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University of Wisconsin-Madison Bucks RIAA
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:52 AM
from the not-your-agents dept.
from the not-your-agents dept.
stephencrane informs us of an interesting development at UW Madison. The school, along with many others, has been sent "settlement letters" by the RIAA with instructions to forward them to particular students (or other university community members) that the RIAA believes guilty of illegal filesharing. The letters order the assumed filesharers to identify themselves and to pay for the content they are supposed to have "pirated." The university has sent a blanket letter to all students, reiterating the school's acceptable use policies, but has refused to forward individual letters without a valid subpoena. This lawyer's blog reproduces the letter. The campus newspaper has some coverage on the university's stance.
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in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
You can only be prosecuted for a public peformance, which raises some interesting questions about your bathroom...
Parent
Re:That's nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:That's nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
1) If you live in an apartment building or townhouse, or if your house is sitting on less than a half-acre of land; or if you share your domicile with roomates who are not part of your immediate family;
OR
2) If you are showering in a locker room, dormitory, or other public washroom facility;
THEN your bathroom is deemed to be public and you are subject to prosecution. If your house is situated on more than a half-acre and is shared by members of your immediate family (defined as your spouse, parents, siblings, or children under the age of 21), your bathroom is deemed to be private. HOWEVER, you are advised to make provisions by not singing in the event you are entertaining houseguests.
I understand they're working on sensing devices for shower heads. You should check with your local Home Depot to arrange to purchase your retrofit kit. New shower heads will be sold with the device already installed.
Parent
Re:That's nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
The RIAA will simply argue in favor of Cartesian dualism - that in fact the mind is a separate entity/observer, viewing the performance of the body, and is therefore an audience member, thus making it a public performance.
Parent
Re:That's nothing! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I love reading the funny comments many users place on slashdot. However, I prefer that Facts are available to those that want the truth.
1) The RIAA has jurisdiction over RECORDINGS as given to them by their members. Nothing else. The have jusrisdiction over Britney Spears' recording of "Baby...one more time", but they cannot prevent you from singing it yourself.
2) Thus, Given singing in the shower, or any other acapella public performance, is not a recording, RIAA has no Jurisdiction. The rights infri
Re:That's nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here...
Parent
Response to a subpoena (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Response to a subpoena (Score:4, Insightful)
No! I'm suggesting an over reaching subpoena should be contested. For example, an RIAA subpoena for your ISP for the infringer using IP x.x.x.x at 2:50 UCT on Jan 24 2007 is proper. Asking your ISP for all subscriber logs, port usage including times, and to whowm they connected to is over reaching and a fishing trip for evedince of activities they have no knowledge about.
Do you think Comcast will give all subscriber records to the RIAA to troll through for everyone who connected to a Torrent Tracker with just a simple subpoena? The subpoena has to have evidence to support it and it can't be over reaching the evidence.
There is a reason the RIAA does not have all the server logs from Comcast, Qwest, and every University. They have asked in the past. Fishing trips into ISP server logs and subscriber databases isn't allowed.
That doesn't keep the RIAA from trying to get a fishing license anytime possible in an investigation.
Parent
Madison is UW, Milwaukee is UW-M (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Madison is UW, Milwaukee is UW-M (Score:5, Interesting)
In Wisconsin, it is "you-double-you"
In Seattle it is "you-dub"
I have no opinion on why Washingtonians are too lazy to pronounce abbreviations fully.
Additionally, as a proud alum, the University of Washington was still a mud pit when the University of Wisconsin was shaping the minds of influential thinkers.
Parent
Re:Madison is UW, Milwaukee is UW-M (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, he means his chemical formula is M+2SO4M3+2(SO4)324H2O
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Too much "collage porn" perhaps? (Score:2)
well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:well (Score:5, Funny)
1. universities will cave-in rather than risk any involvement in a law suit
2. students will be forced to pay if the university is involved, because the few thousand dollars settlement is nothing compared to the tens of thousands at risk if the student gets kicked off their course.
3. because they're a bunch of fucking thugs with morals that make Hitler look like a guy you'd want to marry your daughter.
Oh fuck... I think I've just Godwinned myself.
Parent
Re:well (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The RIAA is bad, but they're nothing compared to the Nazis.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If they knew the exact students they could have addressed the notices to the students. Most likely the university dosn't want to play detective for free.
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The university doesn't want to be seen as being willing to hand over its students for prosecution, because this might impact their admission rates. Being tainted by the RIAAs public image can't be good.
Just speculation, but if they back out of the whole process then they can say it's none of their concern. After all, are universities asked to pass on parking fines?
Original Email Text (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't RTFA, but I did get a chance to RTF email!
Subject: UW-Madison copyright compliance notice
Date: 03/16/2007
The recording industry is threatening lawsuits against those who may have engaged in illegal file sharing. They are currently targeting students who live in university residence halls. Recently, UW-Madison and other universities have been notified that they will receive settlement letters that are to be passed on to the individuals whom the senders believe to be guilty of copyright infringement. Consistent with current network management procedures and our understanding of federal law, UW-Madison does not plan to forward these letters directly to campus network users. We will, of course, comply with a valid subpoena.
However, if the UW-Madison is given cause to believe that a student, faculty or staff network user may have infringed on copyrights, it will take action. University network policies empower the CIO to terminate that person's network access until the matter is resolved. The Dean of Students office (for students) or supervisors (for employees) will be notified and other disciplinary action may be taken, as appropriate.
