U.of Oregon Says No to RIAA 241
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The University of Oregon has filed a motion to quash the RIAA's subpoena for information on student identities in what is believed to be the first such motion made by a university with support from the state Attorney General. The motion (pdf) explains that it is impossible to identify the alleged infringers from the information the RIAA has presented: 'Five of the seventeen John Does accessed the content in question from double occupancy dorm rooms at the University. With regard to these Does, the University is able to identify only the room where the content was accessed and whether or not the computer used was a Macintosh or a PC ... The University cannot determine whether the content in question accessed by one occupant as opposed to another, or whether it was accessed instead by a visitor.' The AG's motion further argues (pdf) that "Plaintiffs' subpoena is unduly burdensome and overbroad. It seeks information that the University does not readily possess. In order to attempt to comply with the subpoena, the University would be forced to undertake an investigation to create discovery for Plaintiffs — an obligation not imposed by Rule 45. As the University is unable to identify the alleged infringers with any accuracy, it cannot comply with its federal obligation to notify students potentially affected by the subpoena. One commentator has likened the AG's argument to saying, in effect, that the RIAA's evidence is 'rubbish'."
If this works... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If this works... (Score:5, Interesting)
PS.. GO DUCKS!
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As we understand it, CALEA doesn't apply to us (a state university), and therefore we have no obligation to do anything in response to CALEA, other than exercise normal due diligence. Which isn't, when you get into it, a whole lot.
Who CALEA applies to is our ISP, not us. This is what the law says and what our ISP says; they don't want us doing it, they want to handle it. Therefore, we can have ethernet jacks that anyone can plug into and use (though they're outside our firewall). You have to have an ID to
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I felt sooo much safer knowing that it was impossible in Italy for terrorists to see lolcats. I guess the system is watertight - otherwise I'm sure they wouldn't be putting all us legitimate non-terrorist types to such inconvenince.
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An amazing read. Does the U.O. have a Pre-Vet program there? If so, I think my eldest would get a better education there. I find myself troubled by schools that prefer to chant the current party line as opposed to using thought and reasoning. Thought and reasoning are not always the optimal course of action, but it is a better action than one that requires switching off the brain in order to perform.
I happen to agree with you. I would not want to attend or have my child attend a school that is willing to relinquish its students' civil liberties, as some other colleges and universities have done. I think this motion speaks well for the University of Oregon as an institution that values critical thinking. And I think it speaks well for the Oregon Attorney General that people in his office actually read the law books, and then enforce the law, and are not cowed by a few large corporations.
Rule 45? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rule 45? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Rule 45? (Score:5, Funny)
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http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule34.htm [cornell.edu]
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Rule 45: Expand or die.
Rule 34: War is good for business.
Oddly appropriate.
The beginning of the end? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The beginning of the end? (Score:5, Insightful)
The year the old "pirate" Napster was being sued, CD sales (IIRC) were at their peak and have been dwindling since. The RIAA boycott (that you have never even once heard about in the mainstream media - hmmm....) must have had some slight effect on the industry.
Their first mistake was to think CD burning technology wouldn't, like all computer technology before it, be affordable for the serfs.
Their second mistake was to try to kill their competetion, the indies, by killing P2P.
Their third mistake was seeing MP3s as "product" rather than "advertising". They have always been known as "record companies", and they sold records. Now they're trying to sell music, and music is a non-tangible item. Note that the indies actually do this, giving away MP3s and selling CDs at their shows.
There were other mistakes - overpricing their wares (an indie CD is usually $5-$10), only having one good song on the CD (my generatiuon was damned lucky, have you ever heard a Led Zepplin song that sucked? There aren't any!), suing their paying customers (DUH!!!!!!) etc.
All their woes are self-inflicted. Now by "suicide" I'm assuming that you'll agree that if a mosquito lands on your foot and you try to kill the mosquito by firing five shots from a sixteen guage shotgun at it and you bleed to death, it's suicide.
-mcgrew [mcgrew.info]
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The rest of your argument is unaffected by this, however, and I agree.
The RIAA is obselete on abo
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"...those of us who don't use drugs of any type other than medicinal purposes."
Or some of us just have a broader definition of what constitutes a medicinal purpose.
