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RIAA Moves Against College-Network Fileswapping 692

Posted by timothy from the baby-with-the-bathwater dept.
pazu13 writes "The RIAA is taking action against college "Napster networks". It's suing four network operators, two at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, one at Princeton University, and one at Michigan Technological University. Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc... my speed across the network is ridiculously faster than when I try to access outside sources."
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RIAA Moves Against College-Network Fileswapping More

RIAA Moves Against College-Network Fileswapping

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  • DMCA? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ken@WearableTech ( 107340 ) <(moc.rjsmailliwnek) (ta) (nek)> on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:32PM (#5656762) Homepage Journal
    Can you use the DMCA against them? Create a system that only lets local IP's access the servers. Then use some simple crypto to transfer the files. Top it off with in access policy that forbids non-student use. If they access your network, it would then be illegal.

    By reading this you have broken the DMCA as this message is encrypted with the English Language Cypher. I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV.

    • No. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <john.oylerNO@SPAMcomcast.net> on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:42PM (#5656856) Journal
      Once they've won their million dollar lawsuit, the judge might not throw out the "trespassing" charge against them, but it would be a slap on the wrist penalty for it.

      And it sure as hell won't protect you from the million dollar settlement.

      Besides, they might not even use the evidence they've illegally obtained. Rather, they would find some student/traitor that would be witness to the "awful theft of IP".

      The law isn't a tool you can use, it's for them to use. Think of it as a smart gun that knows their fingerprints... you might punch them and take it, but it won't ever shoot them.

    • Re:DMCA? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by friedegg ( 96310 ) <.bryan. .at. .wrestlingdb.com.> on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:43PM (#5656861) Homepage
      All it takes is a big enough bounty for one student to cave and access it/report it for violations. They'll have a local IP address, access as a student, and be difficult extremely difficult to predict ahead of time. Plus, being college students, the bounty probably wouldn't need to be too big... maybe a pizza.

      Actually, the RIAA bought me pizza once. They came to a class I had in 1997-98 (Legal Issues in Computing) to discuss music piracy with some college students. At the time, I wasn't very familiar with the concept, but, uh, shortly after, I became very well acquainted. They even gave us some free CDs!

    • Re:DMCA? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by BTM1001 ( 662358 )
      The following from the bottom of the article:
      RIAA® members create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 90% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.

      Sounds somewhat monopolistic to me. How about getting the government to file an anti-trust case against the RIAA. It would be difficult to be an artist and not support the RIAA in some way monetarily.

    • Don't be silly (Score:5, Funny)

      by Xthlc ( 20317 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @08:08PM (#5657083)
      The DMCA represents a significant amount of time and money expended by the RIAA. Are you saying that anyone should be able to just invoke a law, when they never paid for it? That's un-American!

    • Re:DMCA? (Score:3, Informative)

      by uncoveror ( 570620 )
      College-age kids, and younger are the RIAA's target market, and are the ones who can put them in their place by boycotting the recording industry. [dontbuycds.org] Once they go broke, the RIAA and record company execs won't have the resources to bring DMCA lawsuits or any others. Once the current greed for greed's own sake driven record racket dies, a new recording industry run by people who love music can rise from the ashes of the old. That is the way it was back in the day.

  • Do what I did. (Score:3, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:32PM (#5656768) Journal
    Quit College.

  • what next (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    shutting down warez sites so i can't sample software?

    • This would be more like (Score:5, Interesting)

      by HanzoSan ( 251665 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:41PM (#5656843) Homepage Journal

      Shutting off all the TVs to prevent minors from viewing violence.

      I mean really, its not the RIAA's job to be our parents. Its should be left up to the college. Capitalism is important yes, but its not everything, money is not more important than education, if you cannot have freedom of speech even in the educational enviornment well then I'm going to move to China, I mean if we have to be monitored by the RIAA, whats the point of staying in the RIAA's country, Its not ours anymore, if we had a vote right now most people would be for piracy, and for filesharing, this reminds me of prohibition, or people who try to outlaw porn.

