U.Maine Law Clinic Is First To Fight RIAA

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "'A student law clinic is about to cause a revolution' says p2pnet. For the first time in the history of the RIAA's ex parte litigation campaign against college students, a university law school's legal aid clinic has taken up the fight against the RIAA in defense of the university's students. Student attorneys at the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic, under the supervision of law school prof Deirdre M. Smith, have moved to dismiss the RIAA's complaint in a Portland, Maine, case, Arista v. Does 1-27, on behalf of two University of Maine undergrads. Their recently filed reply brief (PDF) points to the US Supreme Court decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, and the subsequent California decision following Twombly, Interscope v. Rodriguez, which dismissed the RIAA's 'making available' complaint as mere 'conclusory,' 'boilerplate' 'speculation.'"

Comments

Harvard

[SuperBanana]

Slightly off-topic, but I often see people mentioning Harvard hasn't been targetted by the RIAA.

It's not for legal reasons. If you use any P2P software, Harvard IT shuts off your access; you're blocked on a DHCP level. You get three "strikes" before this happens- unless you're on wireless, in which case, you're booted right away.

Re:Harvard

[arivanov]

Which means that they have a DPI box like Ellacoia or P-Cube or a P2P cache box like CacheLogic or OverSee. From there on they are actually right to use this policy. The reason is very simple.

RIAA can subpoena the college IT and get real seeder IPs out of the P2P cache logs. From there on it is "game over". You show up on the cache log only if you have both offered a file and someone has used it. So armed with this log they should be able to prove what they have gone to prove. Check, Mate.

So if a college has deployed P2P Cache or DPI from there on they have no choice but to use it. It is actually in the interest of the students because the college IT dept can be made to provide much better evidence than the laughable junk supplied by MediaCentry.

Re:arent' they a recording artists union?

[Trevin]

No, the RIAA is a coalition of record labels and distributors, not artists. (It stands for "Recording Industry Association of America".) They're the middlemen in the music industry, neither creators nor consumers.

Re:Say goodbye to student aid.

[Kadin2048]

Well, the House already passed a bill that links Federal student aid monies to the implementation of RIAA-drafted "anti-piracy" measures. I don't think the GP's fear is too farfetched; certain members of Congress are pretty obviously in the pockets of the media corporations.