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If the colleges won't help the RIAA with their "Investigations" could this be the beginning of the end of the RIAA going after college students? Let's hope so. They already gave up on Harvard, too many students and professors that actually understand the law.
I would suspect that the RIAA would simply just try to have the law changed, or have new ones created to close any loop-holes. I think this is a distinct possibility given how consumer interests and individual rights often take a back seat to federal or corporate interests when making laws. The DMCA is the most obvious example. And the riddance of the Net neutrality law is the most recent example. In Canada we are expected to sign into law pro-CRIA legislation within the next few months thanks to lobbying
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At least, one can hope.
Unfortunately, this is a valid subpoena (Score:2, Interesting)
The U. of Oregon is right that the IP address is insufficient to identify the infringer. But I don't think that is a valid reason to deny a subpoena. Currently, the RIAA knows the alleged infringement came from university. If they can subpoena information that reduces that down to 2 likely suspects, then that is perfectly valid. The fact that this evidence alone cannot identify the individual precisely doesn't mean that they don't have a case.
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Re:Unfortunately, this is a valid subpoena (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unfortunately, this is a valid subpoena (Score:4, Insightful)
Even the summary clearly indicates that the only thing the University can state with any accuracy is the room that was used, and whether the computer was a PC or a MAC.
This in no-way limits the pool of potential "defendants" to two, (which was also stated in the summary), it simply says that it could have been on-or-the-other of the two room-mates, or any guest they may have ever had, or anyone else who may have had access to the room (i.e. janitorial staff, friends, friends' friends, party guests, etc.).
The University seems to be essentially saying that the scope of the investigation that they would have to undertake in order to comply with the subpoena exceeds the burden the litigant is (or should be?) permitted to impose on them.
-AC
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I got in trouble with my university for trolling an IRC chat room. (Chat roomed admin called my ISP.) They traced it to my internet connection.
TRUST ME, the "roommate, ja
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Re:Valid denial for Oregon, but what about elsewhe (Score:3, Informative)
This may be something unique to the University of Oregon, but I would be curious to see if the challenge of the subpoena would stand when applied to other universities. The network architecture at my college was similar. However there were more specific rules involved. In the case of my dorm, each student was assigned a particular IP address, even a physical port in the room. There is also an agreement that is signed by the student that they agree to control access to that access point. (Lots of other nitty details, no routers...etc) Without us falling into the trap of confusing what a judge would decide vs what we as a tech savvy community would want, would it be possible for a University's own access policies to be used against it in a refusal. For UoO, they do appear to have valid claim to deny the request, but it seems that if they were more 'precise' in delivering internet access then they would not be able to refuse the subpoena.
Actually, the holes in the RIAA's "identification" process are not only applicable to all of the other colleges and universities targeted, they're applicable to all of the "John Doe" cases, even those dealing with commercial ISP's.
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Umm, hell people don't notice much larger things than someone (say, another student) wandering into someone else's dorm room and futzing with their computer for a whi
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Quite right, too. If you're going to prosecute someone for child porn and ruin their lives, you better be *da
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More to the point, the university has no more of an obligation to ban p2p than comcast does. Do you think that comcast should be breaking the internet by shu
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not to shield yourself from prosecution when you knowingly and repeatedly download copyrighted music that you do not pay for
C'mon, it's unbelievable that still here on /. there are people which believe that it's unlawful to download. The copyright infringement is actually the distribution, i.e. the uploading. Looks like the RIAA's PR campaign does it's job ...
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Then the university needs to take steps to prevent it happening. if that means banning certain p2p protocols or certain websites then so be it. Sorry to burst everyone's bubble but universities are places where you go to further your education, not to shield yourself from prosecution when you knowingly and repeatedly download copyrighted music that you do not pay for, and for which you know payment is required.
You may not believe in copyright, or the rights of the IP holders, fine, then you should fight to change the law, or happily be prosecuted so you can have your day in court and make your spec about the injustice. But to hide behind university lawyers and IT people who frankly have better things to do than stick up for the illegal activities of the students, is just lame.
Speaking from... uhm... first hand experience here. They do some prevention of P2P. No matter what they do there is always ways around it though.
They severely rate limit traffic they can identify as P2P traffic. This is easily overcome by encrypting bittorrent traffic, which all modern BT clients can do.
