know you guys like to talk about the crappy riaa. this is a pretty good article i think.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30097.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30097.html
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riaa strikes against some college students
- Thread starter howard
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the RIAA is just annoying. Im equally annoyed that their website has been up and running for several days! 
Someone tell me why a Billion+ dollar industry has to go after the poor college student and the Navy sailor who both don't make jack ****. Damn America and our Corperate Slavery!
edit: woops... I lost control there.
edit: woops... I lost control there.
The RIAA refuse to die quietly, clinging to the last vestiges of a regime which is not viable in this day and age.
People do not want their tastes dictated to them, and the RIAA was afraid that sharing information would cause a music buying coup, so they've started persecuting the little guy, with massive threats and punishments.
Damn, I could be talkng about Saddam....
People do not want their tastes dictated to them, and the RIAA was afraid that sharing information would cause a music buying coup, so they've started persecuting the little guy, with massive threats and punishments.
Damn, I could be talkng about Saddam....
Because those poor college students have 100 Gig hard drives connected at 10-100 mbps to a fast Internet connection and are stupid enough to allow unlimited downloads from their computer. Until we started going after bandwidth abusers, we had students (and staff) that were serving over 20 GBs of data per day of P2P. What is that, 20,000 minutes of music. More likely it was movies.
I have no sympathy whatsoever. I am sure that sailor was probably connected to a high speed network and was serving up multi-gigabytes of data per day. They are going after those who serve the most.
I have no sympathy for P2P users who get busted. Hey guess what, they are breaking the law. I don't care what their take on the law is, If a court convicts them, that is good enough for me.
I don't love the RIAA or MPAA, they are just another lobbiest group/PR firm. The AFL-CIO is in the same boat with them, and I bet many of the people against the RIAA would not say the same about the other unions. The RIAA is just a union of music publishers. Looking out for their rights. Trying to get political support for their causes, and using the money of the members to get it. It drives me crazy, all the corporate interests in politics, that doesn't change my opionion about music piracy though.
Quite simply, they can do a query with your favorite P2P application, start a download, and look at the source IP address. They can they build up a database that links which songs where found at which IP address. When the number of songs on one computer reaches some critical mass, the fire off an email to the University abuse email address and threaten them with legal action.
It is not difficult. The universities have better things to do then report people to the RIAA. If someone is abusing network bandwidth, they can just tell them to cut it out. If they don't they can easily cut them off from network access.
!=Rocket Science
It might be cheaper at this school to offer a reward to find P2P users than to find the bandwidth abusers on their own. P2P can quickly eat up expensive T-1/OC-3 commodity Internet connections. If P2P were allowed to go hog-wild on campus networks, there would be no bandwidth left for surfing MacRumors.com
They don't even give people Cease and Desist letters first? How fair is that? The RIAA should at least give you some warning before they decide to ruin your life.
My alma mater made the news! Michigan Tech is one of the offending schools. Makes me so proud.
And something makes me think that they aren't going to get $150,000 per song from an MTU student.
Lets see, 1 million songs times 150g per song...thats around 150 billion. Maybe they can ask Bill Gates for a down payment on that loan.
Taft
And something makes me think that they aren't going to get $150,000 per song from an MTU student.
Lets see, 1 million songs times 150g per song...thats around 150 billion. Maybe they can ask Bill Gates for a down payment on that loan.
Taft
Why should they have to send out some letter? These people are breaking the law, plain and simple. Should the police start sending letters to criminals warning "If you murder someone, you could possibly go to prison"? No, because people know that murder is against the law, and so is theft and distribution of copyrighted material. Written laws are public domain and can be accessed by anyone. These people knew they were comitting a crime. They just didn't think they would get caught.