      Look, it will never work, give it up, the people want to share music, the RIAA can adapt to the industry, or they can hiijack our government and change the laws. If they are allowed to change our laws, we arent a democracy.

      • They don't want to be our parents. They want to be slaveowners, to be our masters.

        After all, that's the most efficient way to extract value from a person, isn't it?

  • Stop listening to crap and go see the band. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by crovira ( 10242 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:34PM (#5656781) Homepage
    STARVE the RIAA.

  • CNET has a story on it too.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by leerpm ( 570963 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:34PM (#5656785)
    Source: RIAA sues campus file-swappers [com.com]

    The recording industry has stepped up its campaign against campus music swapping, filing suit against four university students who operated file-search services on their school's internal networks.

    The lawsuits, filed against two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and one each at Princeton University and Michigan Technological University, ratchet up the pressure that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently has been putting on universities to block campus file-trading. The trade group still has not filed suit against average file-swappers who use more common services such as Kazaa, however.

    "The people who run these (campus) networks know full well what they are doing--operating a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music thievery," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement. "The lawsuits we've filed represent an appropriate step given the seriousness of the offense."

    University students have been widely viewed as the core of the various file-swapping networks ever since the appearance of Napster on the digital scene in late 1999. Universities have seen half or more of their network bandwidth used by people uploading and downloading songs, software and movies over the past few years.

    Schools have attempted to crack down on the practice of file swapping in various ways, ranging from blocking network traffic associated with Napster or Kazaa to confiscating computers used to trade files. In a recent congressional hearing, some lawmakers called for criminal prosecutions for campus file-swappers.

    In its lawsuits, the RIAA compares the use of the campus search software--variously called "Phynd," "Flatlan" or "Direct Connect"--to the defunct Napster service, dubbing the services "local area Napster networks." The particular technology in these lawsuits in fact represents something different than the file-swapping techniques used by Napster or Kazaa, however.

    "Phynd" and the other pieces of software set up servers--often on ordinary dorm room PCs--that search all the computers connected to a campus network that have Windows file-sharing turned on. Unlike Napster or Kazaa, which helped create a network of computers that would not have existed otherwise, "Phynd" and the others search a network that already exists.

    "Dan," a university student who runs a similar server but has not been sued, said the RIAA is missing critical differences in the file-sharing technologies. He asked that his full name and university not be used.

    "With or without these services, people would be able to share these files," the student said. "It's Microsoft that's allowing people to share these files; we're just accessing public information."

    That difference in technology may or may not have any effect in court, attorneys said.

    "It does seem like all it's doing is indexing resources that are available on a network that people are already a part of," said Fred Von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group that has defended file-swapping companies in court against the RIAA. "It doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with building a tool to do that. And it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with running that tool."

    Where the students could run into shadier legal territory is when those indexes and search results come back loaded with MP3 files, Lohmann said. According to the RIAA lawsuits, several of the students also maintained archives of hundreds of songs on their own machines.

    All four civil suits were filed in federal court near the universities.

    • Re:CNET has a story on it too.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:42PM (#5656860) Homepage Journal
      "The recording industry has stepped up its campaign against campus music swapping, filing suit against four university students who operated file-search services on their school's internal networks. "

      Wouldn't it be cheaper to offer an educational discount on music CD's, thus encourage more CD purchases?
      • "Wouldn't it be cheaper to offer an educational discount on music CD's, thus encourage more CD purchases?"

        Gee, that almost sounds like Supply and Demand.
      • Well no, because people dont want CDs. People want mp3s. Perhaps if you gave them a discount on Mp3s I'd buy them, sell each mp3 for 10 cents each and I'd buy them, but I wont ever pay more than 25 cent per song.

        Setup mp3 vending machines with new released songs on them that I cant get anywhere else and I might plug in my mp3 player and load a song or two, otherwise I'm not going to do it, I dont use CDs anymore, CDs arent as portible as mp3s, and we dont go backwards in technology on the college campuses.

