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Music Media Government The Almighty Buck The Courts News

College Demands RIAA Pay Up For Wasting Its Time 261

Posted by Zonk 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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College Demands RIAA Pay Up For Wasting Its Time More

College Demands RIAA Pay Up For Wasting Its Time

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  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dlhm ( 739554 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:00PM (#18446605)
    They should stick it to 'em as hard as the riaa is sticking it to everyone else!!

  • RIAA needs to pay me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:01PM (#18446617)
    For wasting my time with all these frivolous lawsuits I have to read about...

  • Welcome to ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BlueTrin ( 683373 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:03PM (#18446637) Homepage Journal
    Welcome to RIAADot
    News for lawyers, trials that matters ...

  • Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rblancarte ( 213492 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:04PM (#18446663) Homepage
    I think that we are seeing that people are finally getting fed up with the RIAA. Their tactics are quasi-illegal, and their manners are boorish. Maybe 2007 is the year that people finally get wise and stand up to the RIAA. A few losses in court, which IMHO are pretty much a slam dunk, and I think we will see the RIAA have to stand down this attack on music consumers.

    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)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:16PM (#18446895) Journal
      I think in this case it's people getting tired of RIAA making demands on overworked IT departments in what often amounts to warrantless fishing expeditions. I don't think the colleges in question approve of illegal music swapping, but merely that they have better things to do. The attack on RIAA from the legal side is much more interesting, and I wonder if the courts are beginning themselves to tire of what seem to be nuisance lawsuits that often have very little evidentiary backing.

      • Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Blue Stone ( 582566 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:42PM (#18447455) Homepage Journal
        I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments in the ablove posts, but I really feel it's important that we drop the figleaf that is the term that is the 'RIAA'.

        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: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Hatta ( 162192 )
          THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE RIAA.

          THEY ARE THE 'MAJOR' RECORD COMPANIES.

          Um, and the RIAA is composed of the major record companies. Same thing. This is like complaining someone said "congress passed a bill" when they should have said "congressmen passed a bill". It's a distinction without a difference.

      • Although I'm on the university's side about this... I somehow doubt that their claims are 100% accurate. If the FBI showed up with evidence that somebody had been using their networks for illegal purposes, I'm pretty sure they'd suddenly discover that log data in a dusty server room somewhere...

    • Add to that the fact that CD sales are dropping by, what, 20% a year and the entire industry may be dead in a few.

      Good riddance to bad rubbish. Now, how about we see to the MPAA...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sconeu ( 64226 )
        According to the local news (NBC affiliate) it's all the fault of those Evil Content Pirates(tm) [phrasing mine -- they said "illegal downloads"]

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by BlueTrin ( 683373 )
        At least DVD have extra contents, I used to buy at least 4 CDs for every movie I would watch. Now since the DVDs are quite cheap and they improved alot the marketing (adding nice packaging and extra features), I do buy alot more DVDs than CDs.

        Personally, I have alot more pleasure watching my DVD collection than seeing all these overpriced CDs with no-extra content and which are quite expensive only because of the majors. Not that I endorse the MPAA but at least the movie industry made more efforts than t

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by shoptroll ( 544006 )
          ESA > The TV Networks > MPAA > RIAA in terms of who's getting the clue the fastest. At least in my book. At least the TV Networks are readily flirting with putting shows up on the web for viewing by consumers at no cost (as long as you don't mind and ad every 15 minutes... snack break anyone?). On the other hand, we get the RIAA attempting to shut down Internet Radio as we know it. At least the TV networks are trying to match the pirates with near equiavalent (in terms of cost to the consumer

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by griffjon ( 14945 )
      Hell, I've been intentionally boycotting the RIAA since they took AudioGalaxy down, and by accident even before then (their affiliated labels so rarely have any good music on them). I'm sad it's taken this long for the loathing to spread outside of the geek circles.

    • Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:35PM (#18447311) Journal
      I love it when someone stands up to a bully. It gives me hope that there is still some decency left in the public realm when an institution like University of Nebraska, who's got a lot to lose, tells the RIAA to go pound sand.

      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.
    • RIAA:

      I quit buying CDs, and I do not download music either. I spend my entertainment dollars on DVDs and on-demand cable. Last month I purchased 22 DVDs. January I bought about 15. This month I purchased about nine. (and FYI I have not had time to watch more than a few of them, I rip them to xvid format and listen to them on my PocketPC at the office).

      Fuck you very much RIAA.

  • uncle sam (will) say so (Score:5, Insightful)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:04PM (#18446667) Homepage
    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.

    Coming soon, federal legislation giving the University a need to hang onto that information.

