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U.of Oregon Says No to RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The University of Oregon has filed a motion to quash the RIAA's subpoena for information on student identities in what is believed to be the first such motion made by a university with support from the state Attorney General. The motion (pdf) explains that it is impossible to identify the alleged infringers from the information the RIAA has presented: 'Five of the seventeen John Does accessed the content in question from double occupancy dorm rooms at the University. With regard to these Does, the University is able to identify only the room where the content was accessed and whether or not the computer used was a Macintosh or a PC ... The University cannot determine whether the content in question accessed by one occupant as opposed to another, or whether it was accessed instead by a visitor.' The AG's motion further argues (pdf) that "Plaintiffs' subpoena is unduly burdensome and overbroad. It seeks information that the University does not readily possess. In order to attempt to comply with the subpoena, the University would be forced to undertake an investigation to create discovery for Plaintiffs — an obligation not imposed by Rule 45. As the University is unable to identify the alleged infringers with any accuracy, it cannot comply with its federal obligation to notify students potentially affected by the subpoena. One commentator has likened the AG's argument to saying, in effect, that the RIAA's evidence is 'rubbish'."
If they can't identify "subscribers", how can they pass along DMCA complaints or terminate the accounts of repeat offenders? If they can't do those things, does that eliminate their Safe Harbor status?
If I were an RIAA shark, I'd smell blood in the water.
Wow, many people don't RTFA and get slammed for it, sounds like you didn't read anything except the headline!
Even the summary clearly indicates that the only thing the University can state with any accuracy is the room that was used, and whether the computer was a PC or a MAC.
This in no-way limits the pool of potential "defendants" to two, (which was also stated in the summary), it simply says that it could have been on-or-the-other of the two room-mates, or any guest they may have ever had, or anyone else who may have had access to the room (i.e. janitorial staff, friends, friends' friends, party guests, etc.).
The University seems to be essentially saying that the scope of the investigation that they would have to undertake in order to comply with the subpoena exceeds the burden the litigant is (or should be?) permitted to impose on them.
-AC
everyone still keeps acting like the riaa can be defeated with reason and legal leg work. as the recent jury trial showed, reason and legal legwork cannot defeat legions of well-funded lawyers. the only way to defeat the riaa is to wait them out
once there was a time when we were nothing but small mammals, and the world was ruled by terrible lizards. in the realm of intellectual property, this is that time. the internet, of course, obliterates the old economic models of distribution. the old economic models are the riaa's sustenance. so you defeat the riaa by waiting for it's food source to dry up
in the meantime, do what little mammals do best: be nocturnal, be quick, be small, be quiet. mask yourself, use proxies, do all manner of obfuscation and security through obscurity. the internet has no legal jurisdiction. don't fight them head on. just hide
there will be of course casualties, even a dying lizard can swing it's tail mightily. but in the end, it will be dead, and we shall inherit the earth. patience my friends. you cannot defeat the terrible lizard head on. just wait for it to die of starvation
it's economic model is history. the only one who doesn't know it is the riaa. there is no reasoning with the terrible beast, it's behaviors are not, and never have been, and never will be rational. you do not reason with a legal attack dog
wait, and the riaa will die. stop trying to reason with the unreasonable
suing soccer moms and grandmothers for thousands of dollars is not the actions of a rational entity. it is the mark of a last desperate stand, and the end is in sight
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think the issue all along has been that IP addresses are not persons. Yes, you can argue that the address has a responsible person behind it, and perhaps that's all the law cares about. But the RIAA needs to prove the infringing party is the same one who owns the IP address- not trivial. They are asking the ISP or University to decide who that is. All it takes is an uneducated person with an unsecured WAP and a savvy and unscrupulous wardriver and suddenly the ignorant have become copyright infringers. Leave your dorm room open and unattended or be unlucky enough to share an address with a dishonest roommate who points the finger at you could be enough to cause heaps of trouble.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
A subpoena for an IP trace ("tell me who owned this internet access account on this date") is not normally a burden. If the subpoena instead requested the school "identify who was using this computer at this time", the school's response fits. The subpoena requires the school investigate, not just disgorge a few records.
Maybe all the students in the dorm could each claim they were the guilty party? ("I'm Sparticus!")
www.cgstock.com
Agreed. However, when someone says, "We would like to help you bully people, but we just don't have the information you want." they're hardly taking a stand.
Go Ducks!
It's about time someone fought back. UofO has the backing of Phil Knight (founder of Nike), so there should be plenty of money to fight off the RIAA should things get ugly.