    • Has everyone forgotten Google, etc? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @09:31PM (#5657691) Journal
      Unlike Napster or Kazaa, which helped create a network of computers that would not have existed otherwise, "Phynd" and the others search a network that already exists.

      Okay. Phynd is a straightforward SMB indexing server. As per comments here from one of the RPI students, one of the persons charged wrote some of the Phynd software, and the other person admined a Phynd server for RPI. The RIAA is *not* going after the people who are serving infringing data, but after the CS students who wrote indexing software...because it's more convenient for the RIAA.

      When file indexing services become illegal because one of the servers that they index contains potentially infringing information (as just happened), the world has turned completely upside down. Google indexes copyright-infringing images and text every day, and in *far* larger quantities than these SMB indexers. Should *they* be served with a lawsuit and ordered to shut down? How about Yahoo? AllTheWeb has an FTP search engine, not that far from an SMB search engine...is *that* illegal as well? Hell, if you have a multi-user system, a user stores infringing information in his account, and your cron daemon runs updatedb, you're in the same boat as the students that got charged.

      I'm very, very uncomfortable with this, and I feel that the RIAA has gone too far.

  • NFS will be illegal soon. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Blackknight ( 25168 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:35PM (#5656789) Homepage
    So NFS and windows file sharing are illegal now? It is almost impossible for network admins to know what is on every single network share on the LAN. Especially if people are running shares from their desktop machines.
    • file stores are legal, but indexing it wont be. Maybe that will extend to inode tables.

      Or they could just ban ID3 tags and the .mp3 file extension. Right after they turn google off.

      (as an aside, sharing files using windows file sharing? blech. Better to use HTTP on a local apache server of some sort) If they are CS students, the RIAA should put an injunction against them for bad application design.

    • Re:NFS will be illegal soon. (Score:5, Funny)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:38PM (#5656821)
      Yep, 'fraid so. SAMBA's an illegal filesharing tool. Be sure to delete it from your machines, everyone. And if anyone has a machine running any FTP or HTTP servers, they've got to go too. Can't have that sort of thing going on, you know.

      • Re:NFS will be illegal soon. (Score:4, Funny)

        by Loki_1929 ( 550940 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:48PM (#5656926) Journal
        Hands.

        Hands should be made illegal.

        Especially "idle hands", as they "do the devil's work" (ie sharing files).

        Remember kids, it's good to share, until you become a teenager, at which point sharing is illegal and will result in prison time.

        From this point forward, the only lawful act shall be giving money to companies working for or affiliated with the RIAA.

    • It is almost impossible for network admins to know what is on every single network share on the LAN.

      And doubly so if anyone operating an engine that catalogs what is on the LAN is sued.

      Correct me if I'm wrong. But isn't that what they're doing in these cases? Claiming that anything that catalogs the accessable shared files is a "piracy tool" that must be suppressed?
    • The final solution for the RIAA will be to make all copying Illegal.

      Remember, anyone who copies anything is a Pirate, just like anyone who uses Kazaa is a Pirate.

      They want to turn the internet into something more controlled like the TV industry. Freedom isnt allowed in this country, some people have to control everything.

      What ever happened to individual freedom? If the masses decide they want to share files, why should you be able to stop them? What happened to democracy? If the masses vote to have file

    • In related news.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:53PM (#5656968)

      The RIAA is taking legal action against the Department of Defense. It believes the DoD has caused serious harm to RIAA members, in its harbouring of and creation of the Internet.

      "The people who built this huge network know full well what they are doing--operating a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music piracy," RIAA President Cary Sherman said. "They built a protocol called TCP/IP that has been shown to provide ample opportunity for stealing music online."

  • Gestapo, anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrjive ( 169376 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:36PM (#5656799) Homepage Journal
    It seems like nailing the network admins for the (mis)behaviour of the students is a bit of a broad move to make.

