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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...
Judging from the number of elderly, children, blind people, dead people, etc. that the RIAA labels have targeted, I'd say most likely they do it with a random number generator.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
Like article says, they ensure that the infringer is in the US before bothering to send a notice, but I'd be willing to bet there are some US schools too that they try to avoid spamming with notices. Not so much selective targeting, but selective non-targeting.
Prohibit using LimeWire to harvest tracking and identifying information!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
... for making available the IP addresses and tracking information.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
The article details MediaSentry's tactics but wasn't there a bunch of fuss earlier this year on how MediaSentry may actually be illegal in some states because they don't have an investigator's license? Does this mean MediaSentry is filtering out schools from states where they can't investigate people from? Or are they still collecting everything they can and forwarding it on to the RIAA, which still seems illegal on their part.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/11/1427257
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/10/1542222
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
After all Azerus has a section where you can see who is seeding and leaching. It shows IP info if I'm not mistaken. Can they not do this with Torrents? How does that differ from Limewire?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I just can't wait until all artists start their own publishing
That's the real reason behind these suits. They can't possibly be afraid you'll hear top 40 crap, because if they did they wouldn't let the radio (easily sampled to better than iTunes or MP3 quality) play them.
It isn't Britney they want to keep out of your ears, it's the indies. Note they don't say "illegal downloads" except when the context infers that all downloads are illegal? Their aim, mostly met, it to make you think they do indeed have a monopoly (or rather, cartel) and that all music is RIAA music. it worked on you, didn't it?
"Piracy" isn't hurting their sales and they know it. The indies (and the gasoline and food companies) are eating their lunch. Most of us have only so many dollars to spend. If I buy four $5 CDs from the band that plays at the bar (professionally recorded and duplicated, with art and packaging) that's twenty dollars I don't have to buy an RIAA CD.
Their only hope for survival is to kill the internet. Good luck with that.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I assume the RIAA are already polluting filesharing networks with fake files, so why not do the same?
Create an audio file with the same name as a popular song, have the first 7-8 seconds or whatever is legal be the same as the song, followed by an oral essay that critiques the song.
Now, when they sue, not only will you have a bulletproof argument that the suit is without merit, you will have a good counter-suit on the grounds that they are trying to suppress legitimate free speech.
At the very least, this will force the RIAA to listen to songs before filing suit.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Is it exhausting to constantly assume that large groups of people are motivated, competent and organized?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You actually believe this will protect you?!
I agree with the statement "A false sense of security is worse than no security at all."
Check this thread
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/488917.html
Small music venues are being targeted in Chicago; it appears that the city wants to make sure the only live music shows are in large arenas. Who benefits? Let's see. No more opportunities for independent artists to perform. Hmmm, guess the only way to hear live music is to go to a huge arena to see some crappy pop act produced by riaa minions. So are laws like this being proposed in other cities? Is Chicago just the start? Is this the next step in music industry dominance?
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Ahh, Peerguardian. Once they have a Vista client out...
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.
This is why the RIAA has no legal case, and why they must resort to bluffs, threats, extortion, smoke, mirrors, and press releases.
The song file has to be downloaded by another unauthorized person (RIAA investigators don't count) for it to be infringement. The RIAA itself admits here that they have no way of knowing if anybody else has ever downloaded this song. To properly win in court they have to convince judges and/or juries that despite this complete lack of proof that they were infringed anyway.
It's all the Big Lie on their part.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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
1) Figure out what music is currently quite popular.
2) Make your own covers of it without instruments. Sing both the lyrics and the melody with interpretive musicianship. The worse it sounds, the better.
3) Host as the file name.
4) ????
5) Waste their time!
IANAL but I don't think you could get in trouble for posting fake songs up. Technically, you could claim you're helping fight piracy while making Mediasentry's job harder. I imagine the in worst case they ask you to cease and desist. Perhaps someone more versed in law can say if this is valid.
Another option could be to simply use the band's name and make up fake songs with similar names to original songs with fictitious lyrics. This would replace step 2. Granted I believe they are solely looking for song titles.