They also will monitor your traffic usage and if, for instance, you use a large percentage of the traffic they will tell you to back off -- they don't know it is because of illegal activity but they also
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I kind of doubt that students are paying thousands of dollars in books, tuition, and housing just to "shield themselves from prosecution" and "hide behind university lawyers". And the banning of protocols is generally not a good idea, since there are often many legitimate uses for them-- in bittorrent's example, Linux distros, WoW patches, and legally available music, for instance-- but building blacklists at the firewall level wouldn't be unreasonable.
"...and IT people who frankly have better things to
Re:Unfortunately, this is a valid subpoena (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unfortunately, this is a valid subpoena (Score:5, Informative)
Couldn't the RIAA just rephrase it's request? (Score:2)
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Of course it reduces the pool (Score:3, Interesting)
It still does not reduce the poool of people by any reasonable amount....
If the room is dual occupancy, and there is evidence that the law was being broken using a PC in that room, and only one occupant of that room has a PC, then I'm sorry, but on balance it's looking like that person was the one breaking the law. Moreover, this is only 5 of the 17 Does. For another 9 of them, they do have the identity of the person whose credentials were used to access the wireless networking facilities, and apparently the argument is just that they can't prove the person who actually access
Re:Of course it reduces the pool (Score:4, Informative)
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OK, maybe I'm out of my legal depth here, but let me propose a dubious analogy (recognising that obviously we're not talking about a life-and-death criminal case here). If a murder has been committed, and a smoking gun has been found, and there is forensic evidence on that gun that would strongly suggest a certain individual used the weapon in the recent past (though it might not have been the shot that killed the victim in this case), and a known source has information that links that forensic clue to the
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As they are a service provider they are not responsible for the actions of their users, unless they induce users into committing infringing acts.
Your version would lead to Comcast or Sky getting sued due to users downloading movies. This would only happen if comcast ran ads saying "join us, and download for FREEEEEE!!!!!"
RIAA is rubbish. Question here for the law types. (Score:4, Interesting)
I am glad that the U. of Oregon stood up to these guys but it seems that the idea of a warrant or getting this information as being "unduly burdensome" seems pretty broad.
Is there a solid definition in these types of cases for what is really unduly burdensome?
How's their safe harbor doing? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I were an RIAA shark, I'd smell blood in the water.
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> or terminate the accounts of repeat offenders? If they can't do those things,
> does that eliminate their Safe Harbor status?
Short answer, "no".
Slightly longer answer, many services can't do that. Requiring them to would place an impossible burden on anonymous speech.
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DMCA doesn't apply, really. What would you "take down"?
Besides, as others point out, there is no law here. Nothing.
Re:How's their safe harbor doing? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, yes. But the question is, whose blood?
As I said elsewhere, the U.O. President is a former dean of the U.O. Law School, and a former Attorney General of the State of Oregon. His university bio says he argued seven cases before the US Supreme Court as state AG and won six, and goes on to say that's more cases and a better record than any other contemporary State A.G. Its almost impossible to imagine that the University took this step without consulting him, and it's equally difficult to imagine he's misjudged the strength of their case or that he's afraid to take it all the way to the US Supreme Court.
I think the RIAA's sharks have just bitten a much bigger shark. If they aren't looking for a way to swim away quietly, they're in for a hell of a fight.
this is not how you defeat the riaa (Score:4, Insightful)
once there was a time when we were nothing but small mammals, and the world was ruled by terrible lizards. in the realm of intellectual property, this is that time. the internet, of course, obliterates the old economic models of distribution. the old economic models are the riaa's sustenance. so you defeat the riaa by waiting for it's food source to dry up
in the meantime, do what little mammals do best: be nocturnal, be quick, be small, be quiet. mask yourself, use proxies, do all manner of obfuscation and security through obscurity. the internet has no legal jurisdiction. don't fight them head on. just hide
there will be of course casualties, even a dying lizard can swing it's tail mightily. but in the end, it will be dead, and we shall inherit the earth. patience my friends. you cannot defeat the terrible lizard head on. just wait for it to die of starvation
it's economic model is history. the only one who doesn't know it is the riaa. there is no reasoning with the terrible beast, it's behaviors are not, and never have been, and never will be rational. you do not reason with a legal attack dog
wait, and the riaa will die. stop trying to reason with the unreasonable
suing soccer moms and grandmothers for thousands of dollars is not the actions of a rational entity. it is the mark of a last desperate stand, and the end is in sight
Re:this is not how you defeat the riaa (Score:5, Insightful)
1. You can't "wait them out" if you're the one that's being sued (or, as in this case, the university that's being put in a position in which it's being forced to violate the law)