    They have an AUP I'm sure, but at the bigger schools, it becomes tough to enforce. The inability to control what the students do (at some level) somehow makes the admins responsible? I don't agree with that, but that's just me.
    • The article isn't completely clear, but it looks like RIAA is suing the students, not the universities.
    • From what I gather after reading the artitcle, they arent suing the campus network admins but the students who run and admin P2P servers on their PCs.

      Solution: Use a decentralised method.
  • The bands you want to sample still don't have websites?

    Maybe true for older stuff, but somehow I don't think that's what the RIAA is pursuing people over.

  • Legal and right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by evilpenguin ( 18720 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:36PM (#5656801)
    I support the recording industry locating and suing and/or prosecuting people who illegally violate copyright on publications of all kinds. But that is the people engaged in the illegal activity. Peer to peer networks have legitimate functions and can be used in a non-infringing manner. They should have similar common carrier status to the phone companies.

    If they were locating and prosecuting some students engaged in illegally copying copyrighted content, that would be different.

    This action may be legal, but it isn't right.
    • "The lawsuits, filed against two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and one each at Princeton University and Michigan Technological University, ratchet up the pressure that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently has been putting on universities to block campus file-trading. The trade group still has not filed suit against average file-swappers who use more common services such as Kazaa, however. "

      Although it doesn't mention if these people were just operating hubs,

      • Re:Apparently they are going after the students? (Score:5, Informative)

        by derF024 ( 36585 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @08:09PM (#5657087) Homepage Journal
        i go to RPI, and i know both the students here that were sued. one of them wrote a win32 front end to the web based search engine operated by the other student.

        the web based search engine, phynd (http://www.phynd.net/) was written originally about 5 years ago by a student at RPI to scan SMB networks. the original author has since graduated, and the 3rd generation of phynd admins was the one sued. the win32 front end "flatlan" (http://www.flatlan.com/, currently slashdotted, i guess) was written by a current student at RPI.

  • Ok, let me get this straight: according to the article, these students were operating large local area file swapping networks, which included large amounts of copyrighted material that they didn't have the rights to distribute.

    How is this an example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? These kids broke the law and the record companies are taking legal action against them for it. And as far as I'm concerned, they deserve to pay the price for their actions. Organized illegal file swapping is orga

    • Well, umm.... they're not suing the kids. They're suing the network operators.

    • Re:"Baby with the bathwater dept" eh? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, you are simply wrong.

      What these students were doing was simply providing an index of the locations on the SMB network of shared files. Not only music and movies, but research papers, free software, etc.

      They did not pirate music by provinding these listings, they simply said "Hey - this kid over here has what looks like music on HIS computer whith the filename you are looking for"

      The individual people sharring songs are at fault, not the technology provider that allows you to find songs.

      An RPI Stude
    • Exactly as the above poster said. They're suing the network operators, NOT the kids. To me, that's like gun manufacturers because some crackhead shot people up! Personal responsibility people! If the RIAA sued the kids, I would have no problem with it. Sue the people doing the crime.

  • Merf (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dopefish3 ( 251821 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:38PM (#5656819) Homepage
    On a slightly odd recent discovery, it seems the RIAA may not have been so evil at a point...
    http://members.cox.net/datafox166/irony. jpg
    I pulled this off an album circa 1965 or something like that. It _was_ that now its doing this? What happened?

  • It seems the whole article is based on the assumption that "Because the LAN operators are smart enough to install the P2P software, they have to know that it will be used to share copyrighted music." (paraphrased)

    Bad, bad assumption.

  • Use Open Source DRM (Score:5, Funny)

    by stere0 ( 526823 ) <slashdotmail@stC ... minus physicist> on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:40PM (#5656834) Homepage

    Encode your files using OGG-S [slashdot.org]. I am sure your college's IT community would be a great testing and developing environment.

    If they crack the encryption, unleash the DMCA on them. Settle only if they let CowboyNeal screw lightbulbs into Hilary Rosen's ears.

  • I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc...

    Please, dear God! Stop! My sides hurt from laughing so hard!