Ben Folds - Rocking the Penguin
Beastie Boys - Ubuntu in Effect
Whitney Houston - OSX will save the day
I seem to recall reading somewhere that Harvard has never been hit with one of these RIAA money grabs. Most probable reason being that there is enough talent there to rip the RIAA to tiny ribbon sized shreds in front of the judge, which would pretty much end their extortion racket.
So, does that still hold true? Anybody at Harvard ever been hit with one of these?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
1) record your own song
2) rename it as a popular song: eg. Madonna - 4 Minutes
3) they download it after it fails hash check
4) sue them for copyright infringement
5) ?
6) Profit!
01110000 01010111 01101110 00110011 01100100
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.
Put your own copyrghted material up, but name it the same as something that they are looking for. Let their cronies download it in their "validation" sweep (the article didnt actualy say that they validate??) Immediately have someone else download your copyrighted material from them. Instant lawsuit against the RIAA, am I right?
"His name was James Damore."
I agree. In addition, this is one big reason why their "lost sales" calculations are huge stinking loads of bull manure. The RIAA figures that 1 song downloaded (regardless of the legality of the download) equals one sale not made which means that much revenue not put in their pockets. You could easily use the same reasoning to prove that Indie labels cost the record labels money. Or that food store sales cost the record companies money. Or that oil companies cost the record companies money.
Hey, there's an idea. Pit the Big Oil companies against the Big Record Companies/RIAA. Two Companies Enter! One leaves! We won't really be cheering for a winner so much as cheering for one of the companies to be beaten to a pulp.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Although some kids may need to reign in their activities, the RIAA methods' technological and litigation basis are unsound and dangerous. RIAA and their overlords need to be made recipocally accountable with the colleges taking more responsibility too.
I wouldn't be surprised if they "leaked" this article to misinform people to their detection methods. If you think this is their whole routine, then you let your guard down on other levels. Or it could be directed at Limewire. What better way to take out adversaries than "focus fire them"? "We find people using scripting methods mining Limewire data". People shy away from Limewire. /dust off hands
Well one down.
... because I hate all current music! That's the last thing I'd download, the latest pop or rock song! The MPAA, however.........
Peerguardian
Peerguardian is better than nothing. But not by a lot. It maybe keeps the MafIAA from spotting you from their own IP address, but sometimes they neglect to inform PG when the IP numbers change. The MafIAA is perfectly capable of getting online via their local cable system (or one in Russia, for that matter, the tubes go everywhere), or registering a domain under an assumed name, or doing it from their mom's basement.
"In collecting evidence for those takedown notices, Media Sentry investigators do not usually download suspect music files. Instead, the company uses special software to check the "hash," a sort of unique digital fingerprint, of each offered file to verify that it is identical to a copyrighted song file in the RIAA's database. In the rare cases in which the hashes don't match, the investigators download the song and use a software program sold by Audible Magic to compare the sound waves of the offered audio file against those of the song it may be infringing upon. If the Audible Magic software still doesn't turn up a match, then a live person will listen to the song."
In other words, they do not engage in unauthorized downloading and copyright infringement. Except when they do. Because they what sounds to them like a really good rationalization for their behavior.
Which is exactly what their victims do.
If the RIAA being straight arrows, they'd forego the downloading in those "rare" cases. Why is it so important to nail these "rare" that they will compromise their own principles?
Perhaps, if the truth were known, those "rare" cases aren't really all that rare.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
As far as I know, taxation of civil judgments is common. Certain awards are probably excluded from income, but not to the extent you seem to think so.
A quick google search has at least one law firm saying exactly this: Taxation of Legal Damages:
1. MediaSentry is a customer of Audible Magic software, the software in which Dr. Jacobson has an indirect financial interest, and uses Audible Magic software as part of its investigation. So when Dr. Jacobson testifies about how reliable MediaSentry is, he's talking about his customer, and when he testified that he doesn't know what their procedures are, he was lying.
2. The software process used by MediaSentry differs markedly from the way Richard Gabriel has sought to describe it in his representations to various courts.
3. Cara Duckworth, the RIAA's spokesperson, admits that
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune