College Demands RIAA Pay Up For Wasting Its Time 261
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."
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
While I don't know if the RIAA has done anything in particular illegal (though I am fairly sure they have somewhere along the line) I still see the trends in their lawsuits and tactics as abusive and deserving of a civil (if that really counts between two very large organizations neither of which are really citizens) hearing.
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And typically, the honest old County Judge is rather confused by all the technical mumbo-jumbo, but naturally sees it th
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Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
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Surprised This Is News (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
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They had to find a way ... (Score:3, Funny)
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Rich
RIAA needs to pay me... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:RIAA needs to pay me... (Score:5, Funny)
Better get that plane ticket to Soviet Russia then. I've heard the time travel costs extra.
Re:RIAA needs to pay me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously. You know honestly, the RIAA reminds me of the people fighting for prohibition. In the end it's going to lose because everyone is still drinking the booze (stealing the music) and all the legal action in the world isn't going to stop it. So you might as well just come to the conclusion that it's going to happen. I personally say let's make it legal!
Welcome to ... (Score:5, Funny)
News for lawyers, trials that matters
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It seems like the **AA really have got a hold of Slashdot. Oh well, it's April's fools day next week. Let's hope that in two weeks Slashdot starts posting some higher quality stories.
Re:Welcome to ... (Score:5, Funny)
This really worries me, since I use USAA [usaa.com] for a lot of my insurance and banking.
Re:Welcome to ... (Score:5, Funny)
(As seen to the left)
RIAAdot Categories
College Students
Single Mothers
Dissabled Vets
Household pets
The Deceased
Newborn babies
People without internet
No one is safe from the law!
Re:Official "Who's Next?" Pool (Score:5, Funny)
You try reading legalise with all the vowels stripped out.
Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
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]
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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.
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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...
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Good riddance to bad rubbish. Now, how about we see to the MPAA...
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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
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Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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but the problem is (Score:3, Insightful)
-1 no shit
and sometimes you need a
+1 no shit
uncle sam (will) say so (Score:5, Insightful)
Coming soon, federal legislation giving the University a need to hang onto that information.
Re:uncle sam (will) say so (Score:4, Insightful)
http://news.com.com/FBI+director+wants+ISPs+to+tr
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)
It was also passed in 1994 (i.e., not under Bush), and isn't new (though the deadline for compliance is May 2007).
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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
Create more debt (Score:2)
who are you rooting for? (Score:2, Insightful)
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
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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)?
yes (Score:2)
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
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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.
as long as you are angry and fighting (Score:2)
Re:uncle sam (will) say so (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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You seem to be having trouble understanding the post. Here, let me help you out. [wikipedia.org]
Re:uncle sam (will) say so (Score:4, Insightful)
Answer: You won't get marked as insightful then
MAFIAA gets a beating (Score:2)
Gnat on an elephant's back (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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.
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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
Holy shit !!! This is becoming more fun day by day (Score:2)
I hope Nebraska Wins (Score:3, Funny)
What's going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
well, you could check out NU's use guidelines (Score:2)
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]
RIAA never heard of dynamic addressing, heh (Score:2)
bunch 'a' dinosaurs.
dismiss it all with prejudice and stick RIAA with the costs. serves 'em right.
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What I wrote in their support (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the letter I wrote to the president of UNL, the chancellor, each of the regents, and the CIO (Mr. Weir):
I got several replies of agreement, and I think that the school will be holding its ground.
GO HUSKERS!
Re:What I wrote in their support (Score:5, Interesting)
Well said. You should send that along to the Lincoln Journal Star [townnews.com], the Omaha World-Herald [mailto] and the Daily Nebraskan [dailynebraskan.com].
Hey Slashdot! Want to have fun? Read (and reply to) some of the comments in the Journal Star articles about UNL and the RIAA (available here [journalstar.com] and here [journalstar.com].)
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Who justified piracy? I don't advocate it, but I don't think college kids need to be bankrupted because they gave an MP3 to a friend. Furthermore, you seemed to miss the part about having received replies. I don't usually bother replying to emails that I'm just going to delete, but maybe that's just me.
Go Cornhuskers, Go Big Red! (Score:4, Funny)
fuck the RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)
Clear Channel is a tool. (Score:2)
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Re:fuck the RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
Schools should play the "We've got law students galore, just itching for something to work on" card.
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You go Farmboys !!! (Score:2)
They need a better data retention policy (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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
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)
The Free Ride is Over (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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)
Reasons for RIAA not to sue Universities (Score:4, Funny)
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)
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.
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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.
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Fill that sucker out and there goes your plausible deniability.
IP Addresses (Score:2, Informative)
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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.
DRM (Score:2)
Flawed model (Score:5, Insightful)
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....
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Attacking Colleges is quite stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
Why should the RIAA be any different in their requests... after all - they don't even have the force of law behind them!
Re:U of Nebraska = Haven for Hackers? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm also pretty sure that the IP is kept longer then they admit. I have friends attending UNL and they have had the same IP all year. It did not even change when they went home for x-mas break. I think they have the ability to help the RIAA if they want, but with all the bad press, and Nebraska's need for recruiting out-of-state students, this is the perfect publicity stunt. "Come to Nebraska and leech without fear of being turned in".
Overall, I think they are no more a haven for hackers than any other large University. Most seem to have the attitude of "do what you want, but don't get caught".
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Presumably, the same security that prevents people from breaking into those servers that aren't originating on the U of Nebraska student network.
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"altering" != "trying to alter". Of course they probably won't be able to alter them, but it would of course be useful to know who's trying, since that's probably punishable as well.
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Sucking the filling out of hostess fruit pies at seven eleven and then putting them back is not theft.
It'd vandalism.
Semantics are fun.
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If so, does that mean you think the penalty for copyright infringement should be the same as petty theft?
Because if so, I agree. Hell with this hundreds of dollars per song crap.
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Two words: Copy, Theft.
Coping is defined as creating a new 'thing' which is identical, or nearly so, to an already existent 'thing.'
Theft is defined as the unauthorized procurement of the already existent 'thing' itself.
STB
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Re:Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
STB