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How the RIAA Targets Campus Copyright Violators
jyosim writes "The Chronicle of Higher Ed got a briefing at RIAA headquarters on how the group catches pirates. They just use LimeWire and other software that pirates use, except that they've set up scripts to search for songs, grab IP numbers, and send out notices to college officials. They claim they don't target specific colleges, though many feel that they do."
I doubt they are 'targeting' any specific school, but I strongly suspect IPs resolving to unilag.edu.ng are handled differently then those resolving to yale.edu , where the students are more likely to just pay a settlement rather then wipe their arse with the notices...
Is this seeded or unseeded?
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Sounds like entrapment to me, like the mafRIAA is "making avaible" the same mp3s they are accusing people of downloading... bastards.
If you risk getting hate mail simply because you work at a certain company, perhaps it's time to look for a different job?
On the other hand, if this guy actually stuck his neck out and shared how the RIAA really finds their suckers, he'd probably get thank you letters rather than hate mail.
In either case, he probably needs to do some deep self-examination to see why he stays at this job.
Since when can a person be held directly responsible for activity that occurs on their IP address? The RIAA is throwing charges for crimes without sufficient evidence that the person they are charging committed the crime. There are a million ways an IP is shared or used by multiple persons. Without substantial evidence, the RIAA is merely throwing litigious paperwork around at tons of innocent people. When will our government establish a recourse for recurring wrongful litigious activity? The ability to sue, blame, and then settle out of court is being so heavily exploited because lawyers know that most people would rather settle than pay the $$$ to prove themselves innocent. We need to either: 1) Not allow settling, thus making false accusations apparent, and thus the obvious waste of our judicial resources. This would be the cause of an impending need to reform and disallow repeat false accusers. or 2) Allow individual accusers or accusing bodies (such as the RIAA) a limited amount of legal cases, for which an appeal must be done to be allowed more.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Peerguardian. http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
Use it or dont whine about getting nailed by the RIAA,MPAA,BSA,NAACP,etc....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There is some other reason they are targetting universities with this automated business. Maybe because they know students don't want to get in trouble with the administration, or because the universities are more risk-averse and less likely to fight than the commercial ISPs, which would lose business if they tried to stop piracy. The RIAA said it does not single out particular academic institutions to be "made examples of."
"We have no capability of targeting any school at all," said the RIAA representative, who argued that there is a large "misperception" among university administrators that individual colleges are being picked on. "Technically we can't do it. We find what we find with this process, and that's what we send to schools." They don't have the capability??? Of course they do. He's just outlined how easily they could target particular universities. It's one thing to say that they don't do it. To say that they are incapable of doing it is a bold-faced lie.
You must've missed the part in the article where they describe how they determine if it's actually one of their songs or not.
Hint: neither file name nor first few seconds being the same will do it.
Why exactly is it nontaxable? Any income that isn't specifically excluded by code is considered to be taxable. Just because the income is illegal or of dubious legality does not exempt it from taxation. Perhaps the most famous case being Al Capone being toppled by the IRS.
I don't see why anyone would make that assumption. The larger the group, the more intelligent people will be in that group, and the higher the likelyhood that some of them will be exceptionally intelligent.
But by the same token, the larger the group, the more idiots will be in that group, and the higher the likelyhood that some of them will be exceptionally stupid.
That also follows for competence.
The larger the group, the greater the need for organization. Above a certain critical limit, the bureaucracy bogs the effectiveness down.
But I don't see how this applies to evolution.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Money obtained by legal civil settlements is 100% tax free, because its considered making up for a loss, as opposed to "true" revenue.
The RIAA has it good. Judges love them and rubber-stamp their motions in courts, they have the ear of the politicians, and every dime coming in is tax free, heading to their legal team's Maybach fund.
That would only play right into their hand. The network would become useless because someone searching for songs by Amy Winehouse will receive thousands of hits for files of idiots humming the song "Rehab" instead.
You are correct that the easiest way to defeat the methods they deploy is to flood them with garbage, but how is the casual user supposed to filter out the garbage without The Man doing the same?
The closest analogue I can think of would be currency. The Treasury Department changes the design every few years because it takes a while for counterfeiters to, reverse engineer, develop copy techniques, and perfect methods for mass production. By the time that's complete a new bill is in circulation.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
... because I hate all current music! That's the last thing I'd download, the latest pop or rock song! The MPAA, however.........
duh - smart people who can afford good lawyers - that's the last group the RIAA wants to annoy.
are you kidding me? harvard has the largest endowment of any school. most people going there arent strapped for cash, and from what I've read most receive aid too. either the family has more money than you know what to do with, or the students often get financial aid.. in any event harvard is not one of the most expensive ivy's based us news & world reports reviews and numerous other publications.
/appreciate the inherent value of the investment in a 'harvard' education. mind you i didnt go there; but for any top tier school in that echelon if you didn't "know" that you were going to come out ahead either from common sense, in general or a risk/benefit analysis you really shouldn't have gotten in.
if you are going to harvard shouldn't you be smart enough not to have a family you can't afford to support? or conversely have a solid plan on how you will (where harvard is a key part of it).
if you have to hope that your future earnings are enough (as opposed to know) then maybe you shouldnt be there eh? I would have thought that anyone who is deemed worthy of going there would be intelligent enough to understand
and since i'll likely hear a retort about a comedic exageration; look at the bright side.. diploma's can double as extremely expensive toilet paper.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
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