Do RIAA Demands Violate FERPA Protections?

jorr writes "Bob Liu's commentary 'Copyrights: More Work, More Headaches' questions whether the demands from the RIAA violates due process. He states 'According to FERPA, school officials are permitted to access student records but outside organizations like RIAA would need "to comply with a judicial order or lawfully issued subpoena."'"

Re:Cool

[unitron]

It's probably a result of the Slashdot server's tendency to occaisionally shift to posting everything at whatever time it is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between Greenwich, England and U.S. East Coast.

Media is already too expensive!

[CokoBWare]

How come no one ever addresses the issue that students who have managed to scrape a computer together probably can't afford to pay for expensive music and movies. This is not to condone the actions of the students, but certainly points to the motivation for piracy. If the students can't afford it, some of them will unfortunately steal it.

Re:Media is already too expensive!

[dbazile]

(snip) ...some of them will unfortunately steal it.

Gasp! College students are stealing things? No wonder the RIAA is mad at them... They hate the competition. :)

Re:Media is already too expensive!

[silne]

The even more unfortunate thing is, the more people steal stuff, the more they use that as a justification for raising the prices.

I don't think it's occurred to them that a significant portion of people don't 'steal' movies on principle, they do it because it's either unavailable locally (not everyone lives in DVD Region 1) or it's unaffordable and therefore they make justifications to themselves.

Battle of Acronyms

[jeorgen]

Ok, so I didn't follow the link, but just reading the headline "Do RIAA Demands Violate FERPA Protections?", it just feels like the powerful full bodied upper case acronym RIAA has been challenged by a new kid on the block, the FERPA.

FERPA has less redundancy in it's structure with four unique letters, against the unnecessary duplication of the "A"'s at the end of the RIAA.

FERPA has a more aggressive to feel to it with all the usual F* connotations and the spiffy "P" giving it rhythm. I think it stands a chance.

/jeorgen

Re:Battle of Acronyms

[BortQ]

FERPA = five unique letters

Badly Writen

[McPLUR]

Aside from other various mistakes in the article, this one stood out like a sore thumb.

"...a Verizon DSL user that knowingly and repeatedly infringed on copyrights."

And how exactly does Mr. Bob Liu know this information?

Re:Badly Writen

[Anonymous Coward]

And considering your topic should've been titled "Poorly Written"...I don't think you should be one to talk here. =P

a step backwards?

[phriedom]

Gosh darn it, now they're going to have to deal with that pesky "due process" stuff again. Only the guilty worry about stuff like that. Bah, presumption of innocence crap.

Copyright Complaints

[jkeychan]

I regularly review these complaints at a University and note that the only information the complainers give is the time/date, filename, [KaZaA, usually] username, and IP address. Since most IP addresses are provided via DHCP, I think you would be hard pressed to prove that FERPA [ed.gov] protects student IP addresses since they are not owned by the student and are certainly not unique to them. I don't think the complaints actually violate FERPA in any fashion, and place the onus on the University officials to do t