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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."
More and more, corporate America has been ready and willing to screw over the "consumer" in order to make more money. The media industry's stranglehold on their particular market is a stockholder's dream come true.
As long as people are willing to shell out the $$ for the crap they keep shoveling out, not much is going to change.
This is nothing more than a mere glance at the true extend of the RIAA's campaign. The number of students the RIAA has sued, most of whom couldn't hope to pay off a settlement or a lawyer to bring the case to trial, numbers way into the thousands. The truly insidious part is just that: the RIAA has billions of dollars available to sue people, and could keep the cases in litigation until the defendant just runs out of money and is forced to settle. There is no due process here, there never could be in cases like these.
Palm trees and 8
And an innocent man has nothing to fear from the Police... Good luck with that.
The issue is not that people who download music without paying for it should get given a lollipop and a pat on the back.
The issue is that people who are accused of downloading music should get a fair hearing, the chance to defend themselves (mistakes do happen) and face a punishment proportionate to the "damage" done to industry and society by their "crime".
They should not be faced with a "Hobson's choice" of "Confess, and pay this meerly ruinous fine - or defend yourself and hope your parents don't mind selling their house & one of your little sister's kidneys if you loose."
So how much damage is done? Well, look at your CD collection: how of them are only there because, once upon a time, someone gave you a tape (remember those?) or MP3 of the artist, and when their next album came out you bought it? Hmm...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
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.
Question everything
"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...
I'll admit TFA doesn't make it obvious, as they seem to be against copyright or something, but
Are you really that naive?
The RIAA (or MPAA? I always lose track) has, so far, sued 12-year-olds, people who have never used a computer (and don't know how), people who are dead...
Frankly, I don't care whether who they catch, or how guilty they are -- they are the worst example of a "fishing expedition". I honestly don't know how they "catch" people, but I suspect they just throw a dart at a phone book or something.
I'd have to look up the exact article, but yes, there have been cases where universities have bought subscriptions to services like Napster or the Zune Store in order to provide students a place to legally download music, on the assumption that without providing this service, students would illegally download music.
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.
In particular, if an IP-address-to-student mapping is considered private, I'd say you need more than "Well, 50% of college students pirate -- oh wait, I totally pulled that number out of my ass, but give me their names anyway!"
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Erm, no it's not that easy, and costs more than a few hundred dollars. It's not like the RIAA lawyers are going to let you go into a courtroom and say "I'm innocent! See? No evil Kazaaware on THIS computer! They get "experts" to testify that someone at your IP address was downloading songs, and you need to hire your own experts to counter them or the judge rules for the RIAA and not for you. Here in Canada an expert witness runs about $2k for a written report and at least as much to appear in court for you for a day. I'm sure it's more in the US. so we're already over the $3k "settlement offer" the RIAA customarily makes, and we haven't even hired a lawyer yet. We have one expert (you'd be lucky to get away with one -- you need one expert for every one the other side has if you're at all serious about defending yourself), and one Defendant, representing himself or having a lawyer do the work pro bono. For one day. If you won your motion (the average joe probably couldn't afford a Trial, the lost wages alone would kill you), then you get to argue for costs, which means several more days in court, and you're not guaranteed to win. All this is assuming that the Plaintiff's lawyers aren't playing dirty, which of course is false. If one side plays a dirty game you can multiply the costs and time taken by 10, easily. Now all this is assuming the most bare-bones defence you can get, and if you go against the music companies with bare bones, you will get beaten soundly. There's no question about that. To mount a proper defence you would need a very good lawyer (this may be the cheapest part, given that there may be lawyers looking to make a name for themselves in this area of law, possible assistance from the EFF; a growing body of legal resources helps too), a battery of expert witnesses, buckets of money, and lots of free time. And don't expect to recover all your costs. You can expect to be out thousands of dollars, maybe tens of thousands of dollars, and that's if you win.
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