  • My concern is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bun ( 34387 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:41PM (#5656846)
    ...how we are going to be able to find older, less popular music titles? Case in point: for some time (years), I was looking for Red Seven's self-titled album or CD. My local record stores told me it was out of press, so I couldn't order it. I couldn't find it any of the used record stores around town. Finally, after a lot of searching online, I found one song from that album through a gnutella client (Note to RIAA: I'd be glad to send $1 or whatever to the rights holder in exchange for a full-quality *.wav). Until the music industry gets off its hands and makes it easier for the public to find and *pay for* the music it wants, without all the nutty paranoia, the KaZaA's of this world are not going to disappear.

  • How? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by OMEGA Power ( 651936 )
    How is the RIAA (Recording Industry Assholes Association) finding out what is being traded on these networks? From my understanding (based on the file sharing network at my school) is that the system is only accessible to people on the school's local network (which requires a direct connection to a on-campus drop or use of VPN software AND the use of a school-issued userid/password). Is the RIAA illegally breaking into people's LANs, hiring campus spies or what?

  • Lawsuits vs. Legal action (Score:3, Interesting)

    by porkface ( 562081 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:42PM (#5656851) Journal
    I wonder why they're choosing lawsuits over legal prosecution. As I understand it, lawsuits require less proof, and give them much greater investigatory allowances, but in my book these people should be prosecuted rather than hassled with lawsuits.

    What the hell is the point of forcing us to sit through 15 second FBI warnings before movies if they're not going to use the FBI?
  • NAPSTER-LIKE ONLINE PIRACY ON CAMPUS
    It's Illegal!
    Local Area Napster Networks

    This is a particularly flagrant way to illegally distribute millions of copyrighted works over the Internet. The people who run these Napster networks know full well what they are doing ñ operating a sophisticated network designed to enable widespread music thievery. The lawsuits we've filed represent an appropriate step given the seriousness of the offense. --Cary Sherman, President, RIAA

    What do these systems do?

    The

  • What crap... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kenthorvath ( 225950 )
    Given their bandwidth and high-speed connections, college computer networks are a frequent haven for illegal file-copying. As a result, many have become so clogged -- often because of file-copying by users from outside of the college community -- that such legitimate uses of the network as email or academic research have dramatically slowed.

    The filesharing services that they are trying to shut down are internal to the college's network and as such does not have such a negative impact. In many cases, traff

  • Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc...

    I think he meant to say "it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music until he's sick of it and no longer has the need to go out and buy a disc".
  • So, after endless stories on slashdot, I'm convinced the RIAA is evil. Now what? How do I stop supporting them?

    It just so happens I live in Canada and my musical tastes lie mostly in stuff from Europe. Therefore, RIAA, as in America, shouldn't really apply. Does this mean I'm already set?

  • I used to run a Phynd server at UC Berkeley... (Score:4, Informative)

    by gimlix2 ( 451817 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:47PM (#5656906)
    I used to run a Phynd server for a little over a year while in the Berkeley dorms... it was actually pretty cool, but it's not like Napster.

    Basically, the Phynd concept is actually very basic: scan all SAMBA shares (i.e. windows shares), store the results, put in a file/DB and then make a searchable webfront or application. FlatLAN is actually a separate, user-friendlyish application to the webfront. Scanning only takes place every couple of hours, so it might miss a couple computers. Also, if people turn their computer off, the shares are still listed in the database, but aren't accessible. It isn't updated in real-time like Napster/KaZaA/

    The reason this is popular, in case you don't know, is that you're just searching all available shares and downloading them at the speed of the internal network... mmm... 100Mbit switched network... it was quite useful, especially if you're looking for bigger files.

    While I think that the RIAA does have a point, I mean, honestly, why would you put a compressed (.zip/.rar/.arc) category or a mp3 category to narrow searches down?

    However, they do miss a really great aspect of Phynd: it can be used as a security scanner. Since a lot of new computers do come with their computers sharing the entire harddrive (in the same way some trojans do), it's easy to figure out who needs to secure their computer.

