A Look at The RIAA's War Against College Students

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "p2pnet.net has put together a fascinating retrospective on the RIAA's war against college students, commenced February 28, 2007. The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy — corporate "content," as the Big 4 call their formulaic outpourings.' In a scathing indictment not only of the major record labels, but of those schools, administrators, and educators who have yet to take a stand against it, Jon Newton reviews a number of landmark moments in the 11-month old 'reign of terror'. They include the announcement of the bizarre 'early settlement' sale, the sudden withdrawal of a case in which a 17 year old Texas high school student had been subpoenaed while in class during school hours to attend a deposition the very next day during his taking of a standardized test, the call by Harvard law professors for the university to fight back when and if attacked, and the differing reactions by other schools."

Comments

War on this war on that, war on you

[Thaelon]

So this morning I got up and waged war on eye crud. I followed shortly after with a war on two fronts. A war on full bladders and a war on clean toilets. Next I waged war on not being at my computer. Then I went to war on dark monitors. Then I declared war on Firefox.exe. Then I went to war with slashdot's servers and blank Firefox pages. Then slashdot's text had the audacity to wage photon based war on my retinas! In retaliation, I counterattacked with a covert war on the Reply button, then followed up with a brief war on empty subject text boxes. Then I engaged in a somewhat protracted war on empty comment boxes. Now in closing, I'll stage a blitzkrieg on the submit button and preemptively declare victory.

Re:when

[davecarlotub]

"why can't anonymous declare war on the RIAA, they are a far bigger threat to society than Scientology."

Scientologists get angry, real angry. makes for better lulz. as they say...

please adhere to the rules for comments...

[stormguard2099]

10 rant against RIAA
20 generic comment that piracy is still wrong
30 tangent about DRMs originating in Nazi Germany
40 someone yells Godwin's law
50 next RIAA article is posted
60 goto 10

Re:when

[dieth]

No sadly anonymous' hacking attempts are rather meh, their collection of hackers probably have the combined IQ of all the mIRC script kiddies from the late 90s. Sadly that's still a single digit number.

Re:Scathing indictment?

[Mike1024]

or to say that universities have a responsibility to cover up lawbreaking by their students

NO. WRONG ATTITUDE.

Why should the universities have a responsibility to turn over their students? Especially on practically no evidence?

I'm sorry, but this is pretty much like saying "You're with us, or you're with the terrorists." Refusing to cooperate doesn't mean you're suddenly taking the other side, or that you're "covering up" anything, or, indeed, that there is even something to cover up.

It's pretty easy to gather evidence - so easy, in fact, I assumed the record labels do it. You just connect to a torrent, download the content to ensure it is infringing, and log time/IP address of all the other peers who are downloading/uploading.

You then take this evidence to court, and the court issues a subpoena for the recorded holder of the IP address (the university) to identify the person using the IP address at that time.

If record labels have enough evidence to get courts to issue subpoenas (they could easily gather this much evidence), and have a court-issued subpoena, I hardly call that "hardly no evidence". I also wouldn't say I have a "You're with us, or you're with the terrorists" attitude.

Re:when

[lattyware]

Yeah, They are hackers on steroids! There is a big difference!