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College Demands RIAA Pay Up For Wasting Its Time
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Mar 22, 2007 12:57 PM
from the me-next-me-next dept.
from the me-next-me-next dept.
An anonymous reader writes "We've already seen the University of Wisconsin tell the RIAA to go away, but the University of Nebaska has gone one step further: it's asking the RIAA to pay up for wasting its time with the silly demand to push students into paying up. The spokesperson for the University also notes that since they constantly rotate IP addresses and have no need to hang onto that information for very long, they simply cannot help the RIAA. They have no clue who was attached to which IP address at the time the RIAA is complaining about."
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stephencrane informs us of an interesting development at UW Madison. The school, along with many others, has been sent "settlement letters" by the RIAA with instructions to forward them to particular students (or other university community members) that the RIAA believes guilty of illegal filesharing. The letters order the assumed filesharers to identify themselves and to pay for the content they are supposed to have "pirated." The university has sent a blanket letter to all students, reiterating the school's acceptable use policies, but has refused to forward individual letters without a valid subpoena. This lawyer's blog reproduces the letter. The campus newspaper has some coverage on the university's stance.
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RIAA Says Accused Students Are Settling 345 comments
As we've been reporting, the RIAA has been offering settlements to college students suspected of sharing music online. Reader Weather Storm notes that more than a quarter of the alleged music pirates have accepted the RIAA's offer. Quoting: "...an attorney Ohio University arranged to meet with its students... said $3,000 is the standard settlement offer, though cases have settled for as much as $5,000."
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Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
While I don't know if the RIAA has done anything in particular illegal (though I am fairly sure they have somewhere along the line) I still see the trends in their lawsuits and tactics as abusive and deserving of a civil (if that really counts between two very large organizations neither of which are really citizens) hearing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Surprised This Is News (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
RIAA needs to pay me... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:RIAA needs to pay me... (Score:5, Funny)
Better get that plane ticket to Soviet Russia then. I've heard the time travel costs extra.
Re:RIAA needs to pay me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. You know honestly, the RIAA reminds me of the people fighting for prohibition. In the end it's going to lose because everyone is still drinking the booze (stealing the music) and all the legal action in the world isn't going to stop it. So you might as well just come to the conclusion that it's going to happen. I personally say let's make it legal!
Welcome to ... (Score:5, Funny)
News for lawyers, trials that matters
Re:Welcome to ... (Score:5, Funny)
(As seen to the left)
RIAAdot Categories
College Students
Single Mothers
Dissabled Vets
Household pets
The Deceased
Newborn babies
People without internet
No one is safe from the law!
Re:Official "Who's Next?" Pool (Score:5, Funny)
You try reading legalise with all the vowels stripped out.
Re:Welcome to ... (Score:5, Funny)
This really worries me, since I use USAA [usaa.com] for a lot of my insurance and banking.
Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
What has disappointed me was the fact that no one has stood up to them before to finally beat them in court. There has to be a first case and once there is, it will set the precedent.
RonB
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
The people whose actions so many of us detest, who sue disabled pensioners and little girls who don't even own computers, who whine and bitch and claim the sky is falling every time some new technology comes along, who engage in price fixing, who rip off the artists they claim to represent while simultaneously saying that they're engaging in anti-piracy activity for their benefit (all the time without missing a beat and smiling, smiling, smiling), who LIE to the media and inflate and invent the losses they say they're cost by the eeeeevil pirates...
THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE RIAA.
THEY ARE THE 'MAJOR' RECORD COMPANIES.
(And their number is legion) [riaa.com]
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
I've dealt with University legal departments, and they can be among the most cowardly and smarmy of lawyers (which is like saying the "smelliest shit"), and it's really amazing that the administration of the UofN actually ignored their exposure to tell RIAA that they simply weren't going to be pushed around. I remember when a very powerful guy, who's daughter had committed suicide because of the pressure her religious father put on her because she committed the grevious sin of having a boyfriend, tried to pressure the University that I was working for a the time to give up email records so he could find out who the boyfriend was. It was clear at the time that his intention was to go after this boy for "sinning" with his daughter, which I guess was more important than realizing that it was the father who was the one putting fatal pressure on the girl. I still remember the university attorney, who used to be part of a floating Friday night card game, stood up to the guy and told him that they weren't going to give this father a single email, not a bit of information. He was threatened with violence and professional destruction by this rich and powerful asshole, but the U stood behind the lawyer.
