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Duke Demands Proof of Infringement From RIAA
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Nov 14, 2008 10:01 PM
from the bluff-called dept.
from the bluff-called dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a report at p2pnet, Duke University has told the RIAA that it will no longer forward the RIAA's 'early settlement' letters to its students unless the RIAA submits 'evidence that someone actually downloaded from that student,' and said that 'if the RIAA can't prove that actual illegal behavior occurred, then we're not going to comply.' While it is good news that a university is requiring the RIAA to put up or shut up, the forwarding — or not forwarding — of letters is pretty insignificant. What I want to know is this: 'When the RIAA comes knocking with its Star Chamber, ex parte, 'John Doe' litigation to get the students' identities, is the University going to go to bat for the students and fight the litigation on the ground that it's based on zero evidence, and on the ground that the students weren't given prior notice and an opportunity to be heard?' Over 1,000 infringement notices were sent to Duke students in the last year."
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Why not earlier? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's [engadget.com] the top-25 universities which handed out copyright infringement notices during the 2006 - 2007 academic year.Note the geographic locations of the majority of the list.
1. Ohio University - 1,287
2. Purdue University - 1,068
3. University of Nebraska at Lincoln - 1,002
4. University of Tennessee at Knoxville - 959
5. University of South Carolina - 914
6. University of Massachusetts at Amherst - 897
7. Michigan State University - 753
8. Howard University - 572
9. North Carolina State University - 550
10. University of Wisconsin at Madison - 513
11. University of South Florida - 490
12. Syracuse University - 488
13. Northern Illinois University - 487
14. University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire - 473
15. Boston University - 470
16. Northern Michigan University - 457
17. Kent State University - 424
18. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - 400
19. University of Texas at Austin - 371
20. North Dakota State University - 360
21. Indiana University - 353
22. Western Kentucky University - 353
23. Seton Hall University - 338
24. Arizona State University - 336
25. Marshall University - 331
From the 2008 list [dispatch.com] we see that the RIAA seem to be bolder, but the trend as before remains the same, for the most part. Texas Christian university? Thou shalt not steal
Re: (Score:2)
Because, brah, out here on the coast, stealing music is so totally heinous.
Re:Why not earlier? (Score:4, Informative)
Let's see, most of the colleges listed are East of the Mississippi river, so I'd assume that yes a reference to the eastern USA is what was intended.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One word, FEAR
Seems to be in fashion these days, it even works on our Congress, Senate and the President(s).
You can sell anything with Fear.
Oh, I forgot the Fear cousin "Intimidation"
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Re:Why not earlier? (Score:5, Interesting)
Damn straight. From your original post, let's do the math.
1287+1068+1002+959+914+897+753+572+550+513+490+488+487+473+470+457+424+400+371+360+353+353+338+336+331=14646 letters sent to the top 25 universities in 06-07.
14646*($3000) (the typical settlement amount) [arstechnica.com] = $43,938,000
Sure beats working for a living, doesn't it? Greed personified.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt that each letter costs less than $3000 to send out, when all of the legal and P2P spying costs are factored in.
From what I've heard, the money "earned" from the legal crusade of the RIAA mostly goes right back into the costs incurred in perusing new victims. Not a cent goes to artists, but I highly doubt that any of it does to the executives either.
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Re:Why not earlier? (Score:5, Insightful)
The same spies that push porn spam while they "investigate" [torrentfreak.com] or that use automated "investigation" [arstechnica.com] that can't tell the difference between a file sharer and a printer? Yeah I kinda doubt it is really costing them much for their "investigation work" there.
But let us be honest here,this has absolutely NOTHING to do with artists or creators,and is nothing but unrestrained greed from non producing middlemen. How else can you explain getting up in court and with a straight face saying Ripping your CD to your iPod isn't fair use [eff.org] because you didn't get prior "authorization"(in the form of giving them another check) first.
And finally,since we always have at least a few "get the dirty evil pirates" every time we have this conversation,I am going to say this again: There is NO WAY that anyone can stand up here and with a straight face say that copyrights are anything but broken. If you try,I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,and yet his FIRST work,one that was made when most cars had to be started with a freaking handcrank,is still under copyright. I think we can all agree that is severely fucked up. Copyright was supposed to be a contract,nothing more or less. We got a richer public domain in return for a LIMITED monopoly on a work. The fact that Steamboat Willie is still under copyright should prove the contract is broken and not worth the paper copyright laws were written on.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because they don't give a damn about their students?
The same way most CEO's and boards don't care about their customers (or employees). It's actually surprising that the University isn't giving in. Probably has something to do with the cost of complying.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So if the University says "bugger off" to the RIAA, why doesn't the RIAA go after the University as a contributor?
Re:Why not earlier? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if the University says "bugger off" to the RIAA, why doesn't the RIAA go after the University as a contributor?
Because
(a) it has no legal basis for doing so, and
(b)universities fight back. The RIAA lawyers don't know what to do with people who fight back. Their game is picking on the defenseless.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Only 22 had no law school. My pals who are/were in law school cited money and prestige as primary reasons for attending, and given that most of these schools have their own law department...what the hell?