    Another legit use is actually sharing ISOs... no, I'm not talking about your latest w4r3z fix, but the latest Linux ISOs. I was able to pull Slackware 7.1 (I think it was 7.1) off the network at a cool 2-4MB/s which is much faster than trying to grab it from a mirror at 50-100K/s.

    Damn you RIAA...

  • 1-800-BAD-BEAT (Score:5, Funny)

    by kien ( 571074 ) <kien@memberELIOT.fsf.org minus poet> on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:47PM (#5656909) Journal
    Sherman said that the RIAA will continue to investigate these types of services on college networks and that anyone with knowledge of such systems should report them to RIAA's music piracy hotline, 1-800-BAD-BEAT.

    Once again, the RIAA demonstrates that it doesn't know who or what it's up against.

    I can only imagine how many war-dialers will go into infinite-loop mode calling that number.

    I'm beginning to think that RIAA really stands for Really Ignorant Arrogant Assholes.

    --K.

  • From the Article:

    "We hope that these suits serve as a stiff deterrent to anyone who is operating or considering setting up a similar system."

    The RIAA's president also praised the higher education community for the steps that many colleges and universities are taking proactively to address the problem of peer-to-peer infringement on campus.

    They don't really care how these lawsuits turn out. They just want to scare individuals and get more universities to do this [slashdot.org]. I think illegal copying is a rather

  • Spelling error (Score:2, Troll)

    by DdJ ( 10790 )
    Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to
    sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc.
    You misspelled "systematically engage in mass theft"...
  • Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc...

    I know exactly where it's going, and I don't like it one bit. But the solution is not to buy CDs at all; only 4% of the profits go to the artists anyway. You'd actually be giving them more by just mailing them a dollar. (If only there were an easy way to do this) The only way to get rid of the RIAA disease is to quit

  • Um, sure, ok. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by barspin ( 585641 )
    Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc...

    Give me a fucking break. File sharing on college campuses is about nothing more than getting free music. Ask the average kid with a new Dell on a wired campus what he or she does with that computer - well, they "download music and burn cds, duh". Most of these kids aren't even aware that this type of stuff is a viola

  • "and by 'sample', I mean download as many songs as humanly possible"

  • Why sue the NetOps? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by neptuneb1 ( 261497 )
    While we're at it, let's sue ISPs for spreading virii through email, Cisco for building routers that forward packets used by P2P apps, and ATT for providing the backbones that transport these packets. I just don't see where the NetOps are responsible for this.
  • Joe Collegestudent's political-representative-writing parents find out this. No one wants to see their kid pay big money and/or go to jail for a number of years.

    Also, it seems out of character for the RIAA to sue a couple of rich colleges. Did they have to make sure the kids' parents would have the dough to put up a decent fight? I would have expected to see them sue some poor-ass state colleges or something, not Princeton. You know, like all those patent-peddling bullshit companies that sue the little

  • Why not just have encrypted file sharing? This would shield you from the RIAA as well as the LAN admins (hence getting them off the hook). Something like 128bit SSH should do the trick.
  • To all the people that are foaming at the mouth, over the network admins getting sued over this. READ THE DAMN STORY!!!

    It's pretty clear from reading the article, that the RIAA is suing the operators of the file sharing networks. Not the LAN admins. In other words, they are pursuing lawsuits against people that are actively engaged in copyright violations. Nothing more.

    They are doing exactly what they should be.
  • i work at a huge college, and we've had a variety of meetings about this. although they'd love to just shut down filesharing for a variety of network traffic reasons, the legal reasons aren't as cut and dried as it may seem.

    unlike a workplace, a college dorm is NOT just a room in a building with a network jack.

    it also happens to be someone's residence. there are severe restrictions on what you can and can't do/listen to at someone's "home" per se.

    this lawsuit may not be as cut and dried as the RIAA is
  • Princeton eh? Could it be that snarky Ed Felten [princeton.edu] getting busted there for doing "filesharing research"?

