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RIAA College Litigations Getting A Bumpy Ride
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's juggernaut against colleges, started in February of this year, seems to be having a bumpier and bumpier ride. The normal game is to call for a subpoena, to get the name and address of the students or staff who might have used a certain IP address. The normal game seems to be getting disrupted here and there. A Virginia judge threw the RIAA's motion out the window, saying that it was not entitled to such discovery, in a case against students at the College of William & Mary. A New Mexico judge denied the application on the ground that there was no reason for it to be so secretive, in a case involving University of New Mexico students. He ultimately required the RIAA to serve a full set of all of the underlying papers, for each 'John Doe' named, and to give the students 40 days in which to review the papers with counsel, and make a motion to quash if they chose to do so. In a stunning development, the Attorney General of the State of Oregon made a motion to quash the RIAA's subpoena on behalf of the University of Oregon, on grounds which are fully applicable to every case the RIAA has brought to date: the lack of scientific validity to the RIAA's "identification" evidence. The motion is pending as of this writing. Students have themselves made motions to vacate the RIAA's ex parte orders and/or quash subpoenas in over half a dozen cases. Much combat remains, but the RIAA's campaign is no longer a hot knife cutting through butter on the nation's campuses."
Actually, people still pay for music in droves. Itunes is doing amazingly well and, IIRC, revenue is still going up, just not as fast as the music industry thought they were going to. The backlash isn't only caused by the ability to copy for free, it's because we used to pay for tapes and then, suddenly, they offered cds for almost twice as much. Then tapes were phased out, cds became common place, and the price stayed roughly the same. Artists began putting out crap where half the cd isn't worth listening to and another 1/4 is only tolerable, with one or two tracks worth listening to. Besides, with radio stations the RIAA has been giving music away for a while now.
They've had multiple and free distribution streams with a copyable medium for a while now, so perhaps it's time they look at the industry as a whole and try to work with the market and technology rather than against it.
For one thing, because it is easy as hell to spoof a MAC address.
All through college I never did register the wireless for my laptop, I just used a registered MAC address I captured.
I figured that way someone else would get sued.
They're way ahead of you: http://www.news.com/Democrats-Colleges-must-police-copyright%2C-or-else/2100-1028_3-6217943.html?tag=nefd.lede
He is a second year student at USC (University of Southern California)
The attorney letter is from Holm Roberts & Owen LLP from their Denver office.
The school passed on the letter and when I called the school's Acting Litigation Manager - was told that the school would pass on student info if a lawsuit is filed and the school receives a subpoena.
To say I am disappointed at the school's passive position is an understatement. California has very strong laws requiring schools to protect the privacy of students - and if there should be legal action would be compelled to act in protecting student privacy.
Since the school has very strong ties with the recording / film industry, and the LA basin is full of attorneys and judges that are graduates, the lawyer I consulted suggested settling.
hummmm
Don't make me laugh. I've never seen a lawyer with a red BMW. They get black without even *thinking* about it.
I appreciate the use of "quash" instead of the typical slashdot "squash."
Copyright is a special privilege granted for a limited time to encourage people to produce product. With literally thousands of bands, hundreds of tv shows, thousands of movies, tens of thousands of books, I do not see why they need such encouragement. I certainly do not see how John Lennon is going to be encouraged to produce more music by extending the copyright after he was dead.
This IS the problem.
It's self induced.
The RIAA can go fuck themselves, their life of living off other peoples labour is hopefully soon coming to an end.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
1: The RIAA claims that because they don't know who their Doe defendants are until after they have conducted discovery (meaning that they get the ISP under court order to reveal which subscriber was assigned a specified TCP/IP address at a given time), that they cannot serve them with papers and allow them to participate in the court proceedings.
2: The RIAA claims a need for Expedited Discovery (they get it right away, rather than waiting through hearings of whether they're actually entitiled to it, or not) on the claim that ISP server logs are only kept for limited periods of time, and if they don't get it immediately -- rather than waiting for a proper judicial process that protects both the Plaintiffs', and the Defendants', rights -- that it will be lost to them forever.
Both these claims are bogus garbage. Litigation documents sent to an ISP can be passed along to the subscriber of the service that the ISP intends to identify if forced by the courts. This can be done without telling the RIAA who this person is yet. And as for preserving evidence, once it becomes a matter of a lawsuit, ISP's can and do preserve the access logs forever, again not turning them over to the RIAA hounds until all proper procedures are followed.
However, when the only person the judge hears from are the RIAA lawyers, there is no one present to argue the opposite side. As such, the RIAA has been able so far to run roughshod over the rights of the Defendants, dismiss that case before their use of the evidence gathered in the method above can be challenged in that case, and then take what they illegally got away with there and use in individual cases where, to my knowledge (IANAL), how they got your subscriber information cannot be challenged.
So ex parte basically means in secret, or without the other party present, which is a lousy way to conduct justice!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
We're not doing anything to prevent people from viewing any content they want on the Internet. We're not even shaping most traffic. What we're doing is making some traffic go slower so that more people have an opportunity to use the network for its intended purpose. Get a fucking grip, troll.