RIAA Moves Against College-Network Fileswapping

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."

DMCA?

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.

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?

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!

Don't be silly

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:fuuuu

Yes. Remember, alcohol is also illegal, and they certainly try and crack down on that more than they do on piracy. Do they think that's gonna stop us?

Do what I did.

Quit College.

Re:"Sampling an artists music"

Because there are a lot more artists than what you see on MTV, Radio, and Amazon. In fact, much of the music I listen to is not available by any of the sources you mentioned. And if Amazon sells it, it is likely imported and lacking samples.

Re:"Sampling an artists music"

HA, like they actually play music on MTV.

Re:"Sampling an artists music"

why not listen to the radio, MTV, or the short samples available on Amazon.com

because i'm not interested in who corporate america wants me to like/listen-to/buy. money/power to buy airtime does NOT constitute talent!

Re:"Sampling an artists music"

If you're listening to bands outside of all this, it doesn't effect you anyway.

Right. If you're careful about only trading MP3s that have only been legally downloaded from MP3.com, band websites, etc... then the RIAA won't bother you at all. They do extensive checking for each and every song to make sure that 1) The RIAA represents the artist in question, 2) that it's the right song, and not something with a similar name, and 3) that the band hasn't decided to make the MP3 available intentionally. Only then do they reluctantly issue a cease & desist order.

They would never abuse their position and simply issue a blanket C&D on the mere suspicion that there might be an infringement. Sure, it's more expensive to do the careful checking, but they can't take the chance that they might alienate their customers.

Re:"Sampling an artists music"

[old argument] Yeah, that works great for the n% of artists that the major recording companies have signed and paid their way onto the radio playlists. For the 100-n% that are making it on their own, or are being suffocated by a major label contract they can't escape, GOOD LUCK. Soon the RIAA will move to kill the college stations, and if they succeed they will control the entire radio market top to bottom [/old argument]. MTV is even worse, you have to be able to afford to produce a palatable video that'll fit nicely into one of their anointed genre pigeonholes.

Indy bands that give away a few mp3's on their websites get my vote however. Best way to promote your music online, IMO. And it heads off "music piracy" the RIGHT way.

Re:"Sampling an artists music"

If you want to sample an artist's music before buying a disc, why not listen to the radio,

because it's not on the radio MTV,

because it's not on MTV or the short samples available on Amazon.com

because they are short, sound like crap, and take an awful lot of effort to listen to a series of them.

Seriously, there are a lot of us who don't listen to "the popular" music, and even if you do, you maybe get to hear one or two songs on the radio. (MTV is even worse.)

There is no way, short of borrowing a CD from a friend or using P2P to listen to an "album" a couple of times to see if you want to buy it.

Believe it or not, there are people who use P2P networks to listen to non-mainstream artists they've heard about, to evaluate new music, etc. And believe it or not there are people who buy more music because of what they've heard on P2P. I can say this because I am one of those people.

Re:"Sampling an artists music"

Yeah, exactly, because, you know I have infinite amounts of money. So I can afford to buy ten CDs of which I'll like one, and sell the other nine back at a 50% loss. Also I live next to this magical used CD store that has every CD from every artist on their shelves.

Look, I don't mind paying $18 for a CD if its something I want. Honestly. I download stuff I think I might like, listen to it on my computer (which is a hassle still) and see if I like it enough to buy it. If I don't, I delete it. Honestly. How hard is it to grasp that there are mature people out there who's use of P2P actually benefits the RIAA and other (non-RIAA) artists?

Re:"Sampling an artists music"

Right...So you're saying I should pay money to evaluate whether I want to buy something?

Because in practice you can't sell CDs for the same price you buy them, new or used.

In Japan, I used to rent CDs as a palatable method of evaluating music before I bought it. However, here in the good 'ol US of A, the RIAA in their infinite wisdom got legislation passed which prevents this. Thanks to them, I'm basically forced to buy it or "steal" it.

Re:"Sampling an artists music"

If you want to sample an artist's music before buying a disc, why not listen to the radio, MTV, or the short samples available on Amazon.com (or wherever) to get an idea of what the artist is like?

Personally, when it comes to the mainstream English music I only buy the CD under 2 conditions: 1) I actually like 80% of the songs on it and 2) after listening to those songs for about 2 weeks (not constantly, but often) I still like them. That's why I prefer to download an album (when I can't borrow it from a friend) before I buy it. Most music retail sites rarely have all the songs in an album up, and even when they do hearing only 30 seconds of a song is decieving because if there's an annoying interlude 2 minutes into it that makes me detest it then I'll hate the song (maybe I'm too picky). Also, from past experience, mainstream English music when I like it tends to wear itself out really fast about half the time. I'm hesitant to buy CDs I might be absolutely sick of even the sight of in a couple of weeks. With the price of American mainstream CDs these days, I don't want just "an idea" of what an artist is like, I want to be SURE I like the album I'm paying for. Every artist has good and bad albums.

I blame American mainstream music industry for the high occurrence of crap among their products. I've noticed I'm drastically less cautious when shelling out the cash for foreign albums, part of that is because their albums even look a lot spiffier. I appreciate a product that looks, as well as sounds, thoughtfully produced.

This would be more like

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.

Stop listening to crap and go see the band.

STARVE the RIAA.

CNET has a story on it too..

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..

"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?

Has everyone forgotten Google, etc?

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.

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.

Re:NFS will be illegal soon.

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.

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.

In related news..

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?

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.

Re:Sick, Sick.

The Gestapo were the Nazi secret police who particpated in the death of nearly 6 million people. To trivialize this by equating it to rounding up of thiefs shows a real warped sense of perspective on your part.

As opposed, of course, to the idea of trivializing the countless murders, rapes, and thefts commited by pirates on the high seas by using the term "piracy" to describe someone breaking copyright law.

Legal and right

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.

Re:Apparently they are going after the students?

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.

Merf

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?

Use Open Source DRM

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.

My concern is...

...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.

Lawsuits vs. Legal action

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?

I used to run a Phynd server at UC Berkeley...

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

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.

Bullshit

> 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?

this article is seriously confused...

...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

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

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

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?

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.