    No! He points the finger elsewhere in his Freedom to Tinker [freedom-to-tinker.com] blog back in November 2002: the campus paper, the Daily Princetonian then had a nice article [dailyprincetonian.com] with some details on how filesharing works (and is policed, not tightly enough for the RIAA apparently) at Princeton these days.

    At least until today.

    (I had to laugh at the frankness of the music professor quoted in that article.)

    --LP

  • Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by image ( 13487 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @07:58PM (#5657011) Homepage
    > Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc... my speed across the network is ridiculously faster than when I try to access outside sources.

    I'm sorry, I don't believe you.

    Look, the rhetoric of "I want to have file sharing programs so I can legitimately and legally under fair use laws make backup reproductions" is getting old. Not only do I not believe you, but the media does not believe you, the law does not believe you, and the industry sure-as-hell does not believe you.

    People want to steal and pirate music and movies. They are doing it, and no amount of legislation and regulation is going to change that.

    What does this imply? Well, quite rightly, a fundemental transformation of the actual value of art and entertainment media itself.

    This has been going on since the invention of the printing press -- since the age of the bard. Over time, the cost of reproduction goes down, and thus so does the value of the individual unit of media.

    The industry can fight it, but it will lose over time. That is inevitable.

    However, profit can still be made. The winners will be those who offer media that can not be reproduced digitally (vinyl, packaging, etc), and those who adapt the earliest and fastest to the future economies of entertainment. Those that predict the changing value will have a head start on capturing the emerging market.

    In other words, an hour of music is no longer worth $15 - $20. The earlier the industry realizes that, they better they will do.

    And the sooner consumers stop trying to deceive themselves, the lawmakers,and the industry, the better this will be for all of us. Legislature is being crippled by a lying consumer (fair use, my ass), a lying producer (free market, my ass), and people trying to take advantage of the deception (Microsoft DRM, my ass).

    "As the present now will later be past, the order is rapidly fading. And the first one now will later be last, for the times they are a changing."

    PS: Don't believe there is a trend? Think about music in the middle ages. You had to pay someone to play. And when they were done, they were done. You'd have to pay them again to hear the music again. By the beginning of the 20th century, you could spend a fortune on a record player and another fortune on some vinyl, but you could listen as often as you liked. By the end of the 20th century, cassettes and CDs were ubiqituous and cheap, but had a cost associated with physical reproduction. Today the physical costs are nil. See the trend?

    • Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)

      by silverhalide ( 584408 )
      The trend might be looping back around on itself. This new era of free music swapping, in my opinion, is helping to boost concert attendance (I only speak from anecdotal evidence), especially for smaller bands/artists. I can think of several concerts I went to simply because I had heard the music on MP3 beforehand. Face it, it's a well known fact that artists get jack shit from record sales, but make their money on live performances. In that regard, the more people who have access to your music, the mor

  • this article is seriously confused... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Toasty16 ( 586358 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @08:01PM (#5657032) Homepage
    ...I mean, try this on for size:

    ...but instead of being open to anyone with access to the Internet, they reside on a specific college's internal computer network, known also as a "local area network."

    So far so good, no misinformation yet. But then the spin gets started:

    "These systems are best described as 'local area Napster networks,' said Cary Sherman, President, RIAA. 'The court ruled that Napster was illegal and shut it down. These systems are just as illegal and operate in just the same manner."

    Ok, so now we're defining a LAN as a LANL? And Sherman is saying that a LAN is the same thing as Napster? But wait, it gets better:

    "This is a particularly flagrant way to illegally distribute millions of copyrighted works over the Internet,' added Sherman. 'The people who run these Napster networks know full well what they are doing ?'"

    The first quote already differentiated between LANs and the internet, but now they're being lumped together. Also, that question mark at the end is in the original article, and I think that it deserves to be there, since now we are referring to LANs specifically as "Napster networks." But wait, now things get really confusing:

    "The perpetrators of these internal Napster networks named in the suits filed by the RIAA make use of software known variously as Flatlan, Phynd or Direct Connect."