Read peterjhill's post above. I completely agree with everything he said.
one, dont compare a civil suit to criminal offenses. these people didnt murder anyone.
two, this is substantially different than a typical copyright infringement where, usually a company (with insurance), uses someone elses work for a profit. and in those cases, the only real dmages that can be collected are for profits gained illegally, and in SOME cases PROVABLE lost profits. i doubt the RIAA can prove 150K per song in lost damages. they wont get anywhere near that.
third, when dealing with students or other "unsophisticated" parties, i dont think it would be out of the question to send a cease and desist order. Its not like the RIAA is going to get $h!t from these students. If i were them and i lost a big setlement, i'd declare bankruptcy (easy as a poor student) and the debt would go byebye.
the RIAA knows this...they dont really expect to get money from these students, they are just making a point...which makes this rather malicious IMHO (though NOT malicious prosecution...thats not applicable here)
two, this is substantially different than a typical copyright infringement where, usually a company (with insurance), uses someone elses work for a profit. and in those cases, the only real dmages that can be collected are for profits gained illegally, and in SOME cases PROVABLE lost profits. i doubt the RIAA can prove 150K per song in lost damages. they wont get anywhere near that.
third, when dealing with students or other "unsophisticated" parties, i dont think it would be out of the question to send a cease and desist order. Its not like the RIAA is going to get $h!t from these students. If i were them and i lost a big setlement, i'd declare bankruptcy (easy as a poor student) and the debt would go byebye.
the RIAA knows this...they dont really expect to get money from these students, they are just making a point...which makes this rather malicious IMHO (though NOT malicious prosecution...thats not applicable here)
If you murder someone, you are still liable for a wrongful death suit, a civil case. The fact is, these people are breaking the law, and the parties that the RIAA represent feel that these people are doing them harm, they therefore have every right, as American Corporations to seek damages in a court of law. [sarcasm]It would be unpatriotic to say that the RIAA should not be allowed to sue first and ask questions later[/sarcasm]
If they say that this person is responsible for distributing 150k copies of an album or song, then those numbers might make sense. I have seen individual computers on campus with over a quarter million flows in one 24 hour period on port 1214 (kazaa)
Why don't then just go and default on their student loan while they are at it. (the students). After all, they probably don't want to buy a house, car, get a credit card, in the next ten years.
See response to item one
yes, i am well aware of the civil suits that can be brought for murder...but AGAIN, you aren found GUILTY because it ISNT criminal. there is no use comparing apples to oranges in the law. THAT was my point about discussing these students in the same light as a murderer.
As to your second response please find a lawyer and see what a lawyers view on "provable" is. I doubt there is evidence recorded in these cases at all other than massive presence of files and massive data flow. thats not enough for the specific damages. How do they know which song was downloaded most, or if some of the songs werent public domain (though doubtful), or if they hadnt just observed a few heavy traffic days.
oh, and bankruptcy doesnt get you out of your student loans and i doubt they would REALLY have to declare bankruptcy...the court would probably just toss aside the monetary awards and give them community service.
and i never said anywhere that the RIAA didnt have the RIGHT to sue. of course they do, my point is in this case its not going to help them much, and is terrible PR (like they care).
As to your second response please find a lawyer and see what a lawyers view on "provable" is. I doubt there is evidence recorded in these cases at all other than massive presence of files and massive data flow. thats not enough for the specific damages. How do they know which song was downloaded most, or if some of the songs werent public domain (though doubtful), or if they hadnt just observed a few heavy traffic days.
oh, and bankruptcy doesnt get you out of your student loans
and i doubt they would REALLY have to declare bankruptcy...the court would probably just toss aside the monetary awards and give them community service.and i never said anywhere that the RIAA didnt have the RIGHT to sue. of course they do, my point is in this case its not going to help them much, and is terrible PR (like they care).
You did not get my point, having to declare bankruptcy to get out of paying the RIAA is still going to do monetary harm to the student. The reference to the student loans is my way of saying that declaring bankruptcy is as bad as defaulting.
Sure the RIAA may not get their money, but the student will be just as punished. They won't be able to get a car loan without a significant cosigner. Not to mention that it is not cheap to declare bankruptcy or as simple as you seem to imply in your post.
Does the RIAA care about good PR? Not that much. That is one of the reasons that the record companies have the RIAA to provide some removal from the negative actions.
And about civil suits, guilty v. liable, both are going to cost you.
Oh yeah, there are some jobs that ask for a credit check, I wouldn't want to work for those companies, but would hate if I had to pass a nice job because of a bankruptcy.