Are the aforementioned top-25 lists results of left arms(regents and admin) not talking to the right arms(legally-schooled staff) or should we continue to despise 99% of lawyers(except Ray and the proud attorneys at EFF and other l
Re:Why not earlier? (Score:5, Insightful)
Something tells me it's a bad idea to sue a school full of law students, law professors, and likely a few more lawyers on retainer or payroll, when you don't have a legal leg to stand on.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Buddy, I was thoroughly amazed by the fact that you actually got a serious reply to your post. Because I didn't understand a bloody word you said.
What are you smoking? The other day, when I was in Amsterdam, I bought me a couple of grams of good Skunk and I couldn't manage to sound as incoherent, disjointed and whimsical as you just did.
When they tried to make you go to rehab, don't you think you should have said "Yes, yes, yes"?
Re:Why not earlier? (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I understand, the RIAA doesn't have a specific name they are sending to, they get it down to a room at best, with a "John Doe".
Then they send a form letter with a settlement, and try to get the individual to give up who they are and pay up. It's more like mail fraud on the RIAA's end, really.
So if the mail isn't addressed to anyone, who isn't getting their mail?
Parent
Re:Why not earlier? (Score:5, Informative)
Now Duke is growing a pair and saying, 'you do your job and we'll do ours: provide education and experience.' This should have happened a long time ago, but at least it's happening, right?
Parent
Re:Why not earlier? (Score:5, Interesting)
Advice from Harvard [thecrimson.com] perhaps? Whom, as you pointed out before, the RIAA seemed to be avoiding. Maybe they finally read the advice you sent out too. The government dropped those weighted hints that the universities should work against copyright infringement in an overly broad manner and threatened funding, but if institutions like Harvard who could live without government funding for prolonged periods of time are willing to take up the fight then other institutions are more willing to stand up with them perhaps.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Harvard and other big-name schools like that, especially Ivy schools which are older than the Revolutionary War, have endowments in the tens of billions. As you can see here [boston.com], Harvard has nearly $40 billion on hand -- more than the GDP of some [cia.gov] countries in the world.
Who the hell is going to try and push back against Harvard and why would they need government support? I think that's hardly a fair indicator.
Re:Curious... (Score:5, Insightful)
What do think about people who are pirating music and/or movies?
The term "piracy" in the world of copyright infringement means:
-large scale
-commercial
-running off of exact copies for commercial gain.
I have never met anyone who is doing that so I have no real opinion of them as people.
I have seen poor people going around in the streets selling pirated copies, and they do not seem like evil people. They seemed a lot more decent than the people I've seen from the RIAA. They don't even seem to be aware that what they are doing is contrary to copyright law.
Parent
Re:Curious... (Score:5, Funny)
They seemed a lot more decent than the people I've seen from the RIAA.
It's a low bar.
Parent
Dang (Score:5, Funny)
For a minute there I thought this meant Duke Nukem Forever had been released, and it was about Duke fighting the RIAA in a court of law. Man, that would kick ass.
Re:Dang (Score:4, Funny)
From what I heard, someone from Duke administration stopped by the RIAA office and said "I have come here to chew bubble gum and to kick ass, and I am all out of bubble gum."
Parent
Can we get a new tag? (Score:2, Funny)
This might be better filed under fsckthatyoudontmakesense instead of suddenoutbreakofcommonsense
Too late.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I've never studied law in my life, but "RIAA Defence 101" is a course i'd sign up for!!!
Re:Too late.... (Score:5, Interesting)
make defending students against the RIAA part of the law school curriculum
I've never studied law in my life, but "RIAA Defence 101" is a course i'd sign up for!!!
Actually Prof. Nesson once assigned his students the task of drafting a motion to quash an RIAA subpoena [blogspot.com]. Now his law students are fighting the RIAA in SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum. Also law students at the University of Maine and University of San Francisco law schools have been fighting the RIAA, and I believe law students at the University of California are going to be getting into the act as well.
Parent
Re:Too late.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Look, I once worked for a university, and I was asked to comment on a policy about this. What I told the university's lawyer was, we did not have any way to associate an actual person with an IP address, we didn't even have any way to associate a specific computer with an IP address because they changed from time to time, we had no business reason to implement this sort of tracking, and so if the RIAA came knocking, all we could tell them was "sorry, can't help you"... and doing so would be completely honest.
Any university that is keeping enough tracking information to be able to say, upon receipt of a letter from the RIAA, who was using what IP address when, is wasting too much time and money tracking information it doesn't legitimately need.
Parent
I don't approve of infringement. (Score:3, Insightful)
I prefer disarmament [abolishcopyright.com].
Nerve (Score:5, Insightful)
let's hope this sends out a ripple of nerve to the other universities and more of them have the guts to stand up. If nothing else, this would skyrocket the administrative costs of these previously cheap mass shakedowns and hopefully put a stop to them.
Now that the heavy lifting is done... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now that the heavy lifting is done... (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, Duke is bold now that NewYorkCountryLawyer and other lawyers stood their ground in a proverbial Battle of Thermopylae defending a bunch of homemakers and retirees against the RIAA army!