    Ok, so LANs are "Napster networks" which use software? I thought that Napster was software too, but now I see that it was a network, though I'm still not clear on whether it used software or not. Anyway, I learned a lot from this article, like the RIAA's music piracy hotline, 1-800-BAD-BEAT. Call in and report a rival company or school that is hosting a "Napster network," and keep America running!

  • theft, plain and simple (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JDizzy ( 85499 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @08:35PM (#5657266) Homepage Journal
    here is what the poster wrote:

    Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc... my speed across the network is ridiculously faster than when I try to access outside sources.


    This is the most absurd thing I have read in recent days. The notion of stealing music inorder to preview it for later purchase is insane. Would you steal a CD from the music shop only to turn around and go make a purchase of the exact same thing. NO, you would not!

    People think up the weirdest shit to justify that their actions are legitimate, and many times they belive their own lies. I can speculate that some folks steal music, and then go out and purchase some of the tunes they stole. But how many tunes are sampled, yet never purchased. Also, a sample of music is typically a segment of the audio, not the entire tune. People do not trade samples, they trade entire tracks/albums.

    Simply put, napster is not designed to be a preview service. It is designed to move mp3 files from one computer to another, and search the data of remote computers for whatever your criteria is(genre, artists, albums, etc). I'm not sure what is worse, people who download music from napster, or peope who make their albums available on napster. The people who share their tunes are facilitating a criminal activity by the people who steal (aka download) the music.

    My opinion on the entire mess is that if Napster could hurt the music industry, it probably does. Dowloading a binary file is inocent in of itself. A downloader has no notion if the binary they download (mp3's) are copyright, or not. The notion of a filename is meaningless as files can be renamed, so respect of copyrights based on recognition of the bands name in the filename is a flawed argument. Clearly the criminal liability points to the people who make music available for download, but since in napster downloaders, and publishers are one in the same. Thus, the method of correcting the criminal situation is to remove the napster servers.

    </rant>

    • Re:theft, plain and simple (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @10:54PM (#5658144) Journal
      This is the most absurd thing I have read in recent days. The notion of stealing music inorder to preview it for later purchase is insane.

      You may have problem with your comprehension since you are mislabeling things. Downloading music is not stealing, it is copyright infringement since a physical object is not removed and nobody looses anything.

      Would you steal a CD from the music shop only to turn around and go make a purchase of the exact same thing. NO, you would not!

      No because that would be stealing not copyright infringement. You would take the physical thing from the store which the store has paid for and would be unable to sell.

      The law understands the distinction, which is why it makes one.

  • Student at RPI (Score:3, Informative)

    by MankyD ( 567984 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @09:54PM (#5657828) Homepage
    I would just like to speak out, as a student at RPI [rpi.edu], that Celery and Phynd, the samba search engines in quesiton have been an invaluable tool. Yes, they are frequently used for mp3's, divx, warez, and even pornograhpy, but at the same time they are invaluable when it comes to locating a paper that your class group is sharing when you've forgotten where its shared. There are lots of times these engines have saved my butt.

  • What's the gripe? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by werdna ( 39029 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @10:41PM (#5658079) Journal
    Look, guys -- file-swapping of RIAA content is, in fact, copyright infringement except in certain VERY NARROW circumstances. Napster lost big, and didn't contest the 9th Circuit decision, so here we are: it is contributing to such infringement to run a Napster-like network.

    Why would we revile RIAA for asserting these rights now. This isn't some technology regulation, like DMCA -- it is enforcement of entirely legitimate intellectual property rights against actual infringers.

    I would rather they went after the students actually doing the swapping, but we lost the server battle, at least for now.

    • Re:What's the gripe? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Cyno ( 85911 )
      it is enforcement of entirely legitimate intellectual property rights against actual infringers

      Listen to yourself, man. You are advocating monopolistic practices as well as the possibility of physical harm to real live human beings over the consuption of a small sample of media that could be infinitely replicated without costing the RIAA or anyone else a penny. You think it is right to hurt our students for "stealing" risking possible prison time and the real threat of physical harm over a few leaves th

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