Well not only do I disagree with your main stance that it is good they are going after college students I must also disagree with your assertion that filing banckruptcy somehow ruins your credit. To the conbtrary, you actually get more credits offers because you now have zero debt. A co-worker of mine in another life had crap, crappy credit so he filed for bankruptcy and then got a car loan for a 30K auto because he had zero debt. Not always the case, but it's not fanicial suicide to file for bankruptcy.
As to the topic, not sure if you were are and if so then you must have had some parrental finacial assistance but when I was in college I had dick. I had work study to pay me $80 every 2 weeks. With no food program money you think I'm gonna shell out $16 for a CD that shouldn't cost more then $7 even once a month? These college kids [most of them] can't afford to buy the majority of these albumns. So it's not lost revenue. In the old days someone would just pop in a cassette into their dual cassette player and press play/record and BAM! a PEFECTLY LEGAL FRICKING COPY OF AN ALBUMN PRUCHASED BY SOMEONE ELSE!!! Got vinyl? Then you have a great copy on cassette! Got a VHS tape? Hey, well I have a Best Buy bought GoVideo!! [not personally]
Wow, so that means it's perfectly LEGAL to make EXACT copies of Albums and Videos. How many people who own a Go Video machine PAID FOR THIER MOVIES RATHER THEN GOING TO BLOCKBUSTER?!!? This is only an issue because it's rrampant, widespread, a fashion and CDs offer a higher quality experience. DVDs offer a higher quality experience. So while there may be a moral issue when dealing with someone who blantantly distrubutes gigs upon gigs of music and movies, what he did and the others how are downlaoding are only do one thing different then what has been DONE LEGALLY the past 2 DECADES!!! and that's obtaining it from someone they don't know.
So it's illegal to get a copy from a stanger, that's the law. It's not however, illegel to rent a movie from Blockbuster and rip it, rent a VHS from Blockbuster and Copy it Clean, borrow a tape from a friend and Copy it Clean! So this is selective punishment is is absolutely ridiculous and anyone that agress with this BS is well, ignorant and ridiculous as well.
Oh the humanity
The only reason I think it is bad is because thousands and
thousands of people do it, and very few get punished. Seems
very unfair to me.
thousands of people do it, and very few get punished. Seems
very unfair to me.
Just to clarify: Making a copy of an album and giving it away has always been illegal, even in 1985 with vinyl and cassettes. It's only legal if you keep the copies for yourself. Same with MP3s.
And whether you would have been able to afford the album if you hadn't obtained it illegally also doesn't matter. If someone gave you a copy they made of the album, it's still illegal. And it is illegal to rent a movie from Blockbuster and copy it. The punishment may be selective, but the law isn't.
I agree it's unfair - it's unfair that music companies are having their products stolen left and right, raising prices for everyone else. Everybody who participates in P2P and distributes copyrighted material illegally should expect to be punished. Those who aren't punished should considering themselves lucky, but should not be surprised if/when their luck runs out.
Whose? Mine? I couldn't really give a poop who RIAA goes after. I don't share MP3s, so I don't have to worry. I just feel that if I were them, college students would be a target market to go after. They are the most likely to participate in P2P and have alot of bandwidth. The home user on a DSL capped at 256k up is nothing compared to a student who can maintain 3-4 Mbps continuous serving of data from their computer.
This is an insane assertion. I doubt that many actually believe it is true. This is not why bankruptcy exists. You are mistaken and need to find the facts.
It may not be suicide, but it is not in any way a positive thing to your credit rating.
And what is your point. I had no assistance from my family. I worked, got student loans, and had $300 a month from the GI bill, that I earned from four years in the Navy. I didn't use that as an excuse to steal.
Last I checked, CDs are not something one needs to survive. If it was, then you could buy them with food stamps. If you can't afford to buy the CD, then listen to the radio. That way, you can listen to your music, and through the miracle of advertisments, allow the artists to get their money through the radio stations payments.
Not true
You can buy a tape recorder and dual vcr deck for the same reason you can buy a computer. There are legal uses of the machines. That does not mean that it legal to use your computer to hack into the Pentagon. That does not mean that you can use your dual vcr to make copies of movies and give them to all your friends, if you don't have the copyright to do so.
Not a moral issue, it is a legal issue. It is not legal. Therefore, doing so makes one liable for prosecution.
I doubt that I can change your opinion, but someday, you might feel differently.