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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."
Are there any colleges left that aren't doing serious port blocking and packet shaping? Where my daughter goes to school, hosting P2P shares is going to get you a knock on the door from the network guys.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Federal funding has the universities by the balls. And you know who has DC by the pocketbook. It's no secret that the youth are the minority in voting percentages. If the youth don't vote, there is nothing to counteract that money. Make your voice heard to these politicians and try turn this into an issue of awareness that is discussed.
My work here is dung.
This is remding me of the SCO case.
Except, I think the RIAA is using even more shady methodology (although, in some cases, the RIAA might actually have a more point - if they'd just go about honestly rather than a group that wants to win and be "right" no matter what).
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Well, since the story is already tagged with "congresstotherescue", I think we're much more likely to see some lawmakers get some more money dropped into their pockets to convince them to pass a new law saying colleges aren't allowed to obstruct these suits.
I would like to see what you say come true, but part of their shady tactics is to get lawmakers to stack the deck in their favour.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'm no fan of the RIAA, but it doesn't seem right to me that we should be applauding flagrant violations of intellectual property rights. Everyone will be up in arms when Microsoft misappropriates or ignores GPL copyrights, but somehow, because it's the big, bad RIAA/MPAA, we are supposed to turn the other cheek? I'm sure I'll be modded down by the groupthink moderators here, but really, is this the outcome we're all rooting for? Ignoring copyrights?
Seriously, did you just conflate the "human soul" and "lawyers"??
While I'm sure there are some lawyers with some redeeming qualities, and who do important work (eg, ACLU, EFF, etc)
Rightly or wrongly, as a group, they don't have the greatest reputation for having scruples. I don't think there's a whole lot of soul searching or angst going into their decisions other than "do I want the red BMW, or the black one?".
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Because the legal system no longer supports their efforts to force an old and decayed business model upon their "customers", the RIAA has turned to a much more partial audience - the legislature.
Their recent attempts to buy legislation include:
- Criminalization of unauthorized file sharing
- Transferring the costs and burdens of initiating lawsuits to the Justice Department
- Denying Federal Financial Aid to the universities and colleges that do not persecute file sharing themselves.
Whether or not these efforts will succeed remains to be seen, but what is clear is that they are getting desperate. Why they do not pursue alternative revenue-generating options and alter their business model to suit the times is a great mystery to me. At this point, it appears as if they are not meeting their corporate charter, which requires that they do what is in the interest of their stockholders.
They could start by not being raging cockbags.
Insisting on DRM (which only hurts people who pay for music), insisting on charging more than people are willing to pay (hence a slump in CD sales), suing twelve year olds... etc etc.
Also, they don't really have a right to make money. If they can't figure out a way to make their music and make a profit, I guess they'll have to stop making music, won't they? Guess they'll have to get new fucking jobs and pay their way.
This is mostly speculation on my part... but:
For awhile the RIAA was sending out random letters to people, offering settlements. Probably many people did settle, for undisclosed sums in cases that were never made public.
But the RIAA decided to step it up a notch, and create a publicity campaign along the lines of "steal our stuff and you'll get caught" by suing tons of people simultaneously. However this seems to be backfiring: the publicity is making people realize that this is a widespread problem, and is making the weak points in the RIAA's accusations publicly known. So, people are more willing to fight when they: (1) realize there are many other people in the same situation as them, and (2) exchange information on "how to win."
Now this situation is far from over, and it may indeed turn out that many of these accused people will go to trial. Some of them may even lose, and have to pay egregious sums (e.g. $200,000 for sharing ~20 tracks). However the publicity with respect to these infringement cases is making it much easier for people to organize and fight. It is also making the RIAA (and associated labels/business sector) look evil and incompetent.
So, in a twisted sort of way, the publicity blitz to stop filesharing may actually make people more brazen.
Legal defenses being what they are, you might want to ask people to donate to the 'smuggle to a non-extradition country fund'
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
I wonder if the campus people, students, RIAA and judge know how easy it is to chance the MAC address being used by a computer? In most cases it's trivial. It's only slightly more challenging to find a valid MAC address on the local network and hijack it. The whole theory of an absolutely indisputable IP Address -> Mac Address -> Computer -> Individual chain is hardly ever argued, but from a technical perspective the whole chain of evidence is full of assumptions that everyone is being good.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
It's really simple; you stop enabling the RIAA when you stop purchasing RIAA music.
I haven't bought a single music CD since 2002, except for direct purchases from local bands. I had been buying CDs quite regularly and in large quantity since I got my first CD player in late 1983 and so I suppose I was one of the best customers.