2. If you think this motion doesn't have enormous impact, you're wrong.
3. The Capitol v. Thomas case is far from over.
well i would be foolish to debate you on legal pts (Score:5, Insightful)
for example, in a world where no artist signs with any music label, because they can get more money putting their own shingle on the internet, then the rights of labels that don't exist economically anymore don't have any meaning
it will take time to arrive at this new world, so perhaps we have to wait a lot longer than i might wish
to put it another way: there is a great legal framework in place concerning the rights of player piano music roll manufacturers
but in world where there are no player pianos, except in museums, then what does that legal framework mean?
likewise, i am not going to counter your legal arguments, your legal arguments are 100% correct
but i am going to say that over time, the entire legal realm the arguments you are making exist in will become defunct
it will take awhile, but you have an entire generation of young people who know what i am talking about. when such children are in their 40s and 50s, and are running whatever dried up remains of bertelsmann, coumbia records, etc. still exists, then what will any of this sound and fury really mean anymore?
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i want to attenuate what said in my previous post: (Score:2)
it is just that, at times, the existence of things like the RIAA, the jury verdicts for people like oj simpson and robert blake and phil spector (ironically, a music mogul), they leave me profoundly disillusioned with the law
that is, in the case of the RIAA, the law seems less interested in morality an
Re:i want to attenuate what said in my previous po (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a simple man.
I see some bad guys picking on some defenseless people, I jump in and try to help. Whether I will ultimately win or lose is a matter of indifference to me, because I have no control over the ultimate outcome. What I have control of is that I am fighting on the right side.
All I know about the motion the Oregon State Attorney General made on behalf of the University of Oregon is this:
-it is legally right
-it is morally right
-it's the first time a university or an AG has stepped into this business since it began in February
-the RIAA lawyers can make no intelligible response to it, since it is based on facts which the RIAA's own witnesses have already admitted under oath, and
-it's a terrible blow to the RIAA, once which they never anticipated.
So I'm smiling. And you should be too.
well said ;-) (Score:2)
i believe cynicism is a poor replacement for heart, and you have heart. to hell with my pessisism, keep up the good fight!
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really, you don't say? (Score:2)
i did not know that!
thank you sir, for shining the light of your great intellect upon this discussion. i am mightily humbled
i thought for sure that the jurassic period was exactly like business law, and that the paleozoic era was exactly like real estate law
boy do i need to rethink my point of view on life now
pffffffft
i think you might suffer from a fallacy known as "taking the analogy way too seriously"
i heartily await your next rhe
Re:this is not how you defeat the riaa (Score:4, Informative)
U of O A Good Place To Start (Score:3, Interesting)
With Phil Knight's money behind them, a former State Attorney General as the head of the school, and a liberal-leaning state, this could really spell out some issues for RIAA.
IP Trace subpoena (Score:5, Insightful)
A subpoena for an IP trace ("tell me who owned this internet access account on this date") is not normally a burden. If the subpoena instead requested the school "identify who was using this computer at this time", the school's response fits. The subpoena requires the school investigate, not just disgorge a few records.
Maybe all the students in the dorm could each claim they were the guilty party? ("I'm Sparticus!")
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Maybe all the students in the dorm could each claim they were the guilty party? ("I'm Sparticus!")
The RIAA would just take that as admission of guilt and sue each one of them seperately for their lifetime total income + damages.
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I like the idea. Even better, I like the idea that all MAC address belong to some Linksys router or another in the dorm. Beyond NAT, it could be anyone.
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As I recall, the slaves who tried that in the Third Servile War [wikipedia.org] were all killed anyway for their trouble. Perhaps not the best example to follow.
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A subpoena for an IP trace ("tell me who owned this internet access account on this date") is not normally a burden. If the subpoena instead requested the school "identify who was using this computer at this time", the school's response fits.