I love to see a bully getting a boot in the ass. Their arrogant, outraged, sputtering after realizing they aren't going to get their way is priceless.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
uncle sam (will) say so (Score:5, Insightful)
Coming soon, federal legislation giving the University a need to hang onto that information.
Re:uncle sam (will) say so (Score:4, Insightful)
http://news.com.com/FBI+director+wants+ISPs+to+tr
It'll probably never happen. But ONLY because it's completely impractical from a technical standpoint.
Also, if you've never heard of CALEA, do a search. ISPs are already (as of this month) required to help law-enforcement spy on users. At great expense and hassle.
Re:uncle sam (will) say so (Score:5, Informative)
It was also passed in 1994 (i.e., not under Bush), and isn't new (though the deadline for compliance is May 2007).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:uncle sam (will) say so (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, the assignment of static IPs by DHCP must have also gone by the wayside, as when I was in the "residence halls" I was disturbed to discover that the IP addresses also had domain names identifying residence hall and room number and no option to have that information be removed.
I guess that with the addition of wireless access on campus, there was suddenly far more information than they could handle and felt there was no longer any point in tracking it beyond, what are they saying, 31 days?
(*) I'm pretty sure I know which machine, but there's no point in saying it here as it is inaccessible from off campus. I was there when they disallowed pings and traceroutes from the outside for reasons of network security, and that still appears to be the case. There's more than one Peanuts-named machine on campus.
Re:uncle sam (will) say so (Score:4, Insightful)
Answer: You won't get marked as insightful then
Gnat on an elephant's back (Score:5, Insightful)
While I applaud the move, Nebraska is but a minor annoyance to the deep pockets of the RIAA. For this to have the fullest effect, a large proportion of the colleges/universities in the country would have to band together and make a class-action case of it, IMHO. Individual schools can score points, but they won't score a clean enough victory to stop this nonsense.
Re:Gnat on an elephant's back (Score:5, Insightful)
So, yeah, while this move by U of N is a good one, it's hard to say how significant it's impact will be in the grand scheme of things.
I hope Nebraska Wins (Score:3, Funny)
What's going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
What I wrote in their support (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the letter I wrote to the president of UNL, the chancellor, each of the regents, and the CIO (Mr. Weir):
I got several replies of agreement, and I think that the school will be holding its ground.
GO HUSKERS!
Re:What I wrote in their support (Score:5, Interesting)
Well said. You should send that along to the Lincoln Journal Star [townnews.com], the Omaha World-Herald [mailto] and the Daily Nebraskan [dailynebraskan.com].
Hey Slashdot! Want to have fun? Read (and reply to) some of the comments in the Journal Star articles about UNL and the RIAA (available here [journalstar.com] and here [journalstar.com].)
Go Cornhuskers, Go Big Red! (Score:4, Funny)
fuck the RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:fuck the RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. Is it just me who's not such a moron that I don't listen to music I hate whether I have to pay for it or not?
They should play their strong hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Schools should play the "We've got law students galore, just itching for something to work on" card.
They need a better data retention policy (Score:4, Interesting)
If they really want to make the RIAA go away, they need a better data retention policy.
A month is way to too to keep IP address (I assume DHCP) records.
At an ISP where I used to work, we kept RADIUS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RADIUS [wikipedia.org] ) logs far too long too. I think it was realized that a data retention policy was needed when the RIAA started sending their lawyer letters (that was back in 2001).
In most cases, the logs are only need for a few hours. In rare cases maybe a day or two. Longer than that, the only reasons are not related to network or system administration. If your security is so poor that you need IP address logs from a month ago to see who was on what server, you have serious security problems.
If I ran an ISP (or a university network), I would retain the logs for one day. And maybe I would not retain full logs at all, for any length of time, if they became a liability.
