigns, judicial legislation and/or changes to the law.
Who is John Galt?
Um, I thought all that was covered under the "appalling tactics" category, including "invasive computer code [and] purchasing of legislators."
DRM would fall under invasive computer code, and the other offenses you mentioned (Canadian tax, radio station fee, etc) would be the purchasing legislators stuff.
When I said "don't care as much about copyright," I meant that to contrast them with the "information should be free, and I should be able to download whatever I want without paying for it!" crowd. I certainly agree that the **AA orgs are stepping about thirty miles over the line of traditional copyright, fair use, and privacy. I just got lazy and didn't want to type all of that.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Nah, we'll have quantum computers that can zoom through any encryption we come up with today. :)
The problem is, allowing the drm to expire basically requires either the drm to still be working when the copyright expires (to have the server change the restrictions to allow conversion to a normal format), trusting the company to distribute an open version when the copyright expires, or having some sort of escrow system. The first two options require too much trust, and the third one requires a major change in copyright law (back to mandatory registration) as well as a lot of infrastructure so the government can distribute public domain works.
Contrary to the reports from some sensationalist tech journalists, quantum computers don't magically obsolete today's encryption algorithms. Take a look at the Wikipedia article for details. To summarize, for algorithms like AES, a quantum computer may be able to attack keys as much as twice as long as the keys that a classical computer can attack - margins of error that large are built into many systems that use such algorithms in practice.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
That's a succinct and cromulent argument. English is continually embiggened.
Last year, a bunch of kids got letters from the RIAA demanding settlement, and they mostly just paid up cause they couldn't afford a lawyer. Anyways, now the RA's have to hand out little pamphlets about reasons not to illegally download (which mostly are 'your computer is gonna get a virus' and 'the RIAA will make you pay'). The disturbing thing is one particular anti-downloading flier mentioned that the letters sent the previous year were for alleged copyright violations. Anyways, I have friends in IT who know how the people who download are caught at my school, so I can mostly avoid it. However, I'm too scared to torrent even legal material like open-source software, because I don't know if the people who give the info to the RIAA knows exactly what I'm torrenting, like an MMORPG (which wouldn't be within the RIAA's jurisdiction at all I believe) versus a huge collection of music, or if they do know what I'm torrenting, whether they would know that the specific MMORPG happened to be open-source and I do actually have the right to download and share that specific file to my heart's content.