Why thank you, cenconce. I've always found inspiration from the brave men who resisted the Persian empire at Thermopylae.
Parent
How long before the dorms are nat'ed so the ip goe (Score:3, Insightful)
How long before the dorms are nat'ed so the ip goes to a lot more then just 1 person?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If they're anything like my dorms, every machine has an Internet-facing IP.
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And if anyone's smart enough, they've dropped their own router on that line to help obscure everything.
"Yea, my router has that IP Address, but there's over four hardwired computers and six laptops connected to it. You got a MAC address identifying which computer was doing what? No, my router doesn't keep logs. No, I will not turn logs on, you cannot tell me what to do with my legally-purchased hardware."
cue vague legal question (Score:5, Insightful)
When I hear about these RIAA letters-of-doom-death I always wondered, are the Universities even legally required to forward them to students? Why don't the Universities say, "no way, you deliver your own threat letters to people."
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
It could be "cooperate with us or we'll sue the crap out of you. Nice school, would be a shame if it went bankrupt in court wouldn't it"?
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I think that if they were legally required to, they would do so. The RIAA is acting on the basis that "we haven't got a court order or anything, but how about you do as we say anyway and nobody has to get hurt?". The University, while initially bending over, has now taken the stance "show us some actual evidence first, eg something that wouldn't get laughed out of court if you went to try and get a court order".
As someone else pointed out, if only they'd stood up to the RIAA a few years earlier...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the letters aren't forwarded, or the student refuses to settle, the next step is for the RIAA to file a John Doe suit to get a court order (or subpoena, I forget which) and compel universities to hand over information on the student. On
Licensed Investigators Requirement (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Licensed Investigators Requirement (Score:5, Informative)
The university should have also stated that the evidence must come from investigators licensed in the state of North Carolina.
Interesting you should say that, because their "probable cause hearing" [blogspot.com] in North Carolina is coming up soon.
Parent
more proof (Score:3, Insightful)
They should also demand that they don't just download .5% from the student either. They should demonstrate that they actually got a working copy of the song from that individual student.
Resistance isn't futile (Score:5, Insightful)
is the University going to go to bat for the students and fight the litigation on the ground that it's based on zero evidence, and on the ground that the students weren't given prior notice and an opportunity to be heard?
The thing is, the RIAA doesn't really want to sue people. They want people to roll over and pay the $3000. That's almost entirely free money - they pay some small amount per IP to their dogs at MediaSentry, they pay some paralegal to fill in blanks on a form letter, and they pay some postage in order to send them out. Then they just wait until the money starts rolling in. A 10:1 profit margin wouldn't seem unreasonable, even if you factor in the supposed "losses" due to online sharing.
But every time someone fights back, whether it's against the RIAA's ex parte tactics or in a full-blown lawsuit, it costs them big. There are real lawyers getting paid real money to litigate real suits. Any returns are years off, and it's a roll of the dice as to whether they'll see anything for their efforts besides a bill from the defendant's lawyers.
The only reason that the RIAA files these lawsuits is because a few people have called their bluff. Imagine if the mob decided that breaking people's kneecaps was too risky/costly. Once people found out, nobody would pay them the protection money. Very similar situation with the RIAA: if the RIAA started ignoring people who ignored their settlement letters, and other people found out about it, then nobody would pony up the $3000. (Which, of course, is why these articles usually get tagged "mafiaa".)
By not forwarding the settlement letters, Duke complicates the cash cow portion of this formula. Ostensibly, the RIAA could find some way around this, but it'll undoubtedly be more complicated and cut into their settlement revenues. At some point, there's a line at which any hoped-for decrease in sharing is more than offset by the increase in pre- and litigation costs, and once the RIAA actually realizes that, their litigation campaign will stop. While many of us believe that the RIAA has been past that line the whole time, it'll take a lot more people fighting back to convince the RIAA of that.
Oh, and a ruling on unconstitutionally high damages favorable to the public interest wouldn't hurt, either.
Civil Disobedience (Score:3, Insightful)
Now isn't Civil Disobedience also Protected Speech?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I would imagine they were tired of tracking down all of these students in order to forward the RIAABS. I doubt they're really thinking of the students, they're just saving themselves a little work. If the RIAA has any actual proof they'll come up with a court order, then Duke will track them down. In the end, Duke will likely have to track down fewer students that way.
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Well, Duke is certainly well endowed financially. But why should they spend even one minute of administrative time, or one dollar of university resources, to serve as the RIAA's flunky and errand boy? I'd have to guess that they're more than tired of it. Without some kind of concrete evidence in hand, it's a complete mis-allocation of their time and money.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I know Slashdot users tend to stay in basements, avoid sunlight, yadda yadda etc, but rugby and lacrosse are two very different things...
Re:Recall the Duke Lacrosse case... (Score:4, Insightful)
To anyone who may have misunderstood my point...
Duke is fighting vigorously to protect people from charges of downloading but when the Duke Lacrosse team was falsely charged with gang rape they were completely thrown under the bus.
The more serious the accusation, the more important the presumption of innocence.
Parent