But no more. I don't upload music and I don't download it either; I won't give the RIAA any excuse for whining about copyright infringement. But I swear that I will never spend a single penny for RIAA music no matter what the format until the monopolistic miscreants are gone.
Hey, RIAA! I've gone five years without contributing to your war fund! And I'm sure I can keep going.
Everyone else: Take the pledge and watch the greedy bastards suffer.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Not that you are capable of understanding this, but copyright is NOT an absolute. The copyright as we know it now is a recent 'invention' and was introduced in response to technological changes (music recordings). Is it that strange to rethink copyright again now technologie has once again changed the world?
To give an example, before the printing press was invented, the only way to spread written texts was by copying them. Someone, monks in the west, sat down, and simply copied an existing work word for word. That was the only way to make more then one copy, unless the original author fancied writing all the copies himself.
There was no such thing as copyright, you had the original author and book, and people copied that work for distribution.
This changed with the inventing of the press, all of a sudden an original work could be turned out in any number desired (more or less). This changed the name of the game, as all of a sudden you had a new industry, that of the printing press (publishers if you like) who could take works and reprint them and sell them at volumes large enough to make a business. Before that books were simply to rare and expensive for all but the most powerfull to posses.
With music this mattered, before a composer who wrote a piece of music had one copy of it. If someone wanted another copy of it, they had to deal with the composer, distribution was limited. When printing of sheet music became possible all of sudden a piece of music was worth more then just the money you could get from performing it, you could write music and sell it without ever touching an instrument. The music industry had been born.
It is hard for us to imagine, but once people traded music sheets as eagerly as we trade MP3's.
Times changed again when music itself could be recorded, first by automatic instruments, later the music performance itself.
Over this time, the music industry (the people selling others people work) and the artists and the composers have been in a constant struggle as to who should receive what amount of money. The original sheet publishers offcourse preffered to simply take the music, or pay a mininal one time fee, and collect all the profits they could. The performers want to just pay a minimal fee at most and be damned how many times they perform it or how much they get paid for it, the composer wants to see money for each copy sold and each performance.
All this eventually, over many changes led to copyright as we know it now. The best you can say for it, is that it kept everyone quiet. Not exactly content, but quiet.
But things changed, tech moved on once again and deeply cut for the first time into the publishers, all of sudden you didn't need a huge press anymore, (either to print books OR press vinyl/CD's etc) but end customers could reproduce music easily on their own. In a way going back to the original situation where if you wanted a copy of something, you made it.
The industry seems to have responded by making copyright even stricter, seemingly wanting to expand the lifespan to infinite, this despite the fact that for instance Disney is famous for NOT paying for the copyrighted works of others who just happen to fall outside that new protection, Pinocio was famously released JUST after the copyright expired.
But the main question is this, why should we keep a law that has been recently introduced to deal with changing tech, now that tech has changed again? Copyright is NOT a natural thing, it is something invented by lawyers to product an industry, why should we as a society keep it if we no longer need it, want it.
Once there was a law that required a man with a red flag to walk in front of a motorised vehicle, that was introcued to protect the horse carriage industry. We changed it when it became clear that new tech of the automobile had made the horse obsolete. That industry was simply forced to adopt or die. Why should the music industry not do the same.
and if you cry out, but that would mean, no
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
great plan kid, try explaining to the tens of thousands working in the music industry how they tell the mortgage provider that "my business plan is not to earn money".
You did tell this to the blue collar assembly line workers of America, who get laid off in droves because of cheaper labor costs outside of the country, right? Closed factories and all that.
Why should white collar workers be coddled?
If corporate America gets to screw over the middle class without any repercussions, it's about time they got a taste of their own medicine! Vive la revolution!
Please don't compare physical goods to IP. They are not the same thing and you can't compare the two. No matter how many times you repeat this bullshit about stealing, piracy has nothing to do with stealing. Piracy is copyright infringement, no more no less.
Learn some basic economics. People respond to incentives and people are opportunistic. If they have an opportunity to get something for free (vs paying for it), they will do it. This has nothing to do with being self righteous, it's just the way human nature works.
This has nothing to do about being moral or immoral. The digital age simply increased (by several orders of magnitude) the possibility of being opportunistic with regards to IP. You can't set the clock back and you definitely can't change human nature.
I love when MPAA bitch that they won't make movies because of the risk of piracy. If you're so concerned about, bail out of the media business. Supply and Demand will determine what happens next...
Spoofing a MAC is...child's play.
In fact, I'd even hesitate to call it spoofing since that word usually implies some sort of...i don't know...technical skill? Next time you're bored look at the properties for your network card. One of the options...yep, you guessed it. MAC Address. Some generic drivers may not support this but that's a pretty easy fix too.