Unauthorized peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted works is illegal in many circumstances, and a violation of the university's Appropriate Use Policy. Please be advised of your rights and responsibilities under these rules. For more information, see: http://www.doit.wisc.edu/security/policies/appropr iate_use.asp [wisc.edu]
Fun stuff--Pretty glad I'm out of the dorms. Maybe I'll get one of these from Charter...
I've *almost* been saying this for years: (Score:2)
A good step (Score:5, Insightful)
Erase your logs after a short period of time. Don't keep a record of what IP address was allocated to what account at any given time.
Then if the RIAA shows up, not simply with letters, but with lawsuits and court orders, you still can simply say "don't have the info."
This is what librarians do at many libraries. After you return the book, they destroy the circulation record. There is no record of what books you have read.
Yes, this means giving up using the logs for your own enforcement activities done after the fact. You can have a live database, or even keep the records for a few hours if you want to respond to problems same day. After that, no luck. But why is that so terrible? It's not like people who want to be anonymous for something truly nasty can't find an open wireless node these days. Main problem is that IT admins can't bear the thought of giving up control.
However, this would save the universities a ton of money (no need for legal department to handle requests) and it would also save the students a ton of money ($4000 per student served, $3000 with the "discount") which they could be spending on education.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
ISPs should be held to the same standard. It would be difficult if not impossible to differentiate between someone innocently browsing and someone mischievously pirating, so the onus is not on them to maintain IP address logs but rather on the RIAA to prove copyright infringement. In the same way, it's not the library's responsibility if you OCR or xe
Re: (Score:2)
Or copied a CD, DVD or video tape you borrowed. Which tends to be easier since machines which can turn pages arn't too common.
it's up to the litigant to prove you infringed on their copyright.
If they need some third party to help them that third party is perfectly justified in charging them. (Even if no relevent evidence is found.)
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Use an alias wherever you can. Library, credit cards, it's even possible on the airlines if you get a good set of papers. Be a good citizen, don't steal, but subvert the information-gathering monster as much as possible.
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Since the main aim here is to force universities to police their students of behalf of the RIAA, this would suit the RIAA just fine. They make your life difficult until to close down campus file sharers.
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That's because the main reason for keeping a record is to ensure that the library can get the books they loan back. The only situation in which they'd want to keep longer records (say the last few loans of a book) would be to guard against possibility of a borrower defacing books. This dosn't do much for books which are defaced whilst still within the
how it should be (Score:5, Insightful)
"bucks RIAA"? hardly (Score:3, Insightful)
Wisconsin's response is totally in keeping with the practices of any of the major universities that have recieved such letters. And the fact that they said, "show us a court order, and we'll do it" is not "bucking" anything, unless following the law is now rebellious ("bizarro!").
Extortion? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Response to the RIAA Letter (Score:3, Funny)
Long history of rebellion (Score:5, Interesting)
UW has a long history of being a center of political activism, as far back as I can remember. Some of my oldest memories are the riots in Madison protesting the Viet Nam war.
Another incident I remember is a student body president who raided the student association funds to create a life size copy of the head of the Statue of Liberty and the torch and park it out on the frozen lake one winter. Instead of getting kicked out for wasting funds, they were re-elected by a landslide and followed that trick by covering the commons with pink plastic flamingos. The details are hazy but that's mostly accurate.
This is the school that for years had the Budweiser song as the unofficial school song. They'd play that song before football games and the entire stadium would shutter from tens of thousands of people stomping their feet in time to the music and at the end yelling, "When you say Wissss-con-sin. You've said it all!"
It's the town where a man got arrested for walking naked down State Street at 2 am. In those days he would not have attracted the attention of the police even then had he not been dragging a dead muskrat at the time. The cops said they stopped to ask where he got the muskrat.
The point is if there was going to be any place that would tell the clueless mofo's at RIAA to go stuff it's little surprise it would be UW.
So do people still go to the Stone Hearth (aka The Stone Hole)? Used to listen to this really loud little band there...you may remember then as Cheap Trick.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The only place where someone can bomb a University building [wikipedia.org], killing a postdoc getting ready to go on vacation with his wife and three children, and then come back to the city to open a popular deli in the heart of the city, blocks away from his murder, and be welcomed back with good reviews and a healthy patronage. The Radical Rye, as it was called, was displaced by the $200M Overture Center for the Arts [overturecenter.com], but he still has a juice cart called Loose Juice that you can patronize [igougo.com]. A this 4-out-of-
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What a load of shit.. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Magic Mushroom!
Terror tactics. (Score:5, Insightful)
You kill 2-5 people, you destroy maybe $3000 worth of property. One would think this is hardly worth the effort and sacrifice.
But 5 or so such bombings costed Egypt a few billion dollars in lost tourism profits.
RIAA doesn't do this to profit from the lawsuits, but to stop people from using P2P. Create enough fuss around it, make people afraid of using it, show that no matter who you are, 8yo girl, mother of 8 kids, old granny, a guy after stroke, you're not safe. They don't care that you hate them, just like you hate the terrorists. They just want to scare you.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You are naive in believing laws are made in service of people.
Laws are a product like any other. Laws are commissioned, built and installed by request of highest bidder. Laws are made to protect profits of those who create them. Laws are made to destroy competition. If you blindly follow laws, you're a slave. If you work on changing laws without breaking them, you'll be
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"How about laws protecting children from molestation?"
A man found guilty and sentenced to 2 years of prison for child molestation, for crime of washing his half-year-old daughter without using a rubber glove.
A vote of an ignorant or an idiot counts the same as a vote of an expert or a genius, but the former are more common than the latter. Therefore laws are made to appeal to ignorants and sound smart to idiots. They don't serve solving problems, they serve reelecting the lawmakers. Noble ideas like protect