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Collegiate Resistance To RIAA In Michigan
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "There are now at least three complaints being investigated in Michigan against the RIAA's unlicensed investigator, SafeNet a/k/a MediaSentry, one of which was filed by Central Michigan University itself. Two other complaints have been filed by students, one from Northern Michigan University and one from University of Michigan. This appears to be part of the growing sense of exasperation colleges and universities are feeling over the RIAA's harassment."
Took them long enough to become exasperated. With the notable exception of Oregon - and even there it took more than one suit to get the State A.G. involved - all of these colleges/universities/bastions of free and open thinking and individual rights have been very slow to fight back against these spurious lawsuits.
Yes they have been too slow. But perhaps the sleeping giant has been finally awakened from its slumber.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
What are the penalties in Michigan for practicing as a private detective?
The law says, "A person violating this section is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 4 years or by a fine of not more than $5,000.00, or both."
Cool.
(And I say that at the risk of being modded "Overrated".)
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Now, to continue a theme in this thread, "FUCK" everyone who uses "I really love the artists and hate oppression" as an excuse for pirating music. If you really want to support the artist, buy the CD and then go see a concert. Buy a t-shirt, even.
You bring up a good point. In this big conflict between Pirates and the *AAs, we the users and consumers are the ones that get hurt. But it's easy to forget that the artists themselves are also being taken advantage of by both aggressors as well.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
The problem that college CIO's (and CTO's) are describing are, as the "exasperation" article suggests, very much of their own making, but the article, and most likely the information officers themselves, is misstating the origin of the problem, and that may be complicating their legal responses.
The fundamental problem is that colleges have been hiring the wrong people into CIO/CTO positions and giving them the wrong mission. College CIO's fundamental job is to provide reliable information services on a limited (often far too limited) budget. People are hired into these positions for their willingness and ability to reduce costs while maintaining security and a high quality of service on the campus. In my experience (and I have had a number of them), they are perfectly willing to sacrifice the educational mission of the college and the freedom of educators to accomplish that mission if it will save a few dollars.
In the early part of this decade the RIAA's tactics worked perfectly with the goal of cost control. Large music and video downloads were overwhelming campus gateways and forcing ever larger expenditures on maintaining them. Blocking the ports most commonly used for music and video downloads was an easy solution to this cost problem, so the RIAA provided an excuse for cutting costs. A series of RIAA initiatives that played to CIO cost cutting and revenue enhancement were all easy to adopt.
The take down notices were another story. CIO complaints about having to devote personnel to this task started immediately, and it is getting worse as the costs grow. Legal costs are particularly problematic, especially if they get billed to the CIO's budget. With the costs of RIAA enforcement spinning rapidly out of control, CIO's are caught in a difficult trap of their own devising, and complaining that costs are an issue now will not impress judges who see a precedent in prior complience with RIAA demands.
The only way out of this mess is for colleges to do exactly what one of the judges suggested: to execute take downs without an investigation such that a student can sue the university and the RIAA for a abrogation of their rights, preferably as a class action. The universities could potentially then join the students in suing the RIAA, arguing that the RIAA forced them to abandon due process at the insistence of the courts, largely because Universities can't afford to do the RIAA's investigations for them, but RIAA evidence is often weak and inconsistent.
I don't know if this can be done (the details of this are a lawyers job to sort out), but I doubt that AG's are going to be able to help much given the precedents that colleges have alredy set for the wrong reasons. An avalanche of investigations forced on the courts might lead the courts to start to set the standards of evidence that the RIAA has to meet before filing a take down to begin with.
The real problem is that no such standard currently exists.
The other solution, of course, is legislation. LOL.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
There are certain socially accepted stereotypes that I'm sick of.
There is a difference between making a living and bing RICH. Why artists have to be rich??
Work for it if you want more money. Nobody can ask for the right to be RICH. A different thing is asking for the right to make a living. And I think that the money the society is giving back to the *AA is MORE THAN ENOUGH to pay a decent salary to all artists. If there is an artists that is making less than whatever is required to make a decent living, or thinks he's not getting he's share of the cake, go complain to the fucking *AAs!. You created them, you supported them, well, you are the father of the monster. It now turned against you? You should have thought about it before.