Monitor bandwidth usage on IIS6 in real-time: http://www.waetech.com/services/iisbm/
the University is able to identify only the room where the content was accessed and whether or not the computer used was a Macintosh or a PC ... The University cannot determine whether the content in question accessed by one occupant as opposed to another, or whether it was accessed instead by a visitor
Back in the day, we used to tape tapes and albums with absolutely no consequences. And we still bought new tapes and albums anyway. Today, we are assumed to be criminals for doing the same thing, only now in digital format. What is a person to do?
I'll think I will stick to used CD stores for now. Reduce, reuse, recycle.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I was waiting to hear about this, RIAA/MPAA and other have been doing a lot of finger pointing and taking advantage of the legal system to do a lot of their work and people are realizing that RIAA/MPAA is collecting the money bot not necessarily paying the bills for investigation and enforcement.
I have been expecting the pendulum to swing the other way to either strike down these things due to the financial burden on the enforcement/ judicial/ corrections or to start taxing (rightly so) all those poor artists of which they have been protecting their rights.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
but i would assert that sea changes in business and culture can render your entire legal argument moot
for example, in a world where no artist signs with any music label, because they can get more money putting their own shingle on the internet, then the rights of labels that don't exist economically anymore don't have any meaning
it will take time to arrive at this new world, so perhaps we have to wait a lot longer than i might wish
to put it another way: there is a great legal framework in place concerning the rights of player piano music roll manufacturers
but in world where there are no player pianos, except in museums, then what does that legal framework mean?
likewise, i am not going to counter your legal arguments, your legal arguments are 100% correct
but i am going to say that over time, the entire legal realm the arguments you are making exist in will become defunct
it will take awhile, but you have an entire generation of young people who know what i am talking about. when such children are in their 40s and 50s, and are running whatever dried up remains of bertelsmann, coumbia records, etc. still exists, then what will any of this sound and fury really mean anymore?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No, nowhere near the beginning. The RIAA labels' suicide started years ago and is still ongoing. Now, if you're scratching your heads and are wondering WTF I mean by "suicide", the established industry is dying from its own actions.
The year the old "pirate" Napster was being sued, CD sales (IIRC) were at their peak and have been dwindling since. The RIAA boycott (that you have never even once heard about in the mainstream media - hmmm....) must have had some slight effect on the industry.
Their first mistake was to think CD burning technology wouldn't, like all computer technology before it, be affordable for the serfs.
Their second mistake was to try to kill their competetion, the indies, by killing P2P.
Their third mistake was seeing MP3s as "product" rather than "advertising". They have always been known as "record companies", and they sold records. Now they're trying to sell music, and music is a non-tangible item. Note that the indies actually do this, giving away MP3s and selling CDs at their shows.
There were other mistakes - overpricing their wares (an indie CD is usually $5-$10), only having one good song on the CD (my generatiuon was damned lucky, have you ever heard a Led Zepplin song that sucked? There aren't any!), suing their paying customers (DUH!!!!!!) etc.
All their woes are self-inflicted. Now by "suicide" I'm assuming that you'll agree that if a mosquito lands on your foot and you try to kill the mosquito by firing five shots from a sixteen guage shotgun at it and you bleed to death, it's suicide.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'm sorry, but while Led Zeppelin is good (I'm sure not going to argue), there are a certain percentage of their songs that I am convinced one must be stoned/high/drunk/etc in order to enjoy them properly. Since I am an abstainer, I don't really ever enjoy those songs. Not that they are bad songs, but they are not as good as the rest to those of us who don't use drugs of any type other than medicinal purposes.
The rest of your argument is unaffected by this, however, and I agree.
The RIAA is obselete on about 18 different levels, only 12 of which are potentially understandable.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
As a former employee of the U of O's IT department, I can attest that they search out rogue DHCP servers on the network and remove them. So I'm afraid that won't work.
Maybe you're a more complicated person than I am.
I'm a simple man.
I see some bad guys picking on some defenseless people, I jump in and try to help. Whether I will ultimately win or lose is a matter of indifference to me, because I have no control over the ultimate outcome. What I have control of is that I am fighting on the right side.
All I know about the motion the Oregon State Attorney General made on behalf of the University of Oregon is this:
-it is legally right
-it is morally right
-it's the first time a university or an AG has stepped into this business since it began in February
-the RIAA lawyers can make no intelligible response to it, since it is based on facts which the RIAA's own witnesses have already admitted under oath, and
-it's a terrible blow to the RIAA, once which they never anticipated.
So I'm smiling. And you should be too.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
This is all well and good when the party wanting the info happens to be the Bad Guy du jour. I wonder if there's any possible network abuse (spamming, sending death threats, any of the 4 horsemen (terrorist|drugdealer|kidnapper|childpornographer), etc) that might make people question the sense in not having a person accountable for a node's actions.
Also, I suspect that if the university can't find someone to pass the buck to, then it's going to stop with them.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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Yeah, I'm sure they weep themselves to sleep at night.
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