Duke Demands Proof of Infringement From RIAA 159
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."
I don't approve of infringement. (Score:3, Insightful)
I prefer disarmament [abolishcopyright.com].
Re:Why not earlier? (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"
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.
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.
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.
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?
Now that the heavy lifting is done... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not earlier? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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."
Licensed Investigators Requirement (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not earlier? (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.
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.
Re:Why not earlier? (Score:2, Insightful)
What is proof? (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean seriously, how can you proof that someone at IP-Address X offered a file.
The typical way is that they show a screenshot of some programm as well as someone claiming under oath that it's real. Well let's see where someone evil could modify that information to blame someone else:
1. the application: It can display any IP-Address it wants, even random numbers
2. the video card driver: It gets commands to write strings. It's trivial to exchange strings here and most video card manufacturers refuse to provide the source for their drivers.
3. many routers can simply do some kind of "NAT" to change the address. This could be done, in principle for certain ports and fully transparent.
4. the operating system: Of course that's the easiest place for changing any information going into the application and going out of it.
5. the font: Yes, this is obscure and might be noticed, but if I make a font which makes 8s look like 1s and 1s look like 8s, It will seem as if there is a different IP-Address on the screen.
So, there is no possible way they can actually proof anything. Plus they have a motif to modify their system in one of those ways.
As long as we don't have true trustworthy computing, which would mean we have to cut down the software stack of our computers to less than a kilobyte, it's hard to proof anything with a computer. Should we get TGC-style trusted computing, there will be _no_ proof a computer has been modified.
Re:Why not earlier? (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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
So Now Duke Cares about Student's Rights? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm surprised Duke is actually doing the right thing here. Based on their track record, I expected the students to be expelled, their sports team disbanded, the coach fired and have full page ads run in local papers signed by their professors denouncing them. I mean, that's what happened the last time Duke students were accused of something based on flimsy evidence.
I guess Duke learned the expensive way that their students don't check all their rights at the door when the are admitted to Duke.
Re:How long before the dorms are nat'ed so the ip (Score:3, Insightful)
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."
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.
Re:cue vague legal question (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. Once the student is identified, they drop the John Doe suit & file a suit naming the student.
These letters are basically a request to settle for some amount. Many universities have thought students would prefer getting a letter extorting $3,000 than notice of a lawsuit - doubly so when you consider the insane statutory damages available to the copyright holders. That's why they've forwarded them, to give students a choice as to whether to give up $3,000 or fight a lawsuit.
Civil Disobedience (Score:3, Insightful)
Now isn't Civil Disobedience also Protected Speech?
Re:Why not earlier? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.