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."

Comments

The beginning of the end

[4D6963]

I hate to make predictions anyone else can make, but it's starting to smell like the beginning of the end for the RIAA and their shady tactics. Sounds like they're consistently meeting an increasing resistance. I guess sooner or later they'll realize that their best choice is to adapt and evolve and move on to a new "business plan".

Re:The beginning of the end

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

This is not the end.

This is not the beginning of the end.

This is the end of the beginning.

Re:The beginning of the end

[ByOhTek]

point - lacking the right to make money, does not imply people have the right to steal from them. Of course, typically seen in the context here, it does imply that.

The problem is more the methods of the RIAA, which can be just as dishonest as those of the pirates. I'm more a fan of "if it's worth having, it's worth paying for" myself, thus if they ask to much I just go without.

The RIAA should not have the right to restrict fair use (trying to prevent people from legitimately copying/playing their music on their MP3 players or computer), reselling used CDs (remember to destroy your own digital copies if you do this), have more than one person listen to product in a single playing, etc. Heh, all that and I still haven't gotten into their dubious legal tactics.

Likewise, a customer does not (and should not) have the right to pass off the copyrighted works without giving up their own right to use it.

Both sides are slighting the other in this case. The pirates because they have a gimme-gimme spoild-child attitude of wanting to get everything they want and bitching-and-moaning for it, and the RIAA for blatantly abusing their customers.

Re:The beginning of the end

[compro01]

I wasn't aware that it mandated that companies SUPPORT it. The market should determine what restrictions on fair use are bearable.

1. correct. that's why the DMCA is (rightly or wrongly) law. they can't prosecute fair use, but they can go after it by proxy. all the more reason why the presedent set by the betamax case needs to be adjusted to fit modern technology.

2. the market? if you think this is a free market, i would recommend you visit a competent psychologist.

Know anyone?

[kevmatic]

I'm wondering if anyone here knows anyone that's had to deal with this mess. I have a friend at my school who was downloading illegal movies and got caught. But he wasn't charged or sued or anything; the MPAA basically told my school to "make this IP stop downloading our stuff" so he got kicked off for a while and told not to do it again. Most schools probably have a very good idea who is using what IPs. Mine can tell what room a rogue router is plugged into, even without an IP. And our IPs (we don't use NAT) are linked to a specific MAC address (we register the MAC addresses, which is a PAIN). I don't really see why the RIAA can't keep doing this, even though its stupid.

Re:The legal system making sense

[Mr. Underbridge]

I do wonder, though, what process a human soul must go through to file lawsuits against single mom's and 80-yr old grandmothers (and the occasional dead person) and not even blink. RIAA lawyers must be getting paid a lot of money.

I think that's the point - in many of them, no human soul, brain, or eyes are doing so becuase they automate this stuff and don't do anything I'd call due diligence.

One thing I don't get - the whole 'single mom' thing gets a lot of play - but I don't see any reason why she'd get a pass where a 19-year-old kid wouldn't, *if* there's actually evidence she actually did what she was accused of. Probably still dumb to sue her though simply on PR grounds. I often wonder if their PR department hasn't been infiltrated by people whose goal is to bring down the organization from the inside. They're that bad.

Instead....

[Khyber]

"Much combat remains, but the RIAA's campaign is no longer a hot knife cutting through butter on the nation's campuses."

Nope, now they're lobbying to make it mandatory for colleges to purchase each student a Napster or Rhapsody account or LOSE FEDERAL FINANCIAL AID.

Someone just needs to shoot every RIAA member in the head right now. If anyone will donate to my legal defense fund, I'll be more than happy to pull the trigger. My finger's been REALLY itchy as of late.

Re:The legal system making sense

[AKAImBatman]

The legal system has always made sense in respect to these issues. The only reason why the RIAA got as far as they did as quickly as they did is that they had the element of surprise. (In a military sense.) They were able to use that surprise of legal threat to do quite a bit of damage before the legal war machine spun up to full defensive power. Now that things are spun up, the system is slowly beginning to repel the RIAA attacks.

Re:Alternative

[Gadgetfreak]

That's nothing new, though. I'm quite sure that long ago, the RIAA realized they were the obsolete middle man in the artists --> consumer line. But it's a big fat cash cow for them. They do the 'promoting' (payola, etc.) and the artist gets famous. Just like so many labor unions, their position may be obsolete, but because they were firmly established, they're doing everything they can to stay where they are. I certainly don't agree with it, but I can understand why they're lashing out at anything and everything in order to exert their dominance and control. The smart thing to do would be adapt to a more modern business model, but hey, that's not what lawyers do.

I can even understand why bands like Metallica supported the RIAA crackdowns. The huge cut of the $$ that the RIAA gets from record sales could be interpreted as protection money paid to the Mob. If you were forced to play that game, you'd probably some protection.

Re:Excellent

[Volante3192]

The courts have no desire to protect criminals; but they DO have a desire to protect the rights of the accused. That means the RIAA has to go through the Proper Legal Hoops to get this done.

If you looked at the cases, you'll notice a common thread is using ex parte motions to get things done, which I hope someone can fill me in more about cause the wiki page seems very light on details, but it seems the judges don't seem to think this is enough.

These cases aren't being tossed out, they're going back to the RIAA and saying 'do more legwork.'

Re:A change in copyright, that is a different

[SCHecklerX]

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 artists 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.

Fixed that for you. There is no longer a reason for the music industry to exist at all. The artists themselves now have the means to distribute their work. If they are smart, they give it away, or sell for little more than the cost of the media, and make their money on live shows, using their newfound distribution system as a means of relatively free advertising.

Re:By the same token

[EaglemanBSA]

Where I go to school, your account simply gets disabled until you call to find out why. When I was an undergrad here, you got emails notifying you if you were sharing copyrighted material. Now, if you're simply running a p2p client (doesn't matter what you're sharing), your account is disabled, and you have to seek out the reasoning yourself.

Re:This is hailed as some kind of "progress"?

[UnknowingFool]

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?

The RIAA has a right to legally defend their copyrights. They do not have a right to bypass the law or take shortcuts to do so. Also they must go after the right person. There have been many cases where they did not pursue the correct individual and did not care. They have said as much.

"When you fish with a net, you sometimes are going to catch a few dolphin," Weiss helpfully explained to me. "But we also realize that this cybershoplifting needs to stop."

If one of my neighbors takes my morning paper every morning do I sue them all and drop the cases when I narrow it down to a suspect. Also do I have exparte communications with the judge to get all of their financial statements? And then I realize that the neighbor I did sue has been away visiting relatives for a month, should I not then drop the suit or continue with it? The RIAA has done the opposite of reason, fairness, and common sense in every case unless there was negative media on them.

Yes

[Sycraft-fu]

Where I work we do not block P2P. We can't, really, as it is an academic freedom issue in addition to having many, many legit usages. I mean try getting Linux without bittorrent, and WoW's patcher is BT based. We do deprioritize P2P traffic to ensure it doesn't use an unfair amount of the network, but it is allowed. That it is sometimes used for illegal things is not out problem. HTTP, FTP, e-mail, all are sometimes used for illegal things but we aren't blocking any of those either.

We are not interested in playing network police.