College Demands RIAA Pay Up For Wasting Its Time

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."

Re:uncle sam (will) say so

[daveschroeder]

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:FUCK YOU SEVEN ELEVEN!

[Nos.]

Repeat after me, copyright infringement is not theft.

Surprised This Is News

[MikeyTheK]

I'm a little surprised this is news. Generally speaking third parties are entitled to be compensated for their costs of complying with subpoenas in civil cases. Normally the receiving parties notify the issuer of the subpoena what the reasonable and necessary costs are of complying with the subpoena, and generally demand payment up front. I don't know why this is any different.

IP Addresses

[daub84]

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?

Re:Ironic

[swid27]

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:Creating a Fearful Consumer Class

[Paradigm_Complex]

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.

Re:Good

[thegameiam]

I think cdbaby [cdbaby.com] is a fantastic resource for unsigned bands...

The FBI pays - Why not the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Surprised This Is News

[Zakko]

There is a difference here, as noted. However, the letters asking to forward the notices to the students included a request to preserve information should associated lawsuits (with discovery court orders) follow. In general, UNL complies with reasonable requests (usually from law enforcement who sometimes have delays in getting court orders signed) to retain this type of information, but generally the officer requesting the information even asks if there are any significant costs involved. The other side of this is that the University may be treating this as a Public Records Request, which in Nebraska also allows for reimbursement, including an up-front deposit if the amount is significant. This could be an interesting lawyer battle.

Re:Good

[thegnu]

But the problem is that most indie "artists" are still independent because they make crap music. Yeah, there are a few really good ones in there. But good luck finding them before the labels snap them up.

You just like pop music, dude. Looky:

Modest Mouse (indie from 1994-2001)
Built to Spill
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Mano Negra (their good stuff was before the major)
Gogol Bordello
Pavement
The Pixies
the Dead Kennedys
NOFX (good until Heavy Petting Zoo) ...[a loooong list of punk bands]...
Frank Black has not been snatched up
The Breeders
The Smoking Popes

and the inverse:
Nickelback
Creed
Fergie
(need I say more?)

You are on bad crack. If anyone wants to contribute to my lists, please do.

As a member of the University of Nebraska IT staff

[Anonymous Coward]

The dorms on campus are dynamic DHCP. Detailed records of what Mac addresses are asociated with what IP address when are kept for a month. Within that month UNL can easily associate a computer with an IP address at a certain time.
If the RIAA was serious about actually doing something about piracy and not just PR, maybe they should not have waited so long before sending these notices? To my knowledge no law enforcement aganecy has ever had a problem with UNL networking's data retention policies. An law-enforcement agency has a warrant, networking complies with what data they have. And networking does pass along requests from companies like Sony for student to remove illegally shared materials from their computers.

I have seen a lot of interpretations of this story, but the tech side is not very complicated. UNL simply has no technical reason to keep detailed mac address/IP address data longer than a month.

I have no idea where the $11 per notice cost number mentioned in the article came from.

I am personally very happy however, to see someone bite back at the RIAA, even in such a small way.

My apologies for posting as A.C. but it is simpler this way.

All errors in this messagee are from me trying to do two things at once. /. and monitor a process.