    • Re:uncle sam (will) say so (Score:4, Insightful)

      by realmolo ( 574068 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:14PM (#18446855)
      They are trying to do just that:

      http://news.com.com/FBI+director+wants+ISPs+to+tra ck+users/2100-7348_3-6126877.html [com.com]

      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)

        by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:23PM (#18447037)
        Uh, CALEA mandates technical mechanisms for providing information to law enforcement when required by a court order, so that things like wiretaps of VoIP phones or intercepting electronic communications can, you know, actually be done when necessitated by a court order.

        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)

          by steelfood ( 895457 )
          There's also a huge difference between being asked to provide assistance, and being asked to keep and maintain records. Schools and ISP's can provide all the assistance law enforcement wants, but if they don't have a log of all the traffic in their network, that assistance would amount to nothing of consequence for retroactive investigations.

          Besides, the telecos would not like laws requiring keeping and maintaining traffic logs, and probably would lobby against them. After all, they'd shoulder the burden of
    • your cynicism belies a lack of heart. even if your cynical jibe were actually true, it would be a call to arms against our representatives about whose interest they are serving in washington. not a call for snide sarcastic comments that, in the end, betrays the fact that you accept your fate as a citizen in a corporatocracy

      is it right the riaa can give away money and create legislation that screws the citizens of a country? of course not. does it happen all of the time, corporate interests trumping the inte
      • but i say that people like you, who just comment on that reality cynically, are part of the problem. because in your cynicism is acceptance

        And I say that people who cannot accept how a system functions, have no hope of making steps to make it work to their own benefit.

        Is it really better to deny reality, because that reality reflects the naked ugliness of the corporate person (and by extension, human nature as a whole)?
        • it is better to deny reality, and fight it, if reality is wrong

          it is not superior to deny reality, and fight it, if reality is right

          but plenty of people have different ideas about what is right and wrong. and so results the conflicts we see every day in politics and society

          you need to accept... this reality ;-)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tiro ( 19535 )
        please, chill out. why do you need to be so blunt.

        His comment is at least insightful, and possibly true. I don't see why you have to pretend like you know what his mental state is.

    • Re:uncle sam (will) say so (Score:5, Interesting)

      by HTH NE1 ( 675604 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:30PM (#18447217)
      A lot must have changed in the last ten years. It looked to me that [machine named after a Peanuts character](*) kept track of DHCP leases for years, recording who got what IP and what their machine's MAC address was. I was once tasked to audit the information for two semesters to update the DHCP server for the next year. Students who were caught trying to get an unassigned static IP got their MAC addresses banned. They've caught students buying new NICs to get new, unbanned MAC addresses to get back on the network before.

      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.
  • Nice to see the MAFIAA taking a beating in three stories today. Maybe the tide can finally turn and this bullshit will all end.

  • Gnat on an elephant's back (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Billosaur ( 927319 ) * <wgrother@optonli ... minus physicist> on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:06PM (#18446713) Journal

    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)

      by e4g4 ( 533831 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:28PM (#18447169)
      Indeed, and let's not forget that for every University of Nebraska, there's a Penn State with draconian AUPs that require MAC addresses be associated with a particular student before being granted internet access, thus greatly simplifying the process of associating an IP address with a particular student.

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

        Indeed, and let's not forget that for every University of Nebraska, there's a Penn State with draconian AUPs that require MAC addresses be associated with a particular student before being granted internet access, thus greatly simplifying the process of associating an IP address with a particular student.

        Funny. Last I worked for UNL's Information Services department (formerly Computing Resource Center), that was their policy.

        Of course, that was ten years ago. They may have replaced their DHCP software with

  • Such good things happening lately are cheering me up in the middle of a workday when i come to slashdot at chillout breaks.

  • I hope Nebraska Wins (Score:3, Funny)

    by CF4L ( 1072112 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:11PM (#18446789)
    Then maybe they will set a precedent such that I can sue coworkers who invite me to meetings as "required" that I don't have any reason to be at. That will make them thing twice when creating the invitee list.

  • What's going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)

    by br0d ( 765028 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:13PM (#18446831) Homepage
    is that the RIAA is going to start suing schools. And that is when I pop the popcorn.
    • they flatly say in the 2001 document that they are a carrier, and students had better assume that they are visible and not protected if they hink around the law or educational propriety.

      sounds like my alma mater has nicely insulated themselves and told everybody just how the cow eats the cabbage (and wrecks two crops in the process.)