10 years ago this might have been harder. Then again 10 years ago spoofing ANI for the skilled or CallerID for the simple was far more important anyway.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
I agree about the payment...
What is a fair payment?
If I have $10 for entertainment and you are trying to sell me 3 songs, what's fair?
If I have $10 for entertainment and you are trying to sell me 300 songs, what's fair?
If I have $10 for entertainment and you are trying to sell me 3000 songs, many dvd movies, cable, dvd television series, video games, what's fair?
Especially in the case of 3000 songs, the people that produced those songs are mostly long dead.
There is no reason other than greed and highly artificial monopolies that you should not be able to buy "every hit from 1926 to 1957" for $20 on DVD. If we go by the original copyright laws, "all music up to 1979" would be copyright free and extremely cheap.
They used their money to pervert the law. They are using their money to try and sustain that perversion (to "forever less one day").
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.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If equal protection under the law were an even approximately achievable goal, I might agree. But it isn't, since most legal burdens are not shared equally simply because of the accidents of circumstance: CEOs don't get traffic tickets not because they don't speed, but because by and large they don't drive. Most people I know including myself can't afford to not drive to work, hence me and my driving brethren are burdened by a law that does not touch one of my fellow citizens, simply because he can hire someone else to do his driving for him (or charter a plane, or take a taxi).
Since in this example converse unequal obligations (like, for the CEO, obligations not to defraud or embezzle or to comply with industry regulations which most people need not concern themselves with) are not policed with the same proportion of state resources nor are leveraged with proportionate penalty when those duties are breached. Even if they were, the power to defraud or outright distort the regulations as they are written (never mind corrupt their enforcement) is unequal. e.g. I have next to no chance to affect the speed limit regulations in my state, however Mr. Pharma CEO has a great deal of say in influencing the regulations over at the FDA.
Since docking middle-class or poor people lots of money in fines and/or throwing them in jail has never, shortly said, made any of their lives better (or, I'd imagine, reformed them in an significant way), why do we continue to endorse the meaningless and destructive platitudes of incarceration? "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime" is meaningless to a person who needs to be on time to a meeting to keep their job but must speed because they had another obligation to drop off their kids at school, and yet cannot afford a speeding ticket.
Of course, I'm not saying there is much of an imperative in copying music (nobody's livelihood rests on the ability to get free tunes/movies), but rather that the underlying mechanism is deeply flawed in its punitive aspect, and that flaw resonates with people confronted with examples of particularly acute disproportionality (single mom w/ two kids, etc).
p.s. I got out of college not so long ago, and while our culture demands more and more that people go to college to be employed, the institutions for the most part remain a significant bastion of monied privilege.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
But here's the deal: everyone knows what an MP3 is and how to get them for free. It's ubiquitous. The cat's out of the bag. So the industry's real options are: 1) find a way to adapt to a new model, or 2) go bankrupt.
They're choosing 3) stomp their little feet and wish really hard that it'll all go away. It's simply not going to happen. For mathematical reasons, it provably can't happen.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Oh please. Both the American auto industry and the American music industry are in trouble because of outdated business practices and unappealing products. The people who will be laid off will be laid off for those exact reasons.
As for work not being fairly compensated - are you kidding me? Can you point me to any other job where you can do work for a few hours, and then reap income for the rest of your life? Not only the rest of your life, but potentially the rest of the lives of your children? If anything, compensation for creative works is unfair, but in the opposite direction of what you're thinking.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The word "steal" get thrown around a lot. Well, one must consider that the Media Barons might have stolen from us. I have yet to see a single creative work that is not based on previous works. I can guarantee that not one single creative work has been produced where every person was paid for their contribution. This is why the idea of "Intellectual Property" is absurd. What is not absurd is the idea that a short term monopoly be given to encourage the production of new (derivative) works. Unfortunately, copyright law has been perverted to the point that works which belong in the public domain are being held hostage by the Media Barons. This really is one of those magical black and white issues.
1) Intellectual Property really exists, and the current crop of media producers are stealing from everyone before them just because the "rightful owners" don't have the resources to protect themselves.
or
2) Intellectual Property is not real, and copyright has been abused and corrupted to deny citizens of their natural right to use and relay ideas to others.
Actually it is a lot like a phone number ... to a worldwide organizations customer call center.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
Like water in bottles?
Please don't compare physical goods to IP. They are not the same thing and you can't compare the two. No matter how many times you repeat this bullshit about stealing, piracy has nothing to do with stealing. Piracy is copyright infringement, no more no less.
Please don't compare piracy to copyright violation. They are not the same thing and you can't compare the two. No matter how many times you repeat this bullshit about piracy, illegal copying has nothing to do with piracy. Piracy involves ships, eye-patches and parrots. And automatic guns in recent times.