From the fine document:
On September 17, 2007, Plaintiffs served the University of Oregon ("University") with a subpoena under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45, commanding the University to produce
As a UofO Graduate this make me PROUD!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Go Ducks!
It's about time someone fought back. UofO has the backing of Phil Knight [wikipedia.org] (founder of Nike), so there should be plenty of money to fight off the RIAA should things get ugly.
Recycle used CDs, save the planet (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the day, we used to tape tapes and albums with absolutely no consequences. And we still bought new tapes and albums anyway. Today, we are assumed to be criminals for doing the same thing, only now in digital format. What is a person to do?
I'll think I will stick to used CD stores for now. Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Re:Recycle used CDs, save the planet (Score:5, Interesting)
can't get much more blatant than THAT, can you?
if it was ok then - and the sony/betamax case already established our right to make personal copies of 'media' - what's changed?
what's changed is that media companies see the signaling of the end for their business model. they see they have 5-10 yrs left, if even that. they are trying to milk the system for all its worth, ONE final time.
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Its because they want to be the point of sale for EVERY copy forever and ever. Dont think if they could get away with it with DRM and crap that they wouldnt try making you buy the same song for your computer, your iPod, Your Stereo,
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Because now, with everything digital, a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy is as perfect as the original. Back then, there was a limit to how much you could copy before the quality was so low that no one would want it.
The real answer:
The MAFIAA realizes that their days are numbered, thanks to the Intarwebs (Tubes, , etc), and found enough congressmen and lawyers, and made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
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Anyone using the "try before buy" argument is lying or stupid and wasting their money. Nobody is buying CDs if they are downloading they very same music. Who is buying CDs today? The people without broadband Internet connections because downloading is too slow over di
Costs of enforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been expecting the pendulum to swing the other way to either strike down these things due to the financial burden on the enforcement/ judicial/ corrections or to start taxing (rightly so) all those poor artists of which they have been protecting their rights.
Re:Costs of enforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
GO DUCKS! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:GO DUCKS! (Score:5, Informative)
When they say "this subpoena would require us to conduct an investigation" they are in effect saying "the RIAA hasn't conducted an appropriate investigation".
In fact, I'll go one step further: when they point out to the Court that the RIAA's evidence doesn't point to a copyright infringer,
-they are saying something that is fully applicable to all of the RIAA's lawsuits, both those against college students and those against the general populace,
-they are only saying what the RIAA has admitted under oath at the Capitol v. Thomas trial and in the deposition of Dr. Jacobson in UMG v. Lindor, and
-they are in effect sticking up for ALL of us.
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I'm sorry, Ray, but I just don't see how any reasonable, impartial person could accept the arguments you make here.
Yeah, but if you read the litigation documents carefully you'll see they ARE sticking up for the students' rights. They're saying "we're not going to give you someone's name if you don't have evidence that that person did in fact commit a copyright infringement".
If you know with reasonable certainty which computer was used to commit an infringement, that is evidence that its owner was responsible. It's certainly not conclusive evidence, and it might turn out to be evidence that someone else did it instead, but it's evidence all the same.
When they say "this subpoena would require us to conduct an investigation" they are in effect saying "the RIAA hasn't conducted an appropriate investigation".
And how are they supposed to conduct an "appropriate" investigation themselves if the University can withhold k
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I would offer that the RIAA has all the evidence that can be obtained without acquiring evidence from computers. If there is no evidence there - when their investigation has determin
IP Address and a "Person" (Score:2, Interesting)
I would set up my own router with an name like $*@&_YOU
Then serve private IP to a firewall, then another to a wireless router
Then server the floor wireless.
Now, who did what?
I think that is the core of the UofO rebutial
Support of State Attorney General (Score:4, Interesting)
Amusingly enough, the University of Oregon's President [uoregon.edu] used to be the state Attorney General. I suspect he had an easier time getting the current AG's support than most university presidents have.
Fight the power, RPI! (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.poly.rpi.edu/article_view.php3?view=5716&part=1 [rpi.edu]
Definitely a New Development Here (Score:2)
This is the first time that I've seen where someone, most surprisingly an actual non-part
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This is the first time that I've seen where someone, most surprisingly an actual non-party, is attempting to require the RIAA to prove their case at this point, where they probably cannot prove it at all! One thing impressive about this. Who really wants to find out that the opposition to your case is coming in on the State Attorney General's letterhead?