      I'd say that it's time to play The Rouser, folks, another touchdown for good ol' Nebraska U!

      http://www.nebraska.edu/about/exec_memo16.pdf [nebraska.edu]
  • I'm surprised they ever picked up on this Internet thingy.

    bunch 'a' dinosaurs.

    dismiss it all with prejudice and stick RIAA with the costs. serves 'em right.

  • What I wrote in their support (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:15PM (#18446869) Homepage Journal

    Here's the letter I wrote to the president of UNL, the chancellor, each of the regents, and the CIO (Mr. Weir):

    College is the time for many children to grow into adults by learning to make their own decicions, often for the first time in their lives. Access to information about those decisions is important, and the ability to get it anonymously is critical. No boy wants his friends to know that he was contemplating suicide. No girls wants to be seen asking about sexually transmitted diseases. Unless they know that their questions can't be tracked back to them, most kids won't ask them.

    Walter Weir's IT policies contribute to the atmosphere of open learning that a university, of all places, should strive to attain. Now, some group from Hollywood wants UNL to overhaul its computer network for the explicit purpose of destroying that, simply to serve ends that the school has no real reason to care about. As a computer scientist and a Nebraska taxpayer, I have these additional problems with their request:

    1) I am not interested in seeing my money used to persecute kids for trading songs, much as you and I traded tapes with our friends when we were younger.

    2) IP addresses are traceable to computers, not people. If two or more kids share a computer, who gets the cease-and-desist notice? The RIAA has a history of doing asinine things like suing dead grandmothers; yes, that really happened. I'd much rather see UNL say that their requests can't be answered than to get involved in such foolish and expensive unpleasantry.

    3) Again, the current system works and I see no reason to change it to benefit one outside group with dubious interests. Computer networks are hard to build, and harder to build well. Mr. Weir's department has done a fine job and he should not be made to enact its destruction.

    Just say no to the RIAA. We have a system that serves us - the citizens, taxpayers, and students of Nebraska - very well. UNL's network is meant for the education and personal growth of its users. It is not meant to be the unpaid police force for an outside party with no concern for our needs.

    I got several replies of agreement, and I think that the school will be holding its ground.

    GO HUSKERS!

  • Go Cornhuskers, Go Big Red! (Score:4, Funny)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:17PM (#18446927)
    I think y'all oughta introduce some of those mafiaa lawyers to your livestock ... "squeal like a pig".

  • fuck the RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ttnuagmada ( 1064148 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:18PM (#18446945)
    if the RIAA didnt force absolute fucking garbage down our throats through the likes of networks like Clear Channel, they might have better CD sales. In the last few years it seems to me like the RIAA is trying to make the absolute worst fucking music it could possibly ever make just because they know 16 year old girls will buy anything they think is supposed to be popular. the bottom line is that they arent selling the CD's they used to sell because popular modern music from every single genre is studio manufactured dogshit with no originality or artistic merit whatsoever, and as stupid and lame and tasteless as the average person might be they all arent THAT stupid.
    • To be fair, Clear Channel is a corporate entity, and it's RIAA backing and conservative morals can be flipped in a second if consumers push for it. In the Madison, WI market a clear channel station (92.1) picked up Air America/The Mic and a number of left wing talk shows. After 3 years, Clear Channel was about to pull the plug on it. As soon as word got out though, consumer pressure on the advertisers drove a number of advertisers to go to clear channel and threaten to pull their adds if the station format
    • Ummm...the RIAA has absolutely nothing to do with the creation and distribution. They merely sue people on behalf of those who do....

    • Re:fuck the RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)

      by geoffspear ( 692508 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @02:13PM (#18447995) Homepage
      "This music is so horrible that I refuse to pay for it. But I will download it and listen to it for hours."

      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)

    by humphrm ( 18130 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:24PM (#18447055) Homepage
    The RIAA so far has been playing the "We've got deeper pockets and more lawyers than you" card.

    Schools should play the "We've got law students galore, just itching for something to work on" card.
    • The law professors wouldn't want to risk their careers and personal lives on it. If the RIAA can afford to mount these kinds of campaigns they could probably afford a few smear campaigns to keep the academics in check--nobody knows how to create a smear campaign like attorneys (or insurance brokers) do.
  • Heaploads of love and support for ya from other end of the world, Turkey.

  • They need a better data retention policy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vinn01 ( 178295 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:26PM (#18447105)

    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)

    by asphaltjesus ( 978804 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:30PM (#18447207)
    1. The RIAA is the entertainment conglomerates "bad cop."
    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 /.'ers feel better, but don't take the entertainment conglomerates head-on. The entertainment conglomerates are quite happy about that by the way because /.'er's are a bunch of copyright criminals in an online echo-chamber with their crazy ideas about "free media."