Millions of developers create the best software ever FOR FREE, and still make a living. They do it because they LOVE what they do. The Stallmans of this world has a lot more moral ground to call themselves artists for coding than the Hetfields for singing.
It's normal to feel sympathy for an artist we like, but that shouldn't stop us from seeing the reality: The artists keep supporting the *AAs by working with them, so The artists have the fault. They are responsible for the actions of the *AAs, so FUCK the *AA supporting artists.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Agreed.
Of course, there's also the "artists" out there who are asking why they can't "just make a living" by doing what they love. The answer, all too often, is that plenty of other people want to do the same thing, and society is just not interested in supporting that many people to do that thing. Once there's "enough" professionals doing a certain activity, there needs to be competition to choose between who gets paid and who goes and does something else. Otherwise everyone will be doing the "fun" jobs and no-one will be doing the hard jobs.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I've been saying this for years. My family and I are having financial trouble right now; you think I care about whether some rich artist gets even more money from me? I've begun to feel this way even about (the few still living) artists that I like, such as Clapton. I remember reading once that he gave away 60 guitars to be auctioned off to charity. At the time, I couldn't even get my hands on one. So, no, I frankly just don't care about artists who are already rich. Simply put, I'm not so I don't see why I should support them. I've got better things to do with my money, like pay the rent.
Another thing that bothers me about these so-called "artists" is how they got where they are in the first place: 1) Some record exec likes them because they follow the formula or 2) they slept with the right person. By the formula, I mean they do exactly what the record execs think will be popular and rarely change it. If you think I'm just cynical then you don't know the music biz very well. One of the things I still respect the Beatles for to this day was breaking out of the cutesie formula the record execs wanted them to and doing their own thing; that qualified them for the label artist. Consider the popular "artists" of today who are following the same old formula. They're powerful enough to tell the record execs "or else" and do what they want, but how many do? Almost none. Meanwhile, hundreds of actually talented artists aren't even being recorded at all.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Irish+Punk makes no sense in venues without booze.
Just think of the uproar if you said "Blacks+Rap makes no sense in venues without watermelon and fried chicken". Aren't double standards great?
I actually did a post awhile back on pcworld (yeah it's kind of my entertainment news of the tech world) about how much a group or artist makes on cd sales vs concerts. I can't recall the actual numbers but it was to the effect of 1.50 per cd (using the rolling stones as an example) where is they sold 1 million copies they had only made 1.5 million while in concert sells it was more around 100 million in revenue thus making cd sells only 1% of the profit an artist or group makes.
Now, if you expect to be making between 99% and 101% on every CD sold, go indie.
jebbus fark! do you even understand how much it costs to make a CD? I do I recently did it for a friend...
1 45 minute CD 10 tracks.
About 1 hour spend recording each track and mixing/ audio processing.
10 hours to make the audio.
5 hours paid to an artist to make cover art and Cd booklet.
3 hours meetings.
18 hours spent - gear was a laptop+usb 8 channel capture box+ mixer in his home studio with blankets on the walls and ceiling. we recorded late at night to remove any industrial or car low frequency noise.
Results? Far better sound than in a $125.00 an hour pro studio because the artists were relaxed. Album made for less than $600.00 (including pizza and beer) in recording costs and when they buy in batches of 100 the CD's are $3.95 each.
They sell them for $12.00 at concerts and are now making 250% profit on every CD sold.
Only really dumb artists record in a real studio and spend the insane money on "pro mastering" because it's worthless... you can easily get better than studio recording (One of their tracks is insanely good at stereo separation because I put 2 XY mikes in the center (with a foam audio trap between them) and had them sit in a circle.. the audio on that track is spooky when listened to on a stereo setup. You cant get that good of recordings at a studio, they hurry you along and make the artist nervous.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.