Good points, Nom.
It will be amusing to see what kind of response the RIAA's lapdogs -- er, lawyers -- can cobble together, since the AG's motion is based on facts which the RIAA's own witnesses have admitted under oath.
Glad to be a duck! (Score:2)
UO's take on P2P (Score:2)
Anonymity good? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is all well and good when the party wanting the info happens to be the Bad Guy du jour. I wonder if there's any possible network abuse (spamming, sending death threats, any of the 4 horsemen (terrorist|drugdealer|kidnapper|childpornographer), etc) that might make people question the sense in not having a person accountable for a node's actions.
Also, I suspect that if the university can't find someone to pass the buck to, then it's going to stop with them.
RIAA free sticker (Score:3, Interesting)
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Agreed. However, when someone says, "We would like to help you bully people, but we just don't have the information you want." they're hardly taking a stand.
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Re:Hopefully More Push-back Follows. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hopefully More Push-back Follows. (Score:5, Informative)
RICO is so often brought up in these discussions that I finally went looking to see what it would take to get a RICO indictment and eventual conviction. I'm not so sure that it applies.
Note: I got my RICO information from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], so take it for what it's worth.
First off, RICO requires that the individual or groups commit two of 35 different crimes. Extortion is in the list, but not many of the other crimes could apply to the RIAA no matter how far we stretch them. I think even extortion is a bit of a stretch. The ones that are even worth considering are:
I think we can ignore things like murder-for-hire, slavery, etc.
There's a fine line between extortion and blackmail. In both cases, there's a threat for gain. "Pay up or else!" In extortion, the threat is generally something illegal; for blackmail, the threat is normally something that would be legal, if it weren't being done as part of the threat for gain. Certainly, the RIAA is well within the bounds of legal behavior to bring lawsuits, and the courts are very reluctant to limit access to the courts under any circumstances.
To show extortion, one would need to demonstrate that bringing the suits is, itself, improper. That's not impossible, particularly if we can prove that the RIAA threatened litigation that it knew it couldn't win, but there are other rules for dealing with threats of frivolous lawsuits. My knowledge of that end of the law is pretty shaky — does anybody know what those rules are? Does anyone know if one can use them to demonstrate that the legal threat was, in fact, extortion?
For blackmail, one merely needs to demonstrate that the threat was used for gain. Unfortunately, once again, the courts like to encourage parties to settle. Settlement negotiations are almost impossible to characterize as blackmail.
RICO was written with obstruction of justice in mind. The idea was that organized crime would threaten witnesses, suborn testimony, etc. Some of the things that I've heard in a few RIAA cases do push this line, but I don't think they cross it. There's a big difference between trying to subpoena a minor and depose her outside the presence of her guardian, versus saying "If you testify, I'll kill your pets, your kids, and your grandparents, in alphabetical order."
Fraud only seems to apply if the letters they send out contain fraudulent offers. I'm not sure how this could apply, but it's worth examination.
Racketeering refers to a completely illegal business model - e.g., a "Protection Racket," where you pay for "insurance" against bad things happening to your business — where the bad things are the insurer actively trashing your business. If extortion applies to a large proportion of lawsuits (enough to show a clear, deliberate pattern), then racketeering probably applies as well. However, I don't think extortion could be demonstrated.
Ultimately, much as I'd personally love to see RICO applied, I don't think it does. They key point is that the courts don't like to limit access to the courts, even by a chilling effect. Everybody has a right to their day in court. That, in turn, leads to the abuses we see where a big corporation can afford more and bigger lawyers than small mom-and-pop businesses, who settle cases that they could win because they'd lose more money in legal fees than the settlement.
What we need is a revamp of this part of the legal system. Frankly, I don't see how that can be done without free, government-appointed counsel in every case, which is even less workable than the current system.
not uniformly (Score:2)
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More like (Score:3, Insightful)
"Thanks"
"What's your father do?"
"Lawyer"
"Nice, What college are you going to?"
"Either Harvard or Yale"
Yeah, I'm sure they weep themselves to sleep at night.