    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)

      by Paradigm_Complex ( 968558 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @02:00PM (#18447799)
      I feel obligated to point out that plenty of us ARE doing things, even while we laugh at the RIAA's losses. Simply because you aren't, and/or you know no one else doing such, does not mean its not happening. Would you rather I post my actions to against the RIAA every story? Thats absurd, but fine, here: I've not purchased a DVD or anything from iTunes ever. I've been boycotting DRM before it was cool. The last essay I wrote for my English class was entitled "DRM: Slowly Taking Our Rights." When I recommend VLC to a not-so-savy computer user, I always follow it with a warning about how in both the United States and France its not completely legal to use it to play DVD's. Complaining about lack of action (specifically in a manner which will not encourage others to action), is it itself no better than doing nothing at all. How about you start a no-drm day? Make a website and get it on /., digg, etc. Don't assume no one else is taking any action; we are.

  • The Free Ride is Over (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sehlat ( 180760 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:36PM (#18447329)
    The RIAA has, until fairly recently, gotten pretty much a free ride for two reasons:

    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)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @02:23PM (#18448167) Homepage
      (Please note: IANAL...)

      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)

    by geoff lane ( 93738 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:37PM (#18447347)
    Instead of the current icons used for stories about RIAA let's use parody versions of the music company logos. It's only fair that the real villains get the credit they deserve.

  • Reasons for RIAA not to sue Universities (Score:4, Funny)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:43PM (#18447481) Homepage Journal
    1. People know the actual terms of licenses and what Fair Use is.

    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)

    by ObligatoryUserName ( 126027 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @01:44PM (#18447491) Journal
    I worked at UNL for a few years, and this strikes me as ironic.

    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. :p

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by swid27 ( 869237 )

      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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
        Students still can (and do) have static IP addresses; now, however, you have to fill out a form to get one.

        Fill that sucker out and there goes your plausible deniability.

  • IP Addresses (Score:2, Informative)

    by daub84 ( 1044898 )
    I don't know about everyone else, but the college I went to only had a few outside IP's. So, at any given time there were 100's of kids sharing outside ip's. How would RIAA expect a school to be able to track down which of those hundred had supposedly shared or downloaded illegal content?

    • I don't know about everyone else, but the college I went to only had a few outside IP's. So, at any given time there were 100's of kids sharing outside ip's. How would RIAA expect a school to be able to track down which of those hundred had supposedly shared or downloaded illegal content?

      Even if you're behind a NATing firewall, P2P software sends "I'm at IP a.b.c.d" during initialization so servers or other clients can try to reach it, e.g. if ports are opened on the firewall.

  • They should pay me for the time I've had to waste dealing with their DRM schemes, trying to listen to music on my MP3 player.

  • Flawed model (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Himring ( 646324 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @02:06PM (#18447883) Homepage Journal
    It's a flawed model really. Historically, suing oneself into success has never worked. The wright (right?) brothers spent their last decades suing anyone who made anything that flew -- yea that went well. The maker of the gun carteridge -- who partenered/sold out to S&W -- did the same thing, and spent his entire fortune made on the invention in court, died broke.

    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....

    • The wright (right?) brothers Personally, I always preferred the "Wight Brothers", but that's just my appreciation for Stephen Jackson and/or JRR Tolkein's work coming out.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
      Bill Clinton was once asked, "Do you know of a single nation that has ever taxed and spent itself into prosperity?" He didn't have an answer. I suspect that if you asked Cary Sherman and the studio executive crowd "Do you know of a single major industry that has ever litigated itself into prosperity by suing its own customers?" that they wouldn't have an answer either. I exclude the legal profession from the short list of valid responses, since suing themselves into prosperity is their industry, and I also

  • Attacking Colleges is quite stupid (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WaZiX ( 766733 ) on Thursday March 22, 2007 @02:19PM (#18448091)
    Who will be the ones in charge in a few years? Who will be the biggest consumers of media? Who will buy their DVDs/Blu-Rays or whatever later?

    Attack Universities as a whole and you make the next generation of deciders pissed off at you...

    Oh and college guys think they know better (I know, I am one of them), so they tend to not bend over that easily....

    Bad move, really bad move...

  • The FBI pays - Why not the RIAA (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22, 2007 @02:27PM (#18448235)
    I recently received a court order to provide telephone records from my phone company to the FBI. In the (sealed) order, the Federal District Court authorized me to bill the FBI (and ordered them to pay) for my expenses in complying with the order.

    Why should the RIAA be any different in their requests... after all - they don't even have the force of law behind them!

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