Creating a Fearful Consumer Class (Score:4, Insightful)
2. The point is to make consumers deathly afraid of doing anything with digital media without checking for their approval. This makes DRM look like a great solution if you are a consumer afraid of being sued.
"Stick it to them" and haha posts may make
How about organizing an annual no-drm day? Don't by any DRM'd media on that one day each year. That's right no DVD's, no iTunes.
Oh, wait that means we would have to DO something though. Nevermind.
Re:Creating a Fearful Consumer Class (Score:4, Informative)
The Free Ride is Over (Score:5, Interesting)
1. They've been suing "little people" who frequently cannot even afford a lawyer and for whom even ONE loss in court would wipe them out financially.
2. A court system in which computer-clueless judges have taken the RIAA's word that their "evidence" is valid and who have forgotten or overlooked the "innocent until PROVEN guilty" which is the basis of our entire legal system.
Now they're starting to wade in against people and institutions who DO have lawyers and aren't afraid to use them and who CAN carry on the "protracted struggle" the modern over-lawyered legal system demands. In the meantime, judges are getting more educated about what computers can and can't do, and are being reminded of the presumption of innocence.
So instead of "show me the money", of which the RIAA has plenty, they're about to hear "show me the evidence", of which they have little or none.
Game, set, and match!
I'd agree with you but for one thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Innocent until proven guilty only applies to the Criminal Justice System.
Civil law operates under the preponderance of evidence standard- and unless you invalidate the evidence the other
side is presenting, if they've enough of it, you'll lose the case. That's how the RIAA is getting these things
through- shock and awe. And pretty much every one of the cases so far that have actually gone to court have been
a loss for the RIAA.
I wish that one of the courts would twig onto the fact that the labels and RIAA are very probably acting
as a vexatious litigant and punish them accordingly.
A Modest Proposal (Score:4, Interesting)
Reasons for RIAA not to sue Universities (Score:4, Funny)
2. Many many lawyers and soon-to-be lawyers looking forward to massive p0wnage of RIAA that will give them credit and make a name for them in future work in the law are studying at the universities.
3. Many faculty lawyers looking to publish papers to prove how good they are at p0wning RIAA - publish or perish!
4. Lots of grads willing to donate money to their alum funds to help p0wn RIAA.
5. It's just plain FUN!
Ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
Until somtime in the first half of the decade, UNL used to give everyone real static IP addresses. This let students easily host their own servers, including one server that, rumor had it, had one of the biggest collections of pirated music on the Internet - the server was pre-Napster and survived and thrived post-Napster. (Rumor said it was run by a woman who just loved music and liked to listen to everything that was uploaded... I'm not sure if she went to class much because they said she was in her 6th year or so when I was there.)
This was before the RIAA was very active online, and to my understanding was fairly unaware of servers like this. When UNL went to DHCP everywhere, one of the effects was to make it harder to run servers like that. So, it's funny that a move that a few years ago was percieved as hurting music piracy is now seen as enabling it. (The move to DHCP wasn't done for political reasons, but the students didn't see it that way.)
PS. I never visited the server and don't know who ran it, so don't bother subpoenaing me, RIAA.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Students still can (and do) have static IP addresses; now, however, you have to fill out a form [unl.edu] to get one.
The 2000-2001 academic year was a wonderful time to be a freshman at UNL. No network caps whatsoever.
Flawed model (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA missed the boat, failed to innovate, didn't see or care to see the j-curve in technology and are thrashing in the water trying to force people back to music listening circa 1990. The genie is out of the bottle. Pandora's box is open. You are not the next american idol. The answer was D. and now regis is waiting for you to leave the stage. Move along RIAA. Game over dude....
Re:U of Nebraska = Haven for Hackers? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm also pretty sure that the IP is kept longer then they admit. I have friends attending UNL and they have had the same IP all year. It did not even change when they went home for x-mas break. I think they have the ability to help the RIAA if they want, but with all the bad press, and Nebraska's need for recruiting out-of-state students, this is the perfect publicity stunt. "Come to Nebraska and leech without fear of being turned in".
Overall, I think they are no more a haven for hackers than any other large University. Most seem to have the attitude of "do what you want, but don't get caught".
Re:Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
STB