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."

Comments

Not exactly targeting...

[gentimjs]

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...

RIAA "making available"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like entrapment to me, like the mafRIAA is "making avaible" the same mp3s they are accusing people of downloading... bastards.

Hate Emails

[TheRedSeven]

The demonstration was given by an RIAA employee who would speak only on condition of anonymity because of concern that he would receive hate e-mail.

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.

IP is not an identity

[joocemann]

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.

no capability of targeting any school?

[DodgeRules]

From the article:

"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." Technically we can't do it? BULL***T! A simple filter that throws away all schools not A, B or C is very easy to create. It is possible that they CHOOSE not to do it, but it is technically possible.

Re:If you P2P then use protection.

[Kjella]

PeerGuardian is to protection what "safe periods" are to prevention. If they have any clue at all, they've got IP blocks under some unknown subsidiary, rented boxes in colos or using anonymizing whois registrars. Maybe they're happy to target the 90% easiest targets, but it's by no means safe as such.

Re:A humorous solution